A comment by a reader:
I have been a teacher of special needs children in NYC for the past eleven years and also have an advanced degree in educational administration. I am now looking to utilize it.
Here’s my issue– I just took a Pearson test under the most arcane circumstances.
It was the eight hour marathon of the two-part school building leader exam. Throughout the exam on a computer that was not functioning right, jack hammers were being pile driven above my head (and other test takers like me) on the floor above the “Pearson Professional Building” test site. They gave us tight headphones to wear and the vibrations were still felt. It was insane! Fun fact, did you know that Pearson does not allow you to bring water into the testing room? It’s true. For four hours at a shot you have to find water elsewhere. Are they afraid I would find my answers to the 600 word essays floating in the bottle?
If you have to use the bathroom, or grab some water, it takes five minutes to leave the premises because first you raise your hand, and hope that your ‘proctor’ sees you behind the glass, comes inside, turns off your computer (which is still ticking down), then you have to have your palm scanned, and show them your ID then run the ten second hundred yard dash to a key in bathroom. Reverse the process when through. On part two of the exam (seven hours in) – I held my body in check with dehydration and hallucinations floating along simultaneously because I did not want to lose valuable time on the clock. In my exhausted opinion, these tests are more of an endurance meet then a skills test for the field. I felt like it was a cult indoctrination, or a cruel hazing ceremony from college before being expelled.
I wish the world of politicians and other loudmouths and crack-pots could see inside the vail of the Pearson testing empire. Thanks for reading!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who says we can’t measure grit? Looks like that’s all these tests are measuring. (With apologies to Mr. Swacker.)
I’d say they are also measuring “wit”
To wit: “Are they afraid I would find my answers to the 600 word essays floating in the bottle?”
Come on, Dienne. Sure we can measure grift. Grift is Pearson’s business. Just count up the profits and there is your grift. Counting is measureing, right?
Ohhh………What? It’s grit and not grift. Sorry, nevermind!
“The Grift Lift”
“You measure what you treasure”.
So if you treasure grift
Then grift is what you measure
To give yourself a lift
Dienne, SomeDAM Poet and Duane Swacker: you’ve topped yourselves.
😎
What this Teacher experienced should NOT happen to anyone. Move on to the experiences of Students who have endure when taking the PARCC or some other mandated standardized test that can go on for hours. I doubt the Students’ pain level is any less then that experienced by this Teacher. Only in the profession of US Public Education is this type of torture allowed to happen. To me this is a form of domestic terrorism inflected on Students and Teachers by people who have little or no understanding of our Public Education systems and do not care for anything except the profits made off their brutal demeaning tactics.
“Bowdlerdash”
The Pearson test‘s are bowdlerdash
Ephemeral nimbus plinths
They’re really an insufferable hash
Enough to make you wince
I didn’t realize that ritual hazing was now part of professional advancement unless of course you rise through the ranks of edupreneurs. That’s one way to rid education of those pesky professionals.
2old2teach:
On threads of this blog, I have often referred to standardized tests (especially of the high-stakes variety) as being hazing rituals.
But note that the very notion of standardized testing is violated by the non-standard distractions and peculiar adverse conditions. The “professionally made” standardized testing referenced in the posting makes the tests prepared by classroom teachers look immensely more standardized by the supposedly strict guidelines of the very folks that design, pre-test, produce and administer such hazing rituals.
That is why I also call it test-to-punish: it’s not just the standardized test results that are used to punish people of all ages and stations of life, the test itself is often quite literally a punishment all in itself. *Who can forget that [or so it is alleged by the usual unconfirmed sources] stirring Pearson battle cry: “Kids, break out the vomit bags!”
😱
I await the rejoinder by the rheephormsters that visit this blog that the numbers generated by such standardized tests are pure gold and are not to questioned or devalued in any way.
Rheeality, after all, is so much kinder to corporate education reform that reality.
😎
Cross posted it at
with this comment
Pearson . a major player in the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
has been the major beneficiary of the unnecessary testing that is destroying our public education system.
Their tests, sold were sold as magic elixirs
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
to school systems that have REMOVED THE REAL PROFESSIONAL TEACHERS, the real voices of education, who would never allow ant-learning materials to replace real curricula.
The money spent on testing could have gone into hiring more teachers, repairing old school and building new ones, buying materials and funding important services to support the classroom teacher and LEARNING.
This is the latest idiocy. Determining leadership with a computer test?
Corporatocracy is fascism… according to Benito Mussolini.
Pearson also runs National Board certification. The testing conditions described here (no water, raise your hand, clock keeps ticking, etc.) are the same ones used for National Board exams.
I must disagree with my fellow posters here.
This is an excellent test of a teacher’s ability. In the real world, teachers have no time to pee and, in the last school I taught in at least, little access to drinking water.
Bonus points if you’re pregnant with twins (been there!).
I have a simple question. Why did you take the test?
What test are you talking about!? To see how dumb deformers, pseudo-STEM experts, economists, politicians, and corporatized media are in education fracking business? That’s must be a great test!
I don’t entirely mean to be rude (although, kinda, yeah), but you have serious reading comprehension issues that show up quite frequently around here. Perhaps you could get yourself evaluated for some sort of disability.
Anyway, the author tells us why she took the test: “It was the eight hour marathon of the two-part school building leader exam.”
To Raj:
The answer to your question is in one question ABOUT human conscience.
Why do you eat, sleep and hygiene? It is the NEED to survive for body and a profession.
Back2basic
Reader–so sorry that you–and so many others (someone I know, in fact), are having to suffer for Pear$on’$ profit. (In ILL-Annoy, student teachers have to go through the “rigorous” Pear$on-de$igned edTPA program {which Diane has previously posted info. about, but if anyone form any other states want to write in on their experience with this Herculean task, I, for one, would love to read it}.)
To Dienne & SomeDAM way up there–I know something they are “measuring” that rhymes with “grit” AND “wit,” but I’ll be polite in our gracious host’s living room, and simply type s–t. Not what they’re “measuring” because, as we all know, NO flawed Pear$on-made te$t actually “measures” anything. As has been our experience, all of their te$ts and te$t prep$ and other materials are…well, rhymes with “grit” and “wit!”
Some very good points.
And worthy of a change
“Dung Beetles”
You measure what you treasure
So if you treasure dung
Then dung is what you measure
And Pearson is the one
Contrast the standardized approach of Pearson’s of administrator effectiveness with the certification “test” that I went through. The process was a two day affair where all those being tested were brought together to do various activities to simulate what a principal actually does. There was an in-box activity where one had to sort the various items, prioritize and then act upon the top three. There were simulated group meetings where you participated both as a leader and a group member to address a specific concern. Every aspect-your dress, your demeanor, movements, tone of voice, number of times you responded, etc. . . by former administrators randomly assigned to evaluate and assess you. Sometimes the assessors were working with a rubric type checksheat other times it was a narrative type evaluation. After the weekend was done the assessors then took a week or so to go through all the evaluations, write up a report and then one would personally meet with the prospective administrator and discuss the results pointing out the good and the areas that they thought you needed improvement. Unfortunately I think (I don’t remember exactly and am too lazy to dig through all my papers to try to find out) they did attach a letter grade to the process and also some comments.
It was hard to “game” the system, other than as my professors told us, “Always include the superintendent in everything you do”. (Probably as a paean to the assessors most of whom were former supes-you know stroke their egos, and almost all were men-ha ha).
That weekend was the very last one of those types of prospective administrator assessment as the state dept of ed was instituting an 8 hour written exam (obviously a cost saving measure-whether it was actually saving any dollars, well, let’s just say I’ve not seen the cost justification). I got to choose which type I wanted to take and gladly chose what I did because my mind has a tendency to race when under pressure, especially writing with time constraints (hell, at the time it used to take me 45 minutes to an hour to write just one double spaced page for my essays as I always would be going back and editing and not just editing but re-editing).
I thought the assessment process was decent enough, way better than some standardized test to show what the prospective administrators could do. And it was quite obvious, at least to me as an older candidate with outside of education supervisory experience, which candidates seemed better (and I almost said were better but actual job performance is a different ballgame) and which seemed fairly clueless.
I took that test in ’98 and now we have adminimals who were good at taking standardized tests and kissing ass leading the charge who need to be fragged-at least theoretically. (I know Lloyd knows what that term means.)
Not to defend Pearson, but the tests you are taking are dictated and outlined by the state department of ed. That is the case in every state. They make all the decisions and Pearson does what it is told.
Pearson’s large profit margins are in printing, not in creating anything. Most of the fees for each test go to the state.
Of course, the biggest secret, is that the REAL NATIONALSTANDARDS , BASED ON THE 3RD LEVEL PEW RESEARCH OF HARVARD’S (RESNICK) PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING… said not a thing about tests…nada.
The closest thing for this RUBRIC which must be in place for kids to learn, is the principle with covers AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT AND GENUINE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION… WHICH MEANS THAT the teacher assess performance in order to plan lessons that meet the needs of her students.
FYI, I am planning to offer anyone and everyone AT THE NPE a look at the PERFORMANCE STANDARDS.. THE PUBLISHED EDITIONS, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFORT -BASED LEARNING–WHICH ARE in my possession because I was the cohort in NYC for the research… otherwise I would ting that I DREAMED IT.