A strange affliction has taken control of American public education. Or perhaps it is better to say a group of people with a mindset from some fantasyland are now making policy, all geared to produce standardized children and standardized minds.
Here is an exemplar.
As I read this article, my eyes began to blur, the words lost all meaning. Who are these people? Why do they think that all children can be rated,ranked, and labeled by their scores on a standardized test? How do they define “proficiency”? What does it mean? Who decided?
One voice of reason: Bob Schaeffer of Fairtest says that “standards” are not objective, they are subjective.
If you can jump higher than me, am I a failure? If you can solve a crossword puzzle faster than me, are you better than me in general or just better at solving crossword puzzles?
I know that the people who are immersed in data and who believe in data like a religion, think they are being scientific. So did the eugenicisys of the 1920s,who thought they could use test scores to sort and label people and to decide who was allowed to reproduce; they thought they were “scientifically” improving the human race, like plant genetics or animal genetics. By the 1930s, they were recognized as quacks, but on another continent, a mad dictator loved the eugenics philosophy and drove the world mad.
Will anyone hear if I put in a word for humanism? For valuing the different gifts of each person? For loving every child, regardless of their test scores? For abandoning the nutty quest to have standards so high that most children are designated failures by arbitrary measures?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Things Fall Apart and commented:
Standardized testing as eugenics…been saying this for years!
LikeLike
I guess it depends on whether you want to grow flowers in a garden or produce widgets in a factory.
LikeLike
Battelle for Kids
LikeLike
It’s appalling the way they’re framing this- states and school districts are LIARS and the ed reform movement are the sole, brave truth-tellers.
Another political campaign disguised as a policy debate.
Didn’t Duncan start the theme that states and public school districts were “lying”?
Nice message coordination there. Now they’ll all repeat the “lying” smear.
This must be Round Two of common Core marketing. I wish they’d just release the whole campaign and get it over with. Anyone know what they have planned for after the scores come out? A national “public schools suck!” tour?
LikeLike
There is a well funded marketing campaign to sustain the Common Core and the associated tests.
One facet of the current campaign is designed to lower public expectations about the success of students on the SBAC and PARCC tests and to say, in effect, that cut scores on these tests will to set to approximate the operational definition of proficiency and the pass on NAEP tests, Only students who score at the highest level on NAEP tests are dubbed proficient. .
There is also a bit of distraction going on, because SBAC has already announced cut scores based on its field trials in 21 states. There is another little known fact: When PARCC an SBAC applied for federal funding, they promised to make their scores comparable.
PARCC will “coordinate with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium on… artificial intelligence scoring, setting achievement levels, and anchoring high school assessments in the knowledge and skills students need to be prepared for postsecondary education and careers.” Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. (2010, December 23). Proposal for supplemental race to the top assessment award. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/media/parccsupplementalproposal12-23achievefinal.pdf p. 3
Similarly, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) asserts: “SBAC and PARCC are strongly committed to ensuring comparability between their assessments…[including] collaborative standard setting that will facilitate valid comparisons of achievement levels (cut scores) in each consortium’s summative test…” SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium. (2011, January 6). Supplemental funding budget narrative submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. p. 31. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/media/sbac-supplemental-budget-narrative_final.pdf p. 31
Producers of the SBAC tests have their set “cut scores” to report on four levels of performance. Level 1 signals failure. Level 2 indicates “at risk of failure.” Level 3 implies “safe harbor, doing well.” Level 4 means “proficient.” For students in grade 11, only Level 4 indicates readiness for entry-level, credit-bearing courses in college.
Across the grades, in math and ELA, about 11% of students are estimated to score at 4, the highest level and the one that indicates, in the eleventh grade, readiness for entry-level, credit-bearing courses in college. So, that will be very bad news, and it will make news when all of the test scores are gathered in.
The SBAC cut scores in math are estimated to assign 67% of grade 11 students to Level 1 or Level 2, with most (40%) at Level 1. In many states, students who score at Level 1 will also place teachers and administrators at risk of being fired, perhaps with the whole school in line for closure. In addition, many schools will just assign students even more test prep in math, at the risk of harming students’ love for learning and affinities for inquiries that are not driven by tests.
The cut scores for English Language Arts are estimated to place about 59% of students at Level 1 and Level 2, with about 32% at Level 1. Students with these scores are certain to be in the same boat, receiving more test prep. In states like Ohio that guarantee “proficiency” in reading by grade three, 62% of students are likely to fall short, up to 82% if that rule and the meaning of proficiency corresponds to SBAC’s Level 4 definition of “proficiency.”
In any case, the cut score issue is not a trivial matter given the high stakes that federal and state officials have deliberately and foolishly attached to tests, tests that are not “objective” and cut scores that are not “objective” but judgments–and these detached from any concern for the consequences to individual students and all public schools.
Proponents of the Common Core and tests are worried about the political fall-out when the test scores are released in a form that allows stack ratings among all the states that sighed up for the Common Core and have advertised that they have tests aligned with the standards.
They should be worried. Gurus of spin at the American Enterprise Institute suggest how to spin that news. They suggest that the scores should be played down, that news should avoid crisis rhetoric about poor performance. They recommend framing the testing outcomes as just another step on a path “to continuous improvement” in student learning.
That soft “slow-and-steady-as-we-go message” provides cover for policy makers who want to delay high stakes decisions based on these test scores but still use them as a baseline for judging gains in performance for the following year. This delaying tactic may buy time to reset expectations for learning, but it will not stop the obsessive use of test scores and relentless test prep than now dominates life in many schools.
For advocates of the “one size fits all” standards and tests, the comparability in scores from SBAC and PARCC tests means this: Every state that signed up for this grand and nearly maniacal experiment in standardized education will be rated as winners or losers by these supposedly “objective tests.”
The governors and the state education officials who signed adoption papers for this grand experiment in standardized education may be out of office, but current officials will be questioned about the results. Handling the political fall-out will be tricky, especially with an election season heating up, budget problems in many states, and the dueling minds and messages of politicians (notably Republicans, but also Democrats) who support or condemn the Common Core and tests, and many others who have no mindful views other than spin provided to them.
All of the investors in pushing the Common Core–Achieve, the National Governor’s Association the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Gates foundation and buddies along with venture capitalists–want to keep PARCC and SBAC in place, including Common Core “aligned” tests other than those from PARCC and SBAC.
Why? Do not believe the spin about the global economy and needed skills for the 21st century workplace, and all of the other sales pitches.
Test scores with high stakes consequences are the weapon of choice for expanding market-based education. The more students, teachers, and schools fail, the faster the collapse of public education.
As Diane Ravitch and others have said over and over, the cut scores for NAEP “proficiency” are high. NCLB never defined proficiency, Race to the Top did but only in terms of college and career ready specifications, not cut scores or tests.
Achieve has manufactured a “proficiency gap” that looks impressive to a casual viewer, but it is hot air. The proficiency gap is a version of the achievement gap. The kids and the teachers are the problem. The standards and the tests are perfect .
LikeLike
Well said, as always. I have such frustration with how we are moving ever closer to standardized children and people as a result of standardized teaching and testing. Don’t stifle a child’s spirit of discovery and love of learning. This rampant trend is hard to watch.
LikeLike
Actually, not to be too contrarian, but I think education has stifled creativity and love of learning for a long time now. Now we just do it with tests.
LikeLike
You are not contrarian at all. On this forum you are echoing our thoughts.
LikeLike
Also, I know ed reformers all consider themselves tough, hard-nosed CEO’s of America’s schools, but the way to gain cooperation from school districts on putting in your giant, unfunded Common Core mandate is probably NOT to start a national campaign accusing those same school districts and states of “lying” to parents.
Anyone know why they’re using this crazy accusatory language? Was there a focus group somewhere that said calling people liars would advance The Cause?
LikeLike
If states and school districts are all big liars with low standards who set out to mislead parents and the Common Core tests are The Truth then why are they trumpeting the rise in graduation rates and using is as proof of the effectiveness of this narrow version of “reform”?
If states and school districts are using low standards to “lie” about increases in test scores then aren’t they also “lying” on increases on reported grad rates?
LikeLike
“According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics latest School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2013, the reported prevalence of bullying among students ages 12 to 18 dropped to 22 percent after remaining stubbornly around 28 percent since 2005.
“The report brings welcome news,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell said. “Parents, teachers, health providers, community members and young people are clearly making a difference by taking action and sending the message that bullying is not acceptable. We will continue to do our part at HHS to help ensure every child has the opportunity to live, learn and grow in a community free of bullying.”
Gosh, I hope public schools aren’t reporting this stat they’re trumpeting. Most likely lying” about it, given their obvious propensity to lie about “proficiency”
Why does this “self interested politicians” analysis only work one way? There are no self interested ed reform politicians? They’re just better and more honest people?
LikeLike
“Who Decided?”
Who decided what is good?
David Coleman, who is God
Who decided who is smart?
Arne Duncan, from a chart
Who decided who can teach?
Governors with VAMy reach
Who decided all our fates?
Oligarchs like Billy Gates
LikeLike
Snap!
LikeLike
Please read my book, THE GEOGRAPHY BEE, for an example of a humanitarian teacher who sees every individual in her class as she resists teaching to THE TEST.
Dr. Marie Fonzi
LikeLike
“Mind your Standards”
Standardized children
Standardized minds
Standardized drill men
In the mines
LikeLike
Some DAM Poet: See “Metropolis,” a classic movie to see what standardized minds and standardized people look like.
LikeLike
Why we don’t need IRB boards before we “innovate” on children I have no idea.
LikeLike
I would phrase things slightly differently.
The self-proclaimed “education reformers” are “data addicted” but, in the most important instances, only when the data fits their preconceived self-serving notions.
In other words, if you start with the “soft bigotry of low expectations” concerning the potential, humanity, worth and effectiveness of the vast majority of teaching staff, students, parents and their associated communities, i.e., that they are by definition worthless and useless, you then set about rigging the selection and collection of data and its analysis—
By enforcing the “hard bigotry of mandated failure” aka the hazing ritual of high-stakes standardized testing. The “data” then confirm your “intuitive sense” that we, the overwhelming bulk of the population, don’t live up to the requirements of our social betters. And in their eyes it’s a twofer: not only is labeling, sorting and ranking good for them, it’s good for us too.
Noblesse oblige. In its 21st century cage busting achievement gap crushing rheephorm version. Rheeally! And in a most Johnsonally sort of way to boot…
And—according to the usual unreliable sources—the price paid by the heavyweights of the “new civil rights movement of our time”? They feel “swarmed” and need to defend themselves against decency and honor and compassion by hiring legions of enablers and enforcers and “thought leaders.”
To sum up: while the rheephormsters stride about naked surrounded by their braying sycophants, they call out the militarized police to shut up the child that says they have no clothes.
Hint: they still have no clothes. And as for their long-range plans, homegrown talent reminds us:
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” [Mark Twain]
😎
LikeLike
Dataddicted?
LikeLike
GE2L2R:
TAGO!
😎
LikeLike
Your exemplar lead me on to “A visit to a grading center” in the same site. Time again for all to read the Todd Farley book “Making the Grades”.
LikeLike
ps here is the link
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/05/a_look_inside_a_common_core_te.html#incart_related_stories
LikeLike
From Poitico today. As if you had no idea about this until today.
“A recent federal study of students who were first-time kindergartners during the 2010-11 school year and second graders in the 2012-13 school year found that their scores in math, reading and science were lowest when they came from families living below the federal poverty level and highest when they came from households with incomes at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty level: http://1.usa.gov/1HjdH4M. “
LikeLike
Hi Diane,
This is one of your more eloquent pleas for a return to humanity in education. It is encouraging recently to see people such as John Oliver giving the data collecting mania more of the critical attention it deserves. Best wishes!
LikeLike
I think equally disturbing to the data mania is the fact that teachers have been told by their principals to not post any personal opinions about the test on their social media sites. Additionally you have the well known case where Pearson contacted a school and requested that a student be reprimanded for posting test questions on her social media page. The monitoring and spying reflects a paranoia that exists only because there is something to hide. I expect a legal case to be built around this sooner or later. It doesn’t seem legal.
LikeLike
Pearson had something to hide all right: the fact that their tests are garbage written by a bunch of monkeys trained by David Coleman.
See here
LikeLike
“If you can jump higher than me, am I a failure? If you can solve a crossword puzzle faster than me, are you better than me in general or just better at solving crossword puzzles? ”
If the absurdity of testing third graders for college and career readiness doesn’t hit you, these comparisons/analogies really bring home the absurdity of of the reform agenda. The scary thing is that there are plenty of people running around that think competition is the one and only way to establish worth.
LikeLike