Paul Thomas writes a scathing indictment of the U.S. Department of Education’s blind faith in standardized testing. He might have included the U.S. Congress, as well as most governors and legislatures, and a large number of think tanks and foundations. Certainly, one of the primary malefactors of the testing obsession is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And let’s not forget George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, and Sandy Kress (architect of NCLB and Pearson lobbyist.) Then there is the cluster of testing zealots attached to the Common Core.
I could devote an entire post to listing those who shaped the current regime of testophilia. I would include myelf for my sins, but at least I recanted my sins.
Thomas attributes a large part of the damage to non-educators put in positions of authority.
“And let’s not fail to acknowledge that such vapid bureaucratic nonsense is inevitably the result of know-nothings being appointed to positions of power (think never-taught Arne Duncan serving as Secretary of Education in the wake of Margaret Dishonest-or-Incompetent Spellings turning her hollow SOE gig into becoming president of the University of North Carolina, resulting in her bragging about having none of the background experiences typical of leading higher education).”
Thomas includes links to valuable articles and studies about the uselessness of high-stakes standardized testing. Does anyone at the U.S. Department of Education read research? Or has it been turned into a cheering squad for whatever administration is in charge?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Testophilia” is definitely a candidate for the word of the year.
Not for a second should we take our eyes off of what they are really up to with testing and now limiting testing: their central aim to deprofessionalize teachers and remove organized teachers from the equation entirely.
Testing, common core, etc. were NEVER about education, educational pedagogy, educational best-practices, or “the kids.” Never. Not even in the opening seconds of the reformers’ thinking. (BTW: this was our unions’ largest and first total mid-read….they assumed that common core and reformers impulses were fundamentally educational, rather than political, corporate, and hyper-capitalistic).
The central goal of testing within the reformers’ agenda is to establish data to “prove” teachers suck. This, I would argue, is the central nugget that will remain untouched with Obama, Duncan, King, and Cuomo, Elia, etc at the NY State level.
As I have always said, the reformers and their political voice boxes will be remarkably nimble in trimming, cutting, modifying, and changing their agenda around…..at the margins, without ever disturbing that central nuggett…teachers rated via tests. They’ll do less, call for less, rename, rebrand, restructure…..but the one thing they will never change is that….trying to “scientifically” oust a generation of organized professional teachers.
Amen!
Agreed!
NYSTEACHER:
A charter member of the rheephorm establishment concurs! Frederick Hess, American Enterprise Institute, quoted on the blog of deutsch29:
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In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
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Link: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
This from a rheephormista insider—two years ago and it’s just as true today as it was then.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
How much money has been wasted on this unnecessary testing? Critical learning skills were diverted to testing for the test.
It’s called “chauffeur knowledge” (http://www.emotional-intelligence-academy.com/chauffeur-knowledge-or-expert/), consultants and policymakers who’ve learned the jargon (“evidence-based practice,” “data-driven policy,” “metrics”) without understanding their nuances, limitations, and actual applications. And its users are prime examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/lessons-from-dunning-kruger/).
If, according to the Council of great city Schools, the average amount of time devoted to taking mandated tests during the 2014-15 school year was 2.34 percent of school time for the average 8th grader—the grade with the most mandated testing time, what indeed is the Pres offering? A real reduction of .34%?
YAY WE GET A FEW PERIODS OF ART BACK!!!!
Thomas rightly cites R. Callahan’s “Education and the Cult of Efficiency” as a starting point for understanding the history of “efficient education”.
However he fails to cite the most important writing of all concerning the two most inglorious educational malpractices going hot and strong today: educational standards and standardized testing. That most important writing, which has shown the COMPLETE INVALIDITY (in epistemological and ontological basis) of any usage of the results of said malpractices, is Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted 1997 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.
I don’t think the DOE cares about research or articles on the “uselessness of high stakes testing.” With the appointment of John King, the DOE will continue on the same test and punish path, except Obama will occasionally announce something civil to get the attention of the press to placate concerned parents. Next, we’ll get a position paper on recess. The DOE’s misguided march will continue just the same. One thing we know about Obama. He is skilled at speaking from both sides of his mouth when it suits him.
Amen! He’s JUST A POLITICIAN. That’s what politicians do … Double talk.
Paul Thomas says it the best.
The DOB and Obama are so full of potatoes, you could distill a case of vodka from the detritus…
So true. Priscilla.
The issue is not the amount of time students spend taking federal- or state-mandated tests. I think the current amount is acknowledged to be 2.3% of class time, so a drop to 2% is a rather negligible change. Even 1%, however, is too much if the tests are lousy and they’re not providing meaningful information to teachers. As you’ve written often, Diane, if we’re only seeking state-by-state comparisons and an overall view of student achievement, we’ve got that now with NAEP. The additional tests are doing nothing that tells us how to help individual students.
What’s more, the federal- and state-mandated tests have a nefarious effect, and this is separate from their time requirement. They result in too much teaching to the test. This is what parents are most upset about, and with good cause.
If the feds suggest 2% of class time be devoted to testing, schools and districts, which are being judged by the results, add a layer on top of that, sometimes doing “benchmarks” weekly or even daily. All of this is in the name of data-driven instruction, but really, not in a way that helps students at all. The data is collected for one reason only, so school and district officials won’t have an unpleasant surprise come April and May, when the mandated tests are given. Problem: Low benchmark scores? Solution: Do more test prep!
The obsession with data has another consequence: a narrowing of the curriculum. Parents recognize this as an awful side effect of federal and state policy. In other words, there’s more to the story than time spent on tests (and test prep). Complaints will keep coming because the “new and improved” guidelines won’t bring back art, history, PE, and everything else that gives kids a quality education or the time to learn by experience, to discover interests, and otherwise to be prepared for life—all goals which parents understand to be as important as “college and career readiness”. And the new guidelines certainly won’t help put more dedicated, professional teachers back in the classroom. For that, what is needed is better pay, autonomy, and time for teachers to do their jobs—almost the opposite of federal and state policies.
In the end, the proposed drop in testing time from 2.3% to 2% is just a proverbial re-arranging of deck chairs. The titanic ship of data-driven instruction and accountability has hit an iceberg and is sinking. I don’t feel sorry for the billionaires who built the ship; they’ve still got billions left for space travel or whatever they want to do next. But I do feel sorry for the families on board. Hopefully the American public recognizes how the billions did nothing to get at the root cause of “failing schools”. The root cause is not soft bigotry of low expectations, entrenched teacher unions, or lack of data. It is poverty—and all the ways that poverty manifests itself in poor urban and rural communities: dropouts, high teacher turnover, crumbling infrastructure, and class sizes that are much too large for struggling students to get the attention they need.
By misdiagnosing the cause, the Obama administration and its wealthy benefactors nearly wrecked our educational system. They also made our society more inequitable! In the end, their corporate reform and privatization schemes never quite burrowed in to middle class communities, but their testing side-effects did spill over and were legitimately perceived as a threat. Provocation came from none other than the U.S. Secretary of Education: suburban kids are aren’t as brilliant as their parents think. Well, it didn’t take long for parents to spot the double-standard: the reformers’ kids, who attend private or very well-funded public schools, mostly were untouched by the reform movement.
Kids in poorer communities are not so lucky as to have their parents pushing back. Instead, many are running for lifeboats as the ship goes down. Many kids will drown because they can’t get there fast enough, or if they do, they risk being thrown overboard to free up their seat for someone else. (Yes, I am referring to Success Academies and the sad euphemisms of “suspended” and “counseled out”.) While wealthy benefactors look at this situation and imagine themselves to be life-savers, remember this: they built the ship that’s going down. Some kids in poor communities will no doubt be saved, but the majority will suffer a great loss. It may take several generations, if it’s even possible, to rebuild our public education system. But it’s the American way. We’re going to have to rebuild and recover from our two-decade careless experiment with government mandated tests, corporatizing of curriculum, and intentional destruction of neighborhood schools.
How much testing does it take for administrators and teachers should already know? The reformers are so busy bragging about what they do not know, they probably do not even look at the test results that would show them what teachers knew before the tests. Students have refused to memorize the times tables and second-language students are deficient in multiple meanings of words. Both of which limit any ability on the tests in middle school.
The whole thing has been such a waste of time and money. Please, politicians, reinstate the 90% upper limit on taxation. Save us from the meddling of know-nothing oligarchs. Their moves are becoming boring as well as useless and damaging. Bring about restructuring, revitalization, revolution–anything but reform.