Howard Blume reports the Common Core test results in the Los Angeles Times.
Across the state, 44% of students scored at grade level or better in English, while 34% did so in math. In L.A. Unified, the figures were 33% in English and 25% in math.
State and local officials said they were prepared for the low scores. The questions are more difficult than on the state’s previous test and, for the first time, students took the exam on computers. The test is linked to a new set of learning standards, called Common Core, that have been adopted by 42 states.
I don’t know who decided to describe the passing mark as “grade level,” but that is erroneous.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NY Post today, offers NY’s Carmen Farina’s unequivocal support of the common core and condemnation of the opt out movement.
And now, 2 out of 3 California students have evidence that shows they are not worthy of education. Do you think this will increase the dropout rate? I do.
All that pressure on teachers and students. For what?
Make $$$$$ for the OLIGARCH, and at the same time bring back slavery.
Someone has scores? NHDOE will not even say when they are going to release them, despite the fact that they literally stood in front of taxpayers in May and promised mid-july at the latest.
While we’re at it, does anyone know why the NEA and (I think) AFT wanted a federal DOE, cabinet level, in the first place. I was a senior in HS at the time and don’t remember the rationale behind wanting to welcome new insect overlords (Simpsons ref.).
The article writer does make an error in referring to grade levels. I think that means the grading system is not clear. Later the article is more specific but makes a different errors implying that California and not the test makers at SBAC set the cut scores. No example of a “standard.” The last idea, that the objective was for students to land in the top two categories ignores the fact that the items are designed so that does not happen, otherwise the test is too easy, insufficiently “rigorous,” weak on the need for individual grit and collective California grits.
California established four levels of achievement: standard exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met or standard not met.
These terms are different than those previously used. “Standard exceeded” can be roughly compared to the former rating of “advanced.” “Standard met” is similar to the former “proficient.”
The objective was for students to land in the top two categories. And students in California performed close to expectations based on a field test given in 21 states two years ago.
It doesn’t matter what misnomer is applied to the various categories as the abomination of educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing are still COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson Any results are “vain and illusory”, in other words, chimeras, duendes, and/or figments of mind that have no epistemological nor ontological bases in rationo-logical thought and reality.
Any and all involved in public education from students and parents to teachers and administrators and the general public should read and understand Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted treatise: “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 words 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.
Duane,
Just so I understand, do you think Wilson’s criticisms apply to teacher constructed tests? Your post only talks about standardized tests. If it does not apply to teacher constructed exams, perhaps you can give an argument that teacher assigned grades and the resulting class ranks of high school students is perfectly legitimate, but ranking students by a standardized test is completely illegitimate.
Yes, it does apply to teacher made tests the grading of students is an illegitimate and harmful educational malpractice that harms many students. Class rankings by GPA is an abhorrent practice with no validity whatsoever. I’ve never claimed otherwise-ask many of my former students as one of the first items on my beginning of the year agenda was to discuss grades and the concept of grading and its complete invalidity and that the students should be working toward learning Spanish and not working toward a getting a grade.
Using any assessment for purposes other than helping an individual student understand where they may be in the learning of the subject matter of the class is educational malpractice.
Laura…we must take into consideration that the writer is Howard Blume, the lead ed writer for the charter supporting LA Times. This was the front page lead story today. Howard is charged to write what he is told by his bosses. He is NOT an educator, but is a very nice guy who often soft pedals his reports. Without a free, and educated, press, the public is deluded into believing what the news media wants them to think. Most people in LA take the word of the LA Times…and consequently deride public schools and teachers, and favor charter schools. It is a perilous and disgusting situation.
What if the ELA tests are really measures of IQ? Or parents’ verbal input? What if no one, not even their makers, really knows what these ELA tests are”measuring” (I tend to believe this)? What if there’s nothing, short of full-time stultifying test prep, that can significantly raise ELA scores? What if no one knows what kind of teaching can raise these scores because what the test is measuring is very nebulous? What if the “experts” on these tests are just spouting cliches and quoting their own PR that have no connection to the reality of these tests –sophistry…words without substance to back it up? What if the education reporters don’t know enough to see through the obfuscations of the experts? What if, as a result of these results, CA schools spends the next 10 years in a quixotic and fruitless attempt to goose up these scores? What if this generation of CA kids fails to learn much about civics, literature, science, history, geography, economics, art, music, etc. because we devote ourselves to the “more important” task of raising these ELA scores? What if Common Core actually diminishes our kids’ reading, writing and critical thinking skills because of a misguided understanding of what real education is? What if our knowledge-free rising generation is far more prone to being taken in by dangerous charlatans and extremists because they were fed an untested curriculum that turned out to be educationally null and void? Torlakson, why do you take the claims of the test promoters at face value? You’re a scientist –why don’t you ask for empirical evidence that teaching to these tests will really make smarter Californians? How do you know this is not snake oil? Why aren’t you demanding that we do small-scale field testing of tests and new methodologies before foisting them on the whole state? Will folly ever end?
Cut it out, Ponderosa!!
A few simple questions and many non-answers put forth by those who know nothing of the questions you ask although those know-nothings will tell you they know all!
What if the people pushing standardized testing, VAMs and all the rest were actually capable of reasoning?
“What if?
What if false were true?
What if night were day?
What if economists knew
About the things they say?
You ask all the right questions, Ponderosa.
Good observations, Ponderosa. Our test crazed society has us all chasing our tails and going nowhere! The kids are the ones that are losing. So sad!
The idea that students do not need to be at grade level is interesting. What does graduating from high school mean? Exactly how far below “grade level” does a student have to be and still be a high school graduate? I look forward to a precise answer, but I do not, of course, expect to hear one.
Grade level is the median. It floats. Fifty percent are above, fifty percent are below.
Dr. Ravitch,
I certainly agree that grade level is a median. How far below 12 should the cut off for a high school graduate be? Reading at the 8th grade level? Something lower? Should high school graduates know algebra?
TE – most newspapers in the country are written at about the 4th – 6th grade reading level* (WSJ and NYT are exceptions, I believe – written at roughly the 8th grade level). Why would someone who doesn’t plan to go to college need to read at a higher level than that just to graduate high school? I haven’t used algebra, geometry, trigonometry or calculus since I passed the GRE (and, other than the GRE, not at all). Why should those subjects be required for high school graduation? Why can’t we let colleges decide their own admissions standards without imposing those as high school graduation requirements?
* And that’s to the extent that such “levels” have any meaning at all.
In LAUSD, the district and the BoE are culpable in determining graduation standards…which they have just cut to the bone. No more exit exams, and devalued grading from A-G, with D as passing….done only to increase manipulated graduation numbers.
The core issue would seem to be what kind of testing should be mandated? How about vocational ed testing so that some students who cannot read well enough, or process enough to answer standard testing, could be given aptitude testing as in taking apart a car engine? Or testing on how to plumb, or on electrician ability?
Would this not be more realistic than answering questions like the math question listed on the front page of the Times with their article, which uses purposefully convoluted outer space characters to divine simple arithmetic answers involving adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing…and on computers yet, which many of the inner city youth have not learned to use?
This school district is comprised of about 82% inner city youth who live at near, or, poverty level which is statistically determined by the free lunch program.
Expanding vocational ed is far more realistic than taking aim at ALL students being directed to 4 year colleges…then testing them on the highly flawed CC studies (and RttT) and evaluations that label them failures.
TE,
Do you want answer based in rationo-logical thought or just one of the many answers that could be given to your questions.
Better yet, please tell us your answers to your two questions and we can discuss from there!
Duane,
I would prefer a well thought out argument, though to be honest I have little hope of seeing one.
Dr. Ravitch questioned “grade level” (her scare quotes) as a standard. It seems to me that if you don’t like one standard, you might want to propose an alternative or simply say that there should be no standards.
TE, this is a snarky and hostile comment. Standards are completely arbitrary. They are set by adults who make educated guesses. There is no science involved.
TE,
I think you know I say that there should be no standards since the usage of that term as a fundamental concept for educational discourse is fatally flawed. How is it fatally flawed. Well how is the term used? It certainly is not used as meaning a flag or banner. Is it used as in the meaning of an art or music standard whereby one attempts to get at an acceptably pleasing aesthetic performance? Or is it meant to be used as a metrological standard where it forms the basis for some kind of measurement? Or is it a documentary standard, i.e., an ISO standard, one in which all the stakeholders have a voice in the formation and usage of said standard? Without agreement of what an educational standard is the usage of the term is fundamentally flawed.
Why standard and not other terms that have a longer usage and history in educational discourse such as curriculum goals and/or objectives, or performance goals/objectives or student capabilities/abilities to be developed? Because “standard” has this ‘sacred mythological’ cultural value; How can anyone be against a “standard” type argument? (I say easily done if one learns the true nature of the usage of the term).
To sum it up, I propose quit not using the term standard and use the many already available words used in educational discourse.
TE…hope you read my comment above. Am always amazed at your thought process and attitude about student engagement.
Actually, for once you’re asking the right questions (albeit in your typically disingenuous way). But don’t you think those questions should have been asked *before* we tried to test kids to try to find out whether they’re at “grade level”?
In my experience, “at grade level” is generally used to discuss elementary and middle school student leveling. By the 8th grade, students should be ready for high school. Most high school classes could be taken by 9th graders, unless they require a prerequisite course (like Algebra I before Algebra II or French I before French II).
The point is, as students enter schools at different ages and abilities, the levels of accomplishment need to be assessed and determined at smaller incremental levels than they do as the students gain knowledge, background, experience, foundational skills. To test students as if they have reached these grade level goals prior to exposure to the prerequisite skills leaves the students at an unfair disadvantage when taking these tests.
To pretend that all students are able to function at the upper end of each level is to fail to recognize child development, which is, at best, an estimate of the average expectation. We don’t compare babies (or do some) as to when they roll over, pull up, climb, crawl, walk or get teeth, hair, or first words. We shouldn’t compare them even if we subconsciously do. Of course, there are developmental expectations, but there are students who are delayed for whatever reason. Did you ever try to teach children to ride a bike or swim? Do they take to it in the same manner? No. Education is no different. You can’t teach a bird how to fly prior to the development of feathers and wing strength. Why do we assume that we can shove kids to do things that they don’t have the prior skills to understand or perform? When we start an exercise program, we have to condition our bodies to do more and more. It doesn’t “just happen”, and we don’t blame the exericise instructor or the equipment if we are slower than some others.
IMO, there is a lack of common sense in the expectations and explanations of normal childhood academic expectations. By simply shoving the curriculum down to younger and younger grade levels, the expectations for ALL students will not necessarily go up. Some will meet a challenge because they are functioning at a higher level than others due to adequate exposure and developmental opportunities. But, we need to know that even by putting all students in the same environment from birth, they still bring unique characteristics from their life in the womb and from their genetics.
The bottom line is that there is a range of acceptable grade level expectation. We can’t limit it to the low end or push it to the higher end. “On grade level” means that most of the students can achieve that level of learning. You can’t raise “on grade level” for a first grader to be what was previously expected of a fourth grader and achieve much success. That is the reason for high failure rates. These were expected, but they won’t suddenly improve simply by “saying it should be so”. Either a student is ready and capable or not.
Bingo…thanks Deb and Duane for your educator’s analysis.
And of course, thanks to Diane….TE is indeed full of “snarky” suggestions.
Are you really expecting an answer without even bother looking at what/who/how the word “grade level” is defined?
Speaking of sarcasm.
Again TE, what are your answers to your own two questions?
I’ve answered your queries directed at me, please give me the same courtesy in return.
Ah, yes, they “failed”. Who wouldn’t fail a test for which they couldn’t be developmentally prepared, a test which takes most of what has been taught for years and gives it a twist, a vocabulary update, a trick answer or two from which to choose, and suddenly the skids are pulled out from beneath the unsuspecting heretofore intelligent students, leaving them and their teachers gasping for breath.
I suppose if you get the “experts” in every field, but not typical students or learners when they themselves were in school, to design the “perfect” questions and to design convoluted answers (which only distress the truly thinking student to distraction), you can say that you have a most “perfect” test. The trouble is, it is designed for those of a certain IQ, a certain background, a certain amount of experience, and an ability to assimilate ideas quickly.
Alas, the qualities for those achievements aren’t widespread. That isn’t putting anyone down. It is true. Even if most adults can finally learn what needs to be learned to do a job or have a career, the fact remains that they may not have learned as quickly as some others. And, that is OK.
But, the reformers don’t understand. They don’t want to.
Ahh, this article takes me back to those halcyon days of May, when we plopped those 8 & 9 year olds in front of computers for 5 straight days, for hours at a stretch, to take a test so bottomlessly awful that it redefines “crappy.” The L.A. Times article claims that these tests measure achievement and grade level. In reality, the only thing these tests measure is how utterly our education system (and the taxpayer dollars funding it) has been delivered to testing and tech corporate interests. Shame, shame, shame!
What a farce. CA spent Billions on SBAC, ETS, Amplify, etc to give a test that is computer adaptive and cannot be use to scientifically accurate to compare a student, school, or district because EVERYONE TOOK A DIFFERENT TEST.
Has everyone lost their minds? Why did Arne Duncan let CA off the hook with a waiver letter NOT to comply with NCLB to require a proficiency test like STAR?
While NY and Mass. give achievement tests and PARCC, CA is ok with giving just this farce.
What’s next?
Will Arne Duncan enforce his edict of last week to remove all modifications and accommodations for Special Needs children on these tests?
More torture?
How much more will it take for parents in CA to revolt?
Yes Cooper..they have not only lost their minds, and any conscience, but they look only at their Dun and Bradstreet status in determining their rush to deform public ed.
Ugh. They also describe the scores as “student achievement”
I thought the ed reform “movement” was making a new effort not to define students with test scores? I haven’t seen any evidence of any change. The entire piece presents these scores as wholly descriptive.
“Student achievement”. Any one know how to post the emoticon that is puking?
“The results are not as discouraging as they seem, former state schools Supt. Bill Honig said, because the bar is set so high: what students need to succeed at a four-year college… Even though student achievement needs to improve, he said, the scores would be higher if calibrated to the skills needed to attend a community college, get a two-year nursing certificate or pursue a career in manufacturing.”
Ah, at last an admission that the ‘or career-ready’ half of the college-or-career-ready meme is pure BS. How refreshing!
This was the only suggestion of value in the Honig rationale IMO.
Government funding for vocational ed at our great California Community College system should be primary.
Hope Torlakson is working to increase this funding, and also to return to sanity with costs to earn an Associates degree. The per unit cost now is prohibitive for most students who generally must work while attending a 2 year program for nursing, mechanics, child care, etc. where they can matriculate to either 1) transfer to a 4 year college or 2) enter the professional work force where they are needed and can earn far more than teachers.