Tim Farley, principal of an elementary/middle school in upstate New York and founding member of New York State Allies for Public Education, writes here that the new Obama testing policy might increase the time spent testing students.
Andrew Cuomo, governor of Néw York, was quick to applaud the Ibama plan and to note with pride that New York had already enacted a 2% cap on testing time.
Farley writes:
“In New York, as Cuomo has reminded us, we already have a 2% cap on time spent on standardized testing. What does that actually mean? In New York we have 180 school days and an average school day runs about 6.5 hours. If one does the math that’s 180 x 6.5 x 2% = 23.4 hours of testing. So, by law, we cannot exceed 23.4 hours of standardized testing in grades 3–8.
“This begs the question — How much time do kids in grades 3–8 spend on the state tests in English Language Arts and math? If you are a general education student, you will spend roughly nine hours in a testing room for both the ELA and math tests. If you are a student with a learning disability (SWD), and you have a testing accommodation of “double time,” you get to sit in a testing location for eighteen hours. As insane as that seems, it is still 5.4 hours short of the time allowed by law. A 2% cap isn’t a step forward, it’s a giant leap backward.
“How much testing is too much? I don’t know the magic number that will give the state education departments and the U.S. Department of Education the data they supposedly need in order to determine the effectiveness of the schools, but I do know that nine hours of testing is too much for a nine-year-old, eighteen hours is abusive for nine-year-olds with a learning disability, and 23.4 hours of testing for a child at any age is criminal.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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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%?
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The question of How Much is important but the question of What Kind is more so.
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The question by Farley of ““How much testing is too much?” caught my eye for the reason that you state Jon. Without “what kind” one can’t answer the too much question. But allow me to answer:
Any standardized testing is too much, period!
The appropriate amount of teacher made tests in the local context of a class room should be determined by the teacher, period!
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One thing is certain — standardized testing is not for educating the student.
If you want to know what it’s for, you have to look at what the people using it use it for in a given use.
When I was in school, way, way back when, we had statewide assessments 2 or 3 times in 12 years, not counting stuff like the Kuder Preference Test, culminating in optional ACT, PSAT, and SAT for college-bound folks. The PSAT was good for getting me into college, but that’s about it.
Standardized tests are of course being used for very different and mostly destructive ends today.
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But, none of this counts the time wasted on ‘test prep’. In my State (Tennessee) it seems (based on conversations with local teachers) that the curriculum is so dominated by ‘THE TEST’ that many, many hours a day are devoted to making sure the kids know how to deal with the testing format and style of questions that will be asked. AND, it’s not even November.
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As long as they have high stakes associated with these tests, the whole school year will essentially be “test prep”.
David Coleman said it best “Teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that.”
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SomeDAM Poet: your quote from David Coleman, a charter member deep inside the rheephorm establishment, is unimpeachable testimony about rheephorm reality.
Pair this with the two-year-old statement by an equally unimpeachable rheephormista, Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, and the fogs and vapors of Rheeality Distortion Fields rapidly dissipate from the current “major policy shift” of the US DofE re standardized testing.
Link: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Thank you for the reminder.
😎
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The assistant principal at my school told us that is unethical to NOT teach to the test, and has encouraged us to look at the questions as we proctor. While we can’t write them down or anything, we’re supposed to look so that we know what kind of questions are being asked so that we can teach to the test. It’s disgusting.
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I had a similar experience when teaching. I told my principal that I refused to teach to the test because I was only going to provide the highest quality instruction I possibly could. She followed by saying that I didn’t care about the kids and that I was actually hurting them by not teaching to the test. I finished the conversation by saying that I would not budge. I was not going to teach to the test because the kids deserved way more than test prep. My last sentence to her before I walked out of her office was, “I know that deep down you wouldn’t want your own kids in this educational environment”.
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The story is the same in NJ.
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2% is another one size fits all notion from POTUS. Is 2% the same for the developmental level of a K or first grader versus a high school student?
There should also be some acknowledgement of the loss of instructional time, especially for teachers that teach across grade levels. As an ESL teacher in a K-5 school, I counted twenty-eight mornings of lost instructional time due to federal and state testing by the end of my career. That amounts to over a month of prime instructional time lost due to testing as I was required to participate in different levels of testing across multiple grade levels.
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I’m sick of the President setting this up as public school parents versus public schools. In that video, he presents himself as sympathetic to parents who oppose over-testing, and then vows to “aggressively” monitor testing, as if public schools set out to harm children and he has to intervene.
The President needs to examine why he seems to believe public schools and public school parents are on opposite sides. That’s a weird way to look at that relationship. Where does this come from? Why does he always set this up as the Obama Administration battling public schools on behalf of public school students? It’s bizarre, and it’s also blatantly politically expedient. I’m not at war with my son’s public school and I resent being enlisted on the “side” of the ed reform movement as they battle the public schools they’re paid to assist.
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Thanks, Chiara. Wise comment. You can see why the Obama administration vigorously supported Michelle Rhee in her struggle to pit students vs. teachers. Now it’s supposed to be parents vs. the public schools testing their children too much.
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It’s great, isn’t it? Force standardized testing on teachers, then blame the teachers for standardized testing. Obama has graduated to the level of politicians lacking an internal guidance system.
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How Andy arrived at 2% as the magical percentage to limit testing and property tax caps is beyond me. I can’t imagine the byzantine calculation schools will be forced to make to figure out that 2% for testing if the tax levy formulation is any guide.
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How can any thinking educator disagree with you?
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The NYSED 2% was a limit set for maximum “test-prep” as defined by “timed, practice tests. The King/Cuomo 2% was NOT a limit on actual testing.
My read on the math is different. Students in middle school receive about 70 hours of math instruction, tops, prior to actual Common Core math testing in April. Two percent of that would limit time spent taking the Pearson math test to1.4 hours maximum which should be applied to the specialized instruction population at X2.0. This would limit the maximum math test for reg-eds to 42 minutes! Excellent, just a one period, non-disruptive test.
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RageAgainstTheTestocracy: if I read your first paragraph accurately then…
Wow! Another sad example of toxic rheephorm duplicity. *If I misread, please let us know.*
Thank you for your take on this.
😎
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You did not mis-read. The NYSED has defined “test-prep” in such narrow terms so as to render the policy moot. When touting this policy change to the public they conveniently failed to mention this definition. The notion of “enforcement” is an even bigger joke. Just another baloney sandwich meat to appease the parent revolt currently underway here in NY.
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Tim – So grateful for courageous and motivated school administrators! You effectively put the issue of the damage and waste of overtesting in perspective. Here is an article about test prep in kindergarten. Who would have ever thought anyone would have to fight this fight? Politicians like Cuomo and Christie and education leadership should be ashamed of themselves for the damage they are causing to our most vulnerable population. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/02/test-prep-for-5-year-olds-is-a-real-thing-heres-what-it-looks-like/
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I’ve read this article before and I love it. I feel for the teachers who will be rated according to these children’s’ test scores. But WHY do teachers continue to do this to children if they think it is really damaging to them?
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It’s an excellent question. It’s because it’s really hard to go to a grade level meeting where scores are discussed or have a coach or administrator ask why your scores are not on the spread sheet and say “I refuse to test my students.” I am not afraid of being fired, but I guess I am too wimpy to just say no. So I make the process as painless as possible. I don’t call it testing with my kids, I call it an activity. And if they have a terrible time of it (like a student last week who colored in all the smiley and frowning faces on the page), I show them later, 1-on-1 and with no pressure, how to make a choice of one image and circle it. I do not take the results seriously what-so-ever. And I don’t have to use the scores on our RIDICULOUS report cards where we have to have 9 grades per subject (in KINDERGARTEN!). So the children in my class are not penalized for being 5 and not getting this absurd “activity” they have to do. I use it more as practice for pencil grip/small motor skills and keeping their bodies still and seated correctly (vs. slumped over and lying on the table) for 10 minutes – worthwhile practices as they are learning self-control.
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“Tim – So grateful for courageous and motivated school administrators!”
Just as yourself, ki, afraid to do what’s right and just by/for the children Farley is paying lip service to what should be done but IS NOT DOING what is right and just. Has Farley instructed his staff to not do the educational malpractices against which he rages? Not that I’ve read, correct me if he has sent all the materials back and has instructed his staff to teach in the wholesome fashion that we know works and not teach to nor give the test. Oh, but he can’t because he may lose his job and heaven forbid we might “lose his voice”-horse manure!
ki,
Consider the following by Andre Comte-Sponville in his “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” about self interest and expediency taking precedence over justice and what should be rightly done for the students:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
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The FL legislature, under great pressure from parents groups, student groups, the FEA, and political dissenters from the CCSS (Tea Party radicals), passed a law limiting districts to no more than 5% of the school year to testing.
My district interprets this as 9 days out of a 180 day school year or 1 testing day for every 20 instructional days (once a month, basically).
No one talks about how using percentages here, however, is meaningless because schools that lack the computer labs, Internet access, and online bandwidth must roll out testing over days and weeks, often taking libraries, computer labs, and special area teachers and service providers out of the mix for huge chunks of the school year while they monitor testing. This is a real and damaging cost that Arne and Obama choose to ignore entirely.
A friend went to a state content area conference last month and lots of people were talking about how their districts were getting around the law: they are calling tests and assessments “progress checks” and other such euphemisms, telling teachers that “Testing in the classroom is not the same as district-mandated testing but, ya know, VAM evals are coming up and if you want to get an effective/highly effective it would probably help if you gave assessments X,Y, and Z every 2 weeks and call them classroom assessments”, etc.
The testing juggernaut is ingrained into school culture now, just like the failed ‘standards’ movement. Both have become part of the lexicon of common knowledge despite a near total lack of success in improving anything or ending poverty. It’s hard to get people in education to even say standards or testing are useless, failed ideas even though they are because conventional wisdom is pretty hard to combat.
So here we are, stuck in the reform vortex and no plausible way out without bringing down the whole system and starting over.
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Chris,
There is no end in sight.
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Chris – your para on ‘schools that lack the bandwidth’ etc should be front & center in the discussion. This is not just under-funded schools. NO PUBLIC SCHOOL that I know of in my wealthy NJ area has a laptop at every desk. This means every school has to herd kids in & out of testing areas in shifts, while libraries, computer labs, & often gyms are inaccessible for normal use. ONE session of math/engl PARCC at a hs near me needed 5 days to accomplish the task (only to turn around & do it again 2.5 mos later)– elementaries were running more like 7-10 days of disrupted schedules (& pull-outs for make-ups & SpEd)– per session. 2% time for stdzd test-taking = 4-6% for stdzd test-taking in the trenches.
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