Valerie Strauss solved an interesting question. Why did Secretary Duncan recommend that states limit testing time to not more than 2% of class time?
He got the idea from John King, who is slated to be Interim Secretary after Duncan leaves government. John King was Commissioner of Education in New York, where he proposed a 2% limit on testing time.
That worked out well. Twenty percent of the eligible students (220,000) students opted out of the testing in 2015.
Turns out that 2% is a very large number of hours.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Two idiots
Oh, I’m sure it was a collaborative project conducted by the same 150 “movement” ed reformers they always consult with.
The “action plan” is really the opposite of “collaborative”, BTW. It’s a list of demands coupled with a starting assumption that public schools won’t comply so will have to monitored to ensure they do. Also, if “set aside” means what I think it means if Congress ever passes any of this it will be yet another unfunded mandate for public schools.
These appointed leaders are demonstrating they know very little about how best to educate students.
Like a friend of my dad once said, “A shoemaker should repair shoes”. It may be too late to rectify the damage done. Time will tell.
It’s already too late for 70% of the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in NYS that have been branded chronic failures for three consecutive years under the illegal NCLB waiver testing demands (see RTTT) of the USDOE. Many of those young children will never shake the stigma of institutionalized failure or get back the time wasted in test prep and AIS classes.
My grand daughter in eighth grade already claims she is stupid and has stopped trying.
She just doesn’t care anymore. So sad.
Some will speculate that The Lone Tester got the 2% idea from Tonto.
In response to the parent backlash over the way test-prep started to dominate math and ELA classroom time under the Lone Tester’s NCLB waiver program, The NYSED (under Tonto) instituted a “2% rule” for the maximum time allotted for test prep.
NYSED has defined “test prep” as the administration of “timed practice tests”.
It did not include the EnRageNY worksheets and HW. It did not include practice tests that were not timed. And of course the policy came with absolutely zero capacity for regulation and enforcement.
The Obama recommendation for a 2% maximum of instructional time as per his “Testing Action Plan” has yet to be defined.
Math/ELA Testing in NYS:
Instructional time prior to testing (Early April) is approximately 25 weeks.
This works out to (minus interruptions and off days and half days and snow days and drill days) about, 100 class periods.
At 40 min/per. = 4000 min./60 = 67 hours of instructional time (per subject)
Two per cent of 67 hours = 1.34 hours of testing
Now, IEP/ELL students can get a 2.0X time extension for testing. This begs the question, would the 2% rule become a 4% rule for them – or would their testing limit be equivalent to 0.7 hours per subject for reg-eds?
The Devil is always in the USDOE!
It is important to note that Obama’s “2% testing rule” is only a recommendation – not a rule that any state must follow.
It does NOT carry the FORCE of LAW. The “2% testing ploy” is just that – a way to placate the impending parent revolt of 2016. Trying to stop the “Parent Spring” may prove futile.
Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
There will be no real change in testing policy while Obama, Duncan, and King are in office. They plan to throw some money at states for “audits” of their testing policies. That is all.
I have reached this conclusion based on a C-Span discussion about the 2% rule and other testing issues (Oct.26, 2015). The program began with Michael Casserly’s report on testing from the Council of the Great City Schools, followed by remarks from Arne Duncan; John B. King, Jr. both from the Department of Education; Chris Minnich; Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO); June Atkinson, State Superintendent, North Carolina (new President of the CCSSO); and Alberto Cavalho, Superintendent, Miami-Dade County Schools, Florida.
Arne Duncan, John King, and Chris Minnich are clearly committed to national standards and “aligned” college and career-ready tests for “performance” comparisons.
Arne said that “we” are entering a new era. Referring to the college and career agenda in tandem with PARCC and SBAC tests. He praised the emergence of common metrics for “growth” and “achievement.” He saw test scores as comparable to standardized metrics in basketball and in monitoring Wall Street. Duncan said that national tests based on high standards are needed so everyone can tell where the best practices are, who is “getting better faster,” and so on.
Duncan also said that “tests should drive instruction” six times. Others echoed that idea. Arne varied that claim once: “Tests should drive instruction in real time.” I interpreted that as a pitch for on-line instruction—so-called personalized learning—with non-stop data-gathering functioning as the means of testing and determining the next steps in instruction.
Most of the speakers were certain that teachers needed tests in order to know the strengths and weaknesses of their students and to “decide what to teach next.” These speakers clearly saw teaching as step-by-step instruction, even in the midst of rhetoric about “high quality tests,” more “coherent” testing, and more “strategic” testing, along with lip service to tests of critical thinking, problem solving and so on.
June Atkinson, the new President of the CCSSO from South Carolina said they are re-working their testing. They are doing a trial run with three or four tests a year focused on “chunks” of standards so measures of “growth” and “achievement” could ”drive” instruction. She said that “assessments should be thoroughly integrated into instruction you can’t tell the difference between the two” …and that technology can help.
The 2% cap on testing time, whether a rule, or a rule of thumb, is not going to be a bright line, or cap at the federal level under the administration of Obama, Duncan, King, and the policies favored by the CCSSO.
There are five main reasons:
First, a cap would be incompatible with on-line learning where testing is already fully integrated with instruction, often in a feedback loop for each segment of instruction. There will be fierce opposition to any such rule from the tech community, and it would be incompatible with USDEs own tech initiatives.
Second, a cap is at odds with the concept that teaching and testing should become the same thing in every regular classroom. That is the opinion voiced by the John King, and the new President of the CCSSO (State Superintendent of Education in South Carolina).
Third, the orthodoxy of Obama, Duncan, King, and the CCSSO is this: “Teach to the test” because…tests should drive instruction, determine instruction, be the engine and the go-power for instruction.
Fourth, a cap would be incompatible with USDEs “outcomes only” policy framework for K-12 education, teacher education, and higher education. Test scores are the main outcome measure embedded in federal policies. They are not the only one, but the easiest for all secondary determinations of “system outputs” at the national level, and for international comparisons.
Fifth, a federal cap would likely be challenged by testing companies as a restraint on trade or some such.
I have never felt any need for a standardized test, especially when the results are available many months later. I have always found the assessment, particularly the local formative kind informs rather than drives instruction.
The problem with people like Duncan or King is even if they hold degrees in education, they lack any practical understanding of the consequences of the rules or even recommendations they make. They pontificate from on high without understanding how much time is wasted and how demoralizing it is for struggling learners.
But, but… 2 is a small number! 😉
John King got the idea from needing a number small enough to sound tiny but large enough to sound responsible by testing kids enough (and not diminishing testing companies at all)
Coupled with his CCSS skills in math where estimating the wrong answer in the right way is better than getting the right answer, I can see where this came from.
The 2% rule just allowed testing to be here forever! Why did not Duncan say tests should eliminated? Where I am located, students attend instruction time for 180 days or 1,080 hours per school year. Two percent of their time is 36 hours or 6 days a year.
Students get nowhere near 1,080 hours of INSTRUCTIONAL time.
By the time April/Testing Season arrive, a student would be lucky to get 100 hours of instructional time in any one of the two tested subjects. Until this recommendation is more clearly defined, we should not be jumping to conclusions. Obama/Duncan/King need a good math lesson before spouting such useless and deceptive ideas.