Parents are told that their children should take the new online Common Core tests because doing so will help their children.
The president of the State University of Néw York said students should not opt out:
“When it comes to whether students should opt out of standardized testing, no one is actually talking about what’s best for our kids. Standardized tests have become a pawn in political debates about teacher evaluations and we have lost sight of what they are: a way to measure what students know so we can help them improve,” President Nancy Zimpher wrote.”
Advocates and defenders of the tests assert that parents and teachers will learn about how the children are progressing, and teachers will be able to use this information to tailor instruction to meet the needs of individual children.
None of this is true. The information provided by the tests is worthless. It is a score. It offers no information about how to help students improve. It gives a score and a ranking compared to others in the state.
There is nothing individual in each student’s report. The teacher can’t see what the student got right or wrong. The teacher and parent learn nothing except the student’s score.
A test is valuable to the extent it is diagnostic. If a test is diagnostic, it identifies strengths and weaknesses so the teacher can help children do better. This report is not diagnostic. It says nothing of importance.
This is akin to going to a doctor with a painful stomach ache. He gives you tests, then says he will get back to you in four months. When you see him again in four months, he tells you a score, and he compares you to other patients with similar symptoms, but he has no prescription, no advice about how to feel better. Why would you want to know that you are better or worse than others with similar symptoms? Wouldn’t you prefer to have treatment?
Knowing that the test consume a large part of the school year, knowing that they are designed to fail most kids because of their absurdly high passing mark, knowing that the tests have no diagnostic value, the best decision for parents is to opt out of the testing. Send a message to the state capitol and to D.C.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is Zimpher simply drinking the kook-aid or is he making it for the rest of us to imbibe?
Ellen #MustNotHaveKids
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I think he’s a she-Nancy
“She called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Nancy”
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I don’t buy that the SUNY Chancellor is so uninformed as to actually believe that Cuomo and the regents are currently using “assessments as a flashlight — to guide improvement — rather than a hammer to punish failure”.
You’d have to be living on another planet to actually believe that.
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Oh, SDP, she lives close enough…apparently, in that mythical “ivory tower” of higher academia.
She must have read The Chicago Tribune editorial several weeks ago, which clearly stated that the CRAPP gives teachers & parents “actionable information” that would improve teaching!
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“The SUNY Solar System”
The SUNY solar system
Is out by Betelgeuse
And chancellor who leads ’em
Has quite outlandish views
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Was that report issued in the summer, after the child had left that classroom and moved on to the next grade?
Do you or anyone else know if children’s next teachers get those reports the following fall for all incoming students? If they do, have they access to diagnostic tests they can administer, so they can find out exactly what the child needs help with and provide intervention?
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in PA we can get the scores broken down into maybe 4 categories…still not enough to really help in differentiation or interventions.
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Hi Teacher Ed,
Teachers do not receive the scores of their students from state tests until the following school year. Teachers only receive the score. They also only receive test scores for their incoming students There is no diagnostic information given to the teachers from the state tests. The state tests do not give information about areas of need in terms of support for students. Teachers and school have to make use of assessments outside the state tests (such as running records) to figure out areas of need for students. Great, timely, helpful information can be gleaned from informal and teacher-created assessments. Because it is timely, and speaks with specify to student needs, it also drives instruction. As all classroom assessments should.
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might something of value get accomplished if parents demand diagnostic test reports?
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David Nova, the tests–all tests–should have diagnostic value. If they don’t, why use them?
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And I’m not so sure that a test “should have diagnostic value”. There is no reason that a teacher-made classroom test has to “diagnose” anything other than to help the student better learn the subject matter. As it is the state of being able to “assess” what a student “knows” is woefully lacking. I haven’t understood this “diagnosing” of students’ learning. Tests helping students to understand what they know and perhaps allow the teacher to suggest various ways to utilize that information in the individual student’s learning as part of an ongoing discussion of the classroom, not just the teacher “diagnosing” a student would be a calmer, saner, more effective way to go about assessing the both the student’s learning and the teaching and learning process in a fashion that Wilson has termed the “Responsive Frame” through many different activities would be the most effective.
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What are the diagnostic value of final exams for courses in high school?
If you are against exams without diagnostic value for the students, surely you should first work to eliminate the most prevalent form of non-diagnostic exams: teacher constructed final exams (including the ones that I will be giving in a month or so). Condemn ALL non-diagnostic exams, not just the ones that are not written by the folks teaching the class.
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Why is the troll with no moral compass back?
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TE,
I agree with you on the final exam. Ours is so screwed up anyway by an “incentive” program of if you have 95% attendance rate and have an 83% or better grade you don’t have to take the final so that out of a class of 25 I may have 10-12 taking the test. I allow them to use notes, semester review packet and the book to take the test as a way to minimize the insanity that is our finals policy.
If you are the original TE, glad to see you back!
Duane
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Duane, You misinterpreted TE. He is not against final exams. Teachers in college aren’t required to give finals. We have much more autonomy than K12 teachers in our classes and if we do give tests it is typically because that’s our choice. He said it to be a contrarian and attack Diane, as he has done many times in the past. Fortunately for her, and for those of us who do not appreciate his bellicose tactics, he is not “back” anymore. Except for you, FLERP! and other antagonistic corporate reform trolls, probably most of us are very relieved by that.
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The tests were not designed to give diagnostic information. Years ago people demanded that they be given information about how individual students did on our state assessment. They were not tests of individual student learning. Questions that too many students got correct were eliminated. Curriculum decisions were made by district with some loose guidance from state standards. Instruction was not uniform across the state so some districts had not covered content included in the tests. Individual scores said nothing useful about the learning of individual students, and yet parents demanded scores. The state caved in.
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These tests seem useless. If the test is in fact not diagnostic/individual, why should students take them? I don’t think that they should. If the results show nothing specific, they will not help the teachers and parents determine where their child(ren) are in reading, math, etc. The best way to determine where a child is in school is for the teacher to pay attention and pick up on things. Observe children and learn about them. In my opinion, being a good teacher and paying attention to your students in the best way to asses growth.
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Also–& especially this year–in ILL-Annoy, at least, where kids are taking the CCRAPs on computer–these tests are (barely even that) measuring how well a kid can…take a test (use a mouse, use a computer, fill in the correct bubble, the one that actually corresponds to the answer {assuming the student is giving the right answer}, using hand-eye coordination & transference skills, while also computing math problems, reading a test that’s written 2 yrs. above grade level {4 for sp.ed. students}, etc., yada yada, ad. nauseum.
Finally–my favorite story–my niece, who graduated summa cum laude from NYU–attending for only 3 years, as she’d picked up enough AP credits to skip her frosh year–took the LSATs, and skipped some bubble rows, which resulted in a not-so-great LSAT score (she’d realized her mistake, cried, & told the proctor, who gave her some {verboten} “extra time”–but, of course, she couldn’t find where she’d erred. Despite her outstanding grades & hard work/recommendations from the Legal Aid Clinic, she didn’t get into law school. However, she later attended grad school at Columbia (in a different field, & from which she also graduated summa cum laude). Hmm…
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Unfortunately the tests are useful if your goal is to blame teachers for widespread low scores.
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As if the child’s teacher has not already assessed the child in these areas and discussed results with the parents/guardians. This is ongoing throughout the school year…And I love the “What next?” part. We need a test to tell us what’s next? Good teachers would already be on top of this and engaging with parents. The proposed purpose of the tests is such a lie and a cover-up!
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Wonderfully succinct and clear argument demolishing the billion-dollar tests. Opt-out refusal of standardized PARCC/SBAC is smartest things parents can do to stop the abuse of their kids by commercial vendors and the looting of school budgets to pay for tests/tech/test prep.
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Anyone have her twitter id?
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I don’t trust the ed reform movement to use the Common Core tests as a “way to improve”
In fact, I would bet my next mortgage payment that the Common Core test scores will be used for many, many things other than a “way to improve instruction.
If you tell people over and over that this test measures “critical thinking” and “College and Career” readiness and then hand people a 1-5 scale and assign kids numbers, people will understandably and rightfully believe that scale is a proxy for “critical thinking” and “College and Career Readiness”. This can’t end any other way. It’s as if they drew a roadmap for that to happen.
They really can’t have it both ways. They are telling people it is all about the test while also telling them it isn’t. It’s completely incoherent.
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And what does a kid take away from these reports? I’m not really very smart. I flunked math and I got a “D” in ELA. Those tests were too hard for me.
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Important point, 2old. Of course, have witnessed many a student crying or stating, “I’m dumb” even WHILE taking “standardized” tests. In fact, the school used to hand out the score reports (from the previous year!) for the kids to take home (right–what happens when you give anything to a middle school student?! Found LOTS of them on the sidewalks outside of the school, or blowing away in the wind!). Of course they’d always read them & would compare their scores w/their peers (lots of teasing).
My last year of teaching, I had a 7th grader w/Aspergers who repeatedly hit himself in the head, stating, “I’m stupid, I’m stupid, I’m stupid.” I attempted to stop him, but he shrieked (didn’t like to be touched), & called for the social worker to take him down to the office for an ice pack & to call his mom. (Mind you, this was DURING testing, so, of course, the concentration of the other kids taking the test was disrupted. One can only imagine how this affected THEIR scores.)
But, this matters not to ignorant people such as Nancy Zimpher.
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I just read that the judge has sentenced the Atlanta to varying jail terms and that he mentioned how “they had harmed the children” by their actions. I haven’t followed the Atlanta case closely, but just HOW were children harmed? If the Atlanta were the standard, big test, then the students were definitely NOT harmed in any shape, manner or form. Standard test don’s determine promotion or retention, do not affect placement or final course scores and, in fact, as we know, are of no consequence to the student. (They may have consequences to the teacher (VAM) or to the school (A-F ratings)).
The consequence to the student seems to be non-existent and the very premise of the punishment phase of the trial seems to be erroneous.
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Exactly, Terry. It’s the TESTS/TEST PREPS that harm the children
(as I’ve so illustrated in my comments above).
And it’s absolutely child abuse. Those who manufacture &/or perpetuate (Arne, legislators) the testing-industrial complex should be arrested, indicted & prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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We create our own tests to evaluate student progress/accuracy. We grade and record these grades, and act accordingly. Then the students and parents receive a record of this performance. It is called: a report card.
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These reports lack any specificity. The point is what is the skill that is impeding his acquiring the goal described at an optimal level. There have been tests that identified the specific skill. Unfortunately, there was an assumption that the school would be serving the same students the next year. Also, it is a colossal waste of time. The teachers know what the skills are that their students lack. At the school in which I taught where we had many second-language children, the reports always came back indicating multiple meanings of words was a vocabulary issue. We also discovered on our own (since the test couldn’t really measure it designed as it was for higher skills) that the lack of multiplication memorization kept students from showing what they did know. They could not use calculators and had not bothered to memorize the times table. We knew that to begin with. It doesn’t take rocket, or should I say computer– science.
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Here’s a link to the Daily Gazette about the Amsterdam School District in upstate NY.
http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2015/apr/14/0414_optout/
I think it’s interesting that this district is making students STAND UP and verbally refuse the tests in front of their peers. This district also considered having students “sit and stare” if they were not taking the tests. I also think it’s interesting that a parent in the article refused to give her name because she feared retribution from the school against her daughter. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
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They should stand up and recite the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights particularly in states giving the Pearson tests.
“The British are Coming”
The British are Coming
They’re PARCCing in schools
The Pearson’s are drumming
We’re acting like fools
We beat them in battle
But now we surrender
They treat us like cattle
As corporate provender
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It is a blatant attempt to coerce students to take the test against the wishes of their parents. Who is the school to interpose itself in a family decision? What if the student feels the pressure and takes the test? It is a PATHETIC attempt to UNDERMINE the parent-child relationship.
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Heil Hitler!
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It doesn’t matter what she says – we aren’t listening.
In West Seneca, a middle class/blue collar suburban neighborhood outside of Buffalo, NY, 56% of the parents sent in letters opting out their children from the tests which began today. I’m curious to see what the other districts stats will be.
Who are you going to believe – someone yapping in your ear or your own experiences with the issue?
Ellen #NotEveryoneIsAnIdiot
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This is from news channel WNYT in Albany, New York:
Albany: 15.5 percent of students opted out. If there are one or two kids not testing, they stay in the same classroom and read. Any more than that and the kids are moved to another room. At Montessori Magnet School, kids who don’t take the test are assigned reading buddies in 1st and 2nd grade.
Amsterdam: 28 percent of students opted out
Averill Park: 20 percent of students opted out
Berne-Knox-Westerlo: About 68 students or 30 percent, opted out in 3-6 grade, 27 students, or about 39 percent opted out in grade 7, and 29 students, or about 45 percent opted out in grade 8.
Bethlehem: 14.5 percent of students opted out.
Broadalbin/Perth: Close to 25 percent of students opted out – up from 10 percent on Monday. The superintendent credits social media, peer pressure from parents, and a group holding signs on Monday evening.
Guilderland: 18 percent of students opted out of the reading portion
Mohonasen: 55 percent of students opted out of the reading portion – up from a planned 40 percent on Monday. That meant the plan for alternative learning space had to change.
Schenectady: 2 percent of students opted out. They were taken to an alternate location in the school to take a local test.
Shenendehowa: 15 percent of students opted out – up from 5 percent on Monday. The students who don’t take the test go to an alternate location to read.
Watervliet: 6.5 percent of students opted out. They are reading in the back of the classroom.
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This is a huge protest movement occurring right now and yet I see NOTHING about this on tv or in newspapers! How little parents, teachers and students are regarded…
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A recent survey conducted for a “civil rights group” and favoring the Common Core found that about one in four people had never heard of the Common Core. These “never heard” responses were greater for African Americans (37 percent) and Hispanic Americans (33 percent), for those with low income (34 percent), and those with a high school degree or less (36 percent). That same percentage was present for adults who live in households where at least one child attends a public school, including charters and magnets.
13 percent of adults indicated they know “a lot” about the CC.
The survey is available here: http://www.civilrights.org/press/2015/common-core-survey.html
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Here are some opt out rates from around NYS:
(The numbers here cannot be 100% confirmed)
LONG ISLAND
Port Jefferson- 50%
Rocky Point- 50%+
North Babylon- 41%
Mount Sinai- likely in the 40% range
Longwood- likely in the 40% range
Patchogue-Medford- 60%+
Comsewogue- 82%
Sachem 65%
Babylon 59%
Shoreham-Wading River 75%
Hauppauge 64%
Deer Park 36%
Bellmore-Merrick 62%
Amityville 36%
Rocky Point 70+%
Bayport/Bluepoint 58%
Cold Spring Harbor 22%
Connetquot 69%
Fire Island 31%
Islip 65%
Undenhurst 56%
Mount Sinai 50%
North Babylon 54%
Pat-Med 65%
Rockville Center 60%
UPSTATE (Capital Region)
Ballston Spa: 380 students (20 percent )
Bethlehem: 180 students, elementary schools only, (18 percent)
Guilderland: 391 (18 percent)
Mohonasen: 671 students (53 percent)
Niskayuna: 205 students (11 percent)
Schenectady: 106 students (2 percent)
Shenendehowa: 861 students (18 percent)
Ichabod Crane 55+%
Mahopac 50%
WESTERN
West Seneca 70%
Lake Shore 50+%
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What’s the source for these numbers?
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The inter-web
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Unimpeachable.
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I think she is just doing her part in the machinery.
Instead of making universities a better, more affordable product, they seem to be manipulating their future revenue stream through some kind of educational monopoly, by completely manipulating and controlling the “customers”. years before they arrive.
“All told, groups in the know—groups like the Gates Foundation, Complete College America, the National Governor’s Association, The College Board, The Lumina Foundation—they all agree that completion is too low….So let’s say we are shooting for 60 percent. Let’s say that’s the goal over five years. On our current path, we won’t get there.”
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https://www.suny.edu/about/leadership/chancellor-nancy-zimpher/speeches/2015-sou/
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I can’t even get teachers in my school to commit to attending a Saturday rally for Put kids first at the State Capitol. Today was my first day with a little kindergartener who was so called tested to be on the 1 year old level and identified as nonverbal. Like hell, he is. Talked all day. Sure, he is latino and still learning the English language. Kid could follow oral directions. He could focus over 10 min. At times he demonstrated awareness way above the 8 year olds in the room who talk too much sometimes. Kid needed two years of good quality play-based prek before moving on. But now, they just drag them along…….with bad grades.
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Teachers’ final, created by teachers, are to assess mastery of a subject or lack there of. They are based on the curriculum taught, NOT something designed by a random group of people about God knows what.
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I volunteer to be banned in TE’s place.
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That would be no great loss, but it would not be a fair exchange so you can both go. Alas, I care about Diane and regret that I have no say in the matter.
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You could volunteer to be banned on the condition that TE and I are both banned as well. That would be truly heroic.
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I would be willing to leave if you both go, but I don’t see either of you going voluntarily since that was a choice for you to take on your own before, but you didn’t opt out then.
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On the count of three . . .
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FLERP,
If you attack me or my family, you will be banned too.
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Thank you, Diane. You really do deserve a lot better.
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Go ahead.Spin your mortal coil to vacuum clear. It’s right around your corner.
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Many of us here already know how it goes in college because we teach college ourselves. AND we taught K-12 for decades, so contrary to what your ego is telling you, we are the education experts, not someone who is a college lecturer in economics that never studied education.
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TE needs to go….we wouldn’t put up with that crap from our kids, why are we letting him even be here at all….just sayingl….
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Most of TE’s posts have been removed from this page, so I suspect he was banned again. I think he earned this consequence, since he has demonstrated that he continues to have no moral compass
Great call, Diane! Thank you ever so much!!
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It seems my take on TE is different from most here. While I did find some of his posts to be obnoxious at times, I didn’t find any that were totally objectionable to me (I can be rather crude and base myself) and I can’t speak for others who obvious have had serious issues with some of the posts, but then again I know that some were deleted before I read them. I have no problem with Diane banning anyone as it is her blog to do with as she sees fit.
Be that as it may, hopefully we will continue on “discussing a better education for all”
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