The Texas legislature has a strange obsession. Its members think that the best and only way to improve education is to require standardized tests and to make them harder every few years. Those tests can never be too hard. A few years back, the legislature decided that all students had to pass 15 tests to graduate, and parents across the state rebelled, forcing the test-lovers to scale it back to five tests to graduate. But they still believe that harder tests=better schools.
The legislators of Texas should take the Great Testing Challenge: Take the tests you mandate and publish your scores. Any legislator who can’t pass the eighth grade math test should resign. How many do you think would dare to take the tests?
This year, for the first time, ETS wrote the tests, and surprise!, there were computer glitches. Open the link and you will see a picture of little children at an elementary school in Abilene cheering the bigger children who were on their way to take the tests that would determine their worth and put a number on it.
Veteran teacher Jennifer Rumsey writes here about the state’s mandates and how they affect her and her students.
She writes:
“It’s that time again. Time for STAAR testing in Texas. STAAR is the legislatively mandated series of high-stakes tests for public school children in Texas, and it is the most recent and most difficult of several testing program iterations that began in the 1980’s.
“I’ve seen them all. I have been a Texas public school teacher since 1999. I have experienced TAAS, TAAS prep, TAAS workbooks, TAAS-aligned textbooks, TAAS packets, and even a TAAS pep rally.
“Once students’ statewide overall TAAS scores became pretty high, the legislature made the costly move (paid to Pearson) to TAKS. The public schools adjusted: we adopted TAKS-aligned textbooks (published by Pearson), bought TAKS workbooks, held TAKS bootcamps and tutorials.
“And then came STAAR, or State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which is the most ambitious testing program yet. The Texas legislature decided to gut public education funding that year, 2011. The cuts amounted to a loss of $5.4 billion, while they voted to create STAAR and pay Pearson $500,000,000. At first adoption, high school students were required to pass 15 end of course exams to graduate. Now, thanks to grassroots efforts to change excessive testing requirements, high school students only take five graduation exams. However, their future life success remains impacted by rules that they must pass these exams to graduate, even with their academic credits earned. [Note: Because of the deep cuts, Texas schools had larger classes and took cuts to librarians, school nurses, the arts, and physical education.]
“This week my freshmen students must take the 5-hour English I end of course exam. I will be one of the lucky test administrators. During one of my test administration trainings, I found out that I am now required to write down the name of each student who leaves the testing room to use the bathroom, the time the student leaves, and the time that they return. This information, along with a seating chart, will be turned in to the Texas Education Agency. I am not sure why. Is it an additional measure of control over the students? Is it an additional measure of control over myself and other education professionals? Is it a deliberate attempt at de-professionalization of educators? When I mentioned to my students that I had to keep track of their times in and out from the restroom, they were puzzled and irritated. One savvy freshman girl asked, “Do they want to know the stall I used also?”
“What I do know for sure is that these tests have become far too important. They are treated as top secret, national security-level documents. Why is the material in a standardized test treated as more confidential than the information in the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails? I have already signed my oath, and in my test administrator’s manual I am threatened with the loss of my hard-earned professional certification if I share information relating to what is on the test. I am cautioned to in no way purposely view the tests. Ironically, I am allowed to read the writing prompt to a student who requests it.
“Tuesday was a big day for my own family. My 10-year-old daughter is one of the unlucky guinea pig fifth graders in the state of Texas. She is one of the unlucky children affected by the State Board of Education decision in 2015 that “pushed down” developmentally inappropriate math objectives. Some of the newly required fifith grade material was, until 2015, not taught until the children were in the seventh grade.
“What does this “pushing down” of objectives do? It requires more material to be taught during the school year, stealing valuable time that math teachers need to teach the foundational material for that year. It makes math harder and more rushed for the children. It is wrong. The TEA suspended the math passing requirements for 5th graders last year. But not so this year. Nope. My child and her peers must pass this test or face retention in grade.
“And wait, the news just gets better. The outgoing Commissioner of Education announced near his departure that, “STAAR performance standards have been scheduled to move to the more rigorous phase-in 2 passing standard this school year. Each time the performance standard is increased, a student must achieve a higher score in order to pass a STAAR exam.” Thus, my daughter and all her 10- and 11-year old friends are being held accountable for inappropriate math standards and will be judged at a higher performance standard at the same time. Something is not right here. Something is very, very wrong. My child is not a subject to be experimented on.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dr. Ravitch,
I am so thrilled and flattered that you posted my essay! My name is Jennifer Rumsey…not Ann Rumsey. You are a true hero for educators everywhere. Thank you for all of your efforts on behalf of public education.
LikeLike
This is harsh.
Look in the mirror, Jennifer. Are you okay with being part of the system that abuses children?
LikeLike
Dear Jennifer,
I am so sorry I got your name wrong. I write too fast, do too much double-tasking, and make too many errors. Someday I may get an assistant to double check before posting.
Thank you for standing up for your students.
LikeLike
Great piece by Jennifer Rumsey. And don’t forget the 3rd Grade STARR testers. Now their test are scheduled into May. So, they are all reporting that they do “STARR Packets” forever and ever AMEN. No more perky curriculum units to break up the test prep grind and experience the joy and intrigue of deep learning. No none of that. Just packet, packet, packet.
LikeLike
Actually, Diane, ETS did NOT write this year’s STAAR tests, they are simply being paid to “administer” the Pearson-made tests from last year.
LikeLike
We are actually gearing up to sue the Texas Education Agency over the STAAR tests this year…
We worked with our elected representatives to author common sense reforms to our education accountability system, and the 84th Legislature of the State of Texas passed House Bill 743. With an overwhelming majority in the Texas House of Representatives (143 to 1) and Governor Greg Abbott signing the bill on June 19, 2015, the new law went into immediate effect, and among other things, brought two major reforms to the standardized assessments given to Texas students.
1) Assessments given to students under the law have to be verified by an entity other than the TEA and the company creating the assessment.
No more free passes to the vendors that have been paid over $500,000,000 in the last five years to create and administer these assessments.
This provision provides accountability to tax payers that the STAAR does what is expected: measures student and school performance against state education standards.
2) Assessments given to students under the law have to be kept to a maximum time limit.
For grades 3 – 5, the assessment must be short enough that 85% of students can finish in 2 hours, and for grades 6 – 8, they must be short enough that 85% of students finish in 3 hours. This provision provides assurance that assessments that had become longer and longer over the years would be limited to a reasonable time frame and done so with student age considered.
TEA IS CURRENTLY IGNORING THIS LAW and administering the tests as usual.
Read more and please consider donating to the cause here:
https://www.gofundme.com/StopSTAAR
LikeLike
“1) Assessments given to students under the law have to be verified by an entity other than the TEA and the company creating the assessment.”
Verified?? What does that mean? Oh, I verify that it is a test??? Or does the law demand that the tests be validated? If so, they can never be “validated” as the very fundamental epistemological and ontological underpinnings are so error and falsehood filled that they are rendered COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson. See: “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.
LikeLike
Duane ~ Thanks for noticing that erroneous word choice (I didn’t write that copy, but I should have proofread it). Yes, the law says they must be proven valid and reliable.
May I share your post with orhers?
LikeLike
Caite,
You may use any of my writings anytime, just put a note that you’re quoting an old fart retired Spanish teacher.-ha ha.
LikeLike
Thanks, Duane! I will of course give you credit! But clarify the name I should use in the citation again?
Spanish Teacher, O.F. (2016) or an actual name??
🙂
LikeLike
Do our tests really measure “readiness”, and if so, to be ready for what? Most professionals in trades say our kids are not ready, not because of bad test scores, but a poor work ethic and their belief that work should be “easy and fun”.
The affective domain is as, if not more, important than the cognitive domain, but we don’t test any on affective outcomes.
Plumbers and electricians could care less about standardized test scores, along with most work places. They just want an employee who is diligent, goes the extra mile, can endure difficulty, is willing to learn and work productively in a team.
Do we test for these skills? We can do little to teach them, when we are so worried about an EOC multiple-choice test score. Do we just teach facts, or successful life-skills?
LikeLike
YES. And why do we think that testing has value except as created and administered by the teacher when needed?
LikeLike
“Do our tests really measure “readiness”, and if so, to be ready for what?”
Absolutely not and that “what” is open to discussion depending upon each and every student and his/her parents.
LikeLike
Rick, please stop saying these tests are testing “facts”. The Common Core ELA standards do not enumerate facts; they enumerate skills like the ability to use context clues to figure out hard words. I WISH the tests required factual knowledge. Facts are valuable. For example, it’s good to know the fact that “enumerate” means “list”, and the fact that closed head injuries can can cause permanent brain damage, and the fact that the US government has three branches that check and balance each other. It is disturbing to me to hear a fellow educator disparaging facts. We should be championing the teaching of facts, not fighting it.
LikeLike
“Students at some school districts across Texas, from Arlington ISD to Austin ISD, took their STAAR writing tests online but did not have all their answers saved. This happened when students tried logging back in after they’d already logged out once, been kicked off the system for 30 minutes of inactivity, or temporarily lost their Internet connection, the state agency said.
Students take the STAAR writing test in fourth and seventh grade. Results on STAAR and end-of-course exams carry huge weight in Texas public schools. They drive state academic ratings, and they can determine everything from how much teachers make to whether students graduate.”
If they want 4th graders to do the work of a high school student the least they could do is give them adult tools that work properly, instead of cheap, thrown together garbage.
Why did they rush into online testing? Is it fair to force these kids to use computer testing programs that were rushed to market to capture government contracts?
It seems to me that the students are the LAST people considered in any of this. Apparently their work and time has zero value.
LikeLike
Technology gets in the way of students presenting their best work. Not all roads should lead to technology. Sure it is convenient for the testing companies, but not so great for the students. If you insist that students be assessed, then the student should have a pencil-paper option.
LikeLike
Several years ago, on an “important” standardized writing test, the computer ate my son’s essay, and the school made him do it all over again. This after my son was up several nights in a row freaking out about the test. That’s when we started opting out.
LikeLike
The SAT and the ACT, bugaboos of generations of college applicants, were supposed to shrink in significance as more colleges and universities have moved away from requiring standardized test scores for admission.
Instead, the companies behind them have pushed into the nearly $700-million-a-year market for federally required tests in public schools, offering the SAT and the ACT even to students who do not plan to go to college. Prompted by a recent change in federal education law, they are competing — and increasingly winning — against exams funded by the Obama administration to become mandatory high school tests, used for ranking school performance.”
It never ends. They promise over and over to quit the obsession with ranking people by test scores, but they cannot resist. The minute they subtract one they add another.
LikeLike
As they used to say during the Watergate scandal, “follow the money.” In the Texas state Senate/Congress, who did Pearson hire as “consultants” to speed along passage of the bills that authorized the Texas Dept of Ed to make such changes? Where in Texas is the publically-organized outrage against such practices? Which Billionaires are “helping” Pearson with influencing the state legislature? Follow the money !!
JVK
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Testing, testing, and more testing. Students used as guinea pigs.
And meanwhile, more and more valuable instructional time wasted on these tests and preparation for the tests, while programs like the arts, physical education, and even science and social studies are cut. Teaching critical thinking skills has also gone by the wayside- no time for all that.
LikeLike
Require every member of the Texas House, Texas Senate, Texas State Board of Education and Pearson’s chief lobbyist, Sandy Kress to take all end of course tests and publish the results before one dollar flows in contracts and subcontracts from the Texas Education Agency to Pearson, etc.
http://www.tamsatx.org/
LikeLike
I have a plan to take the tests to the lege next session. Want to help, LLC1923?
LikeLike
Most parents and taxpayers are not aware of how the money flows. For vetting purposes, the testing contracts must be published on TEA’s website. Pearson and the subcontractors have developed a scheme only for the purpose of monetizing every child who attends public schools in Texas.
Caite, I’ll be happy to work with you!
LikeLike
I want to point out the obvious: These can be End of Course tests. There is at least 2 months left to the school year! At least teachers can teach away from the tyranny of the test.
LikeLike
I don’t understand your point, please explain. TIA, Duane
LikeLike
In Utah, our school “grades” will be getting harder to achieve every year. They’ve been based on the bell curve, but now a new law will raise the level needed to get certain “grades” will be harder to achieve.
In about five years, a school can only get an A grade if they have 95% or higher pass. NO school in the state has a 95% proficient rate.
This means that most schools will be “failing.” Nice and ripe for charterization–several Utah legislators either own, operate, or have family working for, charter schools and management organizations. http://www.sltrib.com/home/3549645-155/another-proposed-tweak-to-utah-grades
LikeLike