In this article that appeared in Education Week, testing expert W. James Popham explains why the current wave of assessments are fundamentally flawed.
He writes:
Today’s educational tests are intended to satisfy three primary purposes, all of which can play a constructive role in students’ education: to compare, to instruct, and to evaluate.
Comparison-focused educational tests permit us to identify score-based differences among individual students or among groups of students. The resulting comparisons often lead to classifications of students’ scores on a student-by-student basis (such as by using percentiles) or on a group-by-group basis (such as by distinguishing between “proficient” and “nonproficient” students).
A second purpose of educational testing is instructional—that is, to elicit ongoing evidence regarding students’ levels of achievement so that better decisions can be made about how to teach those students. Test-based evidence can also help students themselves decide whether to modify how they are trying to learn.
A third purpose of educational testing is evaluation—that is, determining the quality of a completed set of instructional activities provided by one or more teachers. These evaluations often focus on a lengthy segment of instruction, such as an entire school year.
All three of these purposes, if implemented by using appropriate tests, can benefit students. The trouble is that one of those purposes—comparison—has completely dominated America’s educational testing for almost a century.
Why are we so obsessed with wanting to compare children? Does it really matter if your son or daughter in Michigan has a higher or lower score than someone of the same age in Texas or Maine?
This is the silliest possible misuse of educational testing, and the least valuable.
Education is not a basketball game or a race horse. It is about developing the human beings in our care to be the best they can be. Not by punishment, not by scare tactics, not by humiliation, but by the same care and support we would give to a precious flower in our garden. If you crush a flower, it never grows.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This brings back memories! Love, Carole
Sent from my iPad
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This is the single most recent article about why parents should opt out their children from state assessments. W. James Popham at his best. Every state should ask for a waiver that allows parents to opt out their children without any legal or punitive consequences.
“. . . testing expert W. James Popham. . . ”
And what makes Popham a “testing expert”?
Maybe he got a perfect SAT score.
That would make him an expert in my book.
Of course, by the very low page count, I know that not many people read my book
Guessing: PhD in Educationalmeasurementandstuff
Hmmm! How does one get a PhD in a non-existent realm, “educational measurement”???
SomeDAM Poet, I will 🙂
Duane: all you need is a background in economics, a ruler, and another expert to appeal to.
Assessment today is more flawed than ever. Giving tests on a frustration level of most students tells us very little about a student’s performance other than the student was frustrated. Having a cut score that compares to the NAEP does nothing but send the signal that the teachers and schools are failing. This is the purpose of the tests based on the CCSS, and this is the politicized rather than academic message we are getting from the tests. These tests are no more than a political tool to undermine public schools.
The evaluative component gets even worse. With VAM in the mix, some states are using a flawed, secretive algorithm to determine which teachers are effective. As a result teachers are losing their jobs or pay increments due to a formula that has little to no merit. The purpose of VAM is political, not evaluative. Its real purpose is to destabilize the profession of unionized teachers and destroy due process rights.
Teachers have many tools to determine the performance of students. Standardized tests, especially those administered via computer, are not very useful especially when the results are available when the teacher no longer has the student. The money spent on standardized tests would be better spent in the classroom.
“Today’s educational tests are intended to satisfy three primary purposes”
It’s probably just an honest oversight, but he neglected to mention the primary purpose of today’s educational tests: $$
that would be the “primary primary purpose”
The real fatal flaw lies in the simple fact that parents will not allow tests to be used as weapons in a war on public education – especially when their children are the casualties.
James Popham helps us understand the misuse of tests in New York State that are used to evaluate teachers. It is time for the New York State Board of Regents to adopt criterion referenced tests that teachers can use to identify students within a grade or school who need intensive assistance.
One problem for schools that are very dependent on federal aid for remedial services is that criterion referenced tests may not produce as many academically needy students and the district aid levels may be reduced.
After NCLB we had to give standardized tests to identify needy students. It was a couple of days of disruption, a litmus test of sorts. Testing has taken on a life of its own. It is narrowing the curriculum and has become the main focus of instruction. Today the stakes are much higher, and the results are being misused to the detriment of students, teachers and schools.
“. . . criterion referenced tests. . . ”
Those tests suffer the same inherent errors, falsehoods and psychometric fudging identified by Wilson that render them completely invalid also. Each test item/question is norm referenced. It’s all part of the standardized testing shell game.
Identifying students who may need intensive instruction is not the job of a statewide standardized test, whether it is criterion referenced or not. We have far better “up close and personal” means for assessing the needs of struggling students.
“This [student test score comparison] is the silliest possible misuse of educational [standardized] testing, and the least valuable.”
Any use of standardized testing (and no I do not mean tests designed for diagnostic purposes that have no right and wrong answers) is worse than “silly”. It’s invalid, illogical, unethical and for the harm it causes many students, immoral.
See SDP’s post above to find the “value” in standardized testing.
“If you crush a flower, it never grows.”
Great line, Diane! Will have to use it.
Cross-posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/W-James-Popham-The-Fatal-in-General_News-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Standardized-Tests_Testing-160406-40.html
With this comment , which at Oped, has embedded links back to this site,
here is a Fact Sheet: Why You Can Boycott Testing Without Fear of Federal Penalties for Your School:
http://www.fairtest.org/why-you-can-boycott-testing-without-fear
Ravitch also explains
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/03/fairtest-weekly-report-on-resistance-to-high-stakes-testing/
that As Congress continues to take steps to protect the status quo of high-stakes testing, resistance to this misguided approach to education continues to build. When the public is not heard by its elected officials, the public finds ways to be heard. It was public demonstrations that built the civil rights movement; it was public demonstrations that built the anti-war movement in the 1970s. Keep your eye on what the public is doing. The politicians don’t hear or see until the noise is deafening and the sights cannot be hidden by blindfolds.
Bob Schaeffer of FairTest writes: Across the U.S. the testing resistance and reform movement is rapidly expanding as annual standardized exam begin in many schools. This week’s stories from more than half the 50 states clearly show the significant impact that parents, students, teachers, administrators and community leaders are having on policy makers in the fight against testing misuse and overuse.
Here is a New Video: Parents Opting Their Children Out of Common Core Tests
“All three of these purposes, if implemented by using appropriate tests, can benefit students.”
How does score-based comparison ever benefit students?
It makes the ones who got a high SAT score feel good and superior, which is very important.
How could folks like David Coleman and Bill Gates rationalize trampling people’s rights to implement their pet policies if they did not know in their heart of hearts that they were superior to everyone else?
“If you crush a flower, it never grows.”
But how much force does it take to crush a flower? How much does the required force vary by kingdom and order and genus and species? How can we improve crushing techniques to reduce the gap among these divisions if we stop crushing flowers entirely? We need this data.
Coming along quite nicely F L E R P ! TAGO
Best comment ever, FLERP! BTW, how old are your kids, if you don’t mind sharing?
Elementary school- and middle school-aged.
Ouch – I taught middle school for 14 years and found it to be the most flower crushing time of all – and no easier when it was my own kids’ turn.
Remember, Bill’s day was a lead member in the Eugenics movement along with Lewis Terman. The Singer post is a spot on history of testing and the incumbent assumptions it brings.
“Bill’s dad”-Gate’s father promoted Eugenics? Please provide a source for that info. TIA, Duane
Bill’s dad….stickey keyboard and fat fingers do not mix.
The fatal flaw in educational assessment is not in the technology, it is (as Heidegger said) our relationship to it. Phenemonologically, what do we become when we use it? What does what we made make us? In effect, it means reading the purpose from the outcome.
Dr. Popham is, as ever, correct and succinct, in outlining the “avowed purposes” of testing technology, and he is correct when he asserts that, used as their designers probably intended, technology is a formidable tool in productive assessment.
The relationship that is problematic is that which turns tests into instruments of power.
Whatever the avowed purposes of testing are, their practical purpose is that of sorting students for eventual use by society in different ways. Joel Spring told us that 35 years ago. High-stakes, standardized testing is USED to generate data to rationalize, substantiate and justify decisions made about most of those students before they EVER entered a classroom or a schoolhouse. (Also to generate data to make the tests ever more effective sorting screens.)
The purpose is to insure, ultimately, that as few individuals as is humanly and technologically possible escape the socio-economic niches for and into which they were born.