More than 100 university-based education researchers in California called for a moratorium on Common Core testing.
Among many excellent point, the group’s statement said:
The rhetoric surrounding the CCSS is not supported by a compelling body of research. For example, the CCSS is often presented as a way to enhance rigor in public schools. However, state-level standards varied so widely that no definitive statement can be made as to whether the CCSS is more or less rigorous. Proponents have argued that the CCSS ensures that all students receive an equal education, but even the courts recognize that high expectations without adequate resources can further disadvantage the students in most need. Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set of curriculum standards, including those like the CCSS, will either raise the quality of education for all children or close the gap between different groups of children. Therefore attaching high-stakes testing to the CCSS cannot be the solution for improving student learning.
Yet California is moving forward with high-stakes tests, tied to these unproven, untested standards.
Based on those test scores, any number of high-stakes decisions may follow, including student promotion or graduation, teacher evaluation and compensation, school closure, and possibly the withholding of federal student financial aid for teacher-preparation programs (as proposed in the draft of the federal Teacher Preparation Regulations of Title II of the Higher Education Act, scheduled to be finalized and released around the time of this writing), all of which are decisions using scientifically discredited methods, namely, the use of value-added modeling that purport to attribute gains in test scores to such factors. Perhaps not surprising, in California, public approval for implementation of the CCSS has declined 17% in just one year, with more voters now opposing the CCSS than supporting them….
Testing experts have raised significant concerns about all (SBAC, PARCC, Pearson) assessments, including the lack of basic principles of sound science, such as construct validity, research-based cut scores, computer adaptability, inter-rater reliability, and most basic of all, independent verification of validity. Here in California, the SBAC assessments have been carefully examined by independent examiners of the test content who concluded that they lack validity, reliability, and fairness, and should not be administered, much less be considered a basis for high-stakes decision making.18 When asked for documentation of the validity of the CA tests, the CA Department of Education failed to make such documentation public. Even SBAC’s own contractor, Measured Progress, in 2012 gave several warnings, including against administering these tests on computers.
Nonetheless, CA has moved forward in full force. In spring 2015, 3.2 million students in California (grades 3-8 and 11) took the new, computerized Math and English Language Arts/Literacy CAASPP tests (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress). The tests were developed by SBAC, and administered and scored by Educational Testing Service. Scores were released to the public in September 2015, and as many predicted, a majority of students failed (that is, were categorized to be below proficient). SBAC itself expected that pass rates would go down, and would be particularly low for certain groups, including English-language learners (who make up over 22% of the enrollment in CA public schools), whom SBAC predicted would see an approximately 90% fail rate….
Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing, also reduces the quality of education and student learning, engagement, and success. The impact is also on student psychological well-being: Without an understanding that the scores have not been proven to be valid or fair for determining proficiency or college readiness, students and their parents are likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about academic potential.
All in all, this is an excellent statement. Policymakers in California should read it and take it seriously.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If teachers are unfairly penalized for teaching the most challenging students, teachers will avoid teaching the most challenging students. I am not sure if that is the actual intent of Reformers or not.
Penalizing teachers for working with challenging students may not have been an original intent of a test-score “standardizing” reform, but over time those looking for ways to pull in yet more of that “accountability” pie found that teacher blame brought in the money. Blaming, evaluating, training and ultimately dismissing teachers turned into a very lucrative arm of the Arne Duncan/Big Money school reform plan.
Thank you to these professors who have stood up to those who would blame teachers for the failure of public education.
The failure of public education is due to selling public education to big business. Education is not about business, but about children’s learning.
Standardized testing never does anything other than sort and rank students. This will not improve outcomes for students. Teachers already know students and can generally predict scores for students. The real challenge is what we do address the issues. In this age of ignoring the needs of our public schools and the poorest students, our policies have become inhumane, Research and documentation from scholars will do little to deter corporations and billionaires from dictating unscientific and unsound educational policies. Their goals are not about what is best for our young people. Their objectives are political and economic. They want control to force their unsubstantiated views on our students, and they want to make a profit in the process. Many of our policymakers are corrupt enough to make this happen.
Well said.
retired teacher: well said.
High-stakes standardized tests that do no provide a “spread” of scores are considered defective products by their designers and producers and pre-testers. Add to that the rheephorm customer insistence that said eduproducts label, sort and stack rank public school students and staffs and schools so that there is a predetermined outcome of few “winners” and many many “losers”—
And voilà! you have the sacred metrics of corporate education reform in a nutshell.
Which is why, when it comes to the movers and shakers of rheephorm, the weight of the test-to-punish hazing ritual does not fall on THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
This blog—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
I also recommend (as has the owner of this blog), for the mechanics of standardized testing and the mindset of the psychometrician [look it up!] that make them, Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2009).
Thank you for your comments.
😎
P.S. Note that in the title of the book it uses the word “REALLY” to deal with the actual topic, as distinct from the rheephorm usage of “RHEEALLY” to describe anything that exists simply because they say so. Example: Michelle Rhee, a supernova of self-styled “education reform” took “her” [forget that pesky co-teacher!] students from the 13th to the 90th percentile—the educational equivalent of walking on water and turning water into wine. A claim quite literally eviscerated on this very blog by her greatest fanboy.
And yet, those with the power to make the decisions to end this nonsensical testing go on their merry way mandating the use of tests that have done nothing but destroy.
Reformers mission: destroy public education to a level of a SCORCHED EARTH, and making $B for corporate profiteers in the process. How they get there will be determined by the corporate profiteers. The more resistance we present to them, the harsher the punishment to children and teachers.
Standing up to publicly claim that CCSS is not of quality, but we still support testing…continues the corporate profiteers’ ultimate end. Cowards!
Children are still duct taped to hours, weeks and months to Toxic Tests,
which yield: Garbage in…Garbage out!
BUT, the corporations count their $M as they continue to exploit our children and dedicated teachers.
A key policy maker in California is Michael Kirst, emeritus professor Stanford, President of the California State Board of Education. A high proportion of the researchers are in San Francisco. Only one of the researchers is from Stanford. Will Kirst and other members of the board pay attention?
While I appreciate this effort, it fails to mention a USDE waiver attained by so-called CORE Districts, serving 1 million students, who will participate in an accountability system largely funded by non-profits.
The system is called the School Quality Improvement Index. The Index is constructed around a 60% weighting for scores on academic tests and a 40% weighting of school climate and social-emotional measures.
The point is that academic tests still count in these districts, but they are by no means the only problem with so-called accountability measures.
Kirst has supported the Common Core from the get go, including the tests. He collaborated on an EdWeek commentary that regurgitated the standard PR about the tests and standards, higher order thinking, problem solving, and all of that jazz.
The researchers have at least made a move to counter the unethical and multiple uses of the scores on academic tests. I wished that The American Educational Research Association, national associations of school boards, and on down the list would rally to kill this pandemic of testing. Everyone in and beyond California needs to be aware of other measures that are no less problematic.
The CORE Districts in California have named a vendor for the school climate and social-emotional tests in the form of high stakes surveys of students, teachers, other instructional staff and parents. The vendor is Panorama Education. These surveys are optional this year. USDE is likely to accept more of these dubious measures for “accountability” because ESSA invites states to include at least one “alternative” measure. USDE has also contracted for the production of surveys of school climate and social emotional learning. The contract went to the American Institutes of Research. Final field tests are scheduled for next year. References on request.
Laura, we need all the references you have on the CORE districts. These tracks to providers are tremendously valuable. Have you studied the actual recommendations in this “CARE-ED” report?
They call for exactly the dubious measures being imposed in your CORE districts.
Thank you for this. Is there some way to contact you? If you’re on Facebook, give a shout-out to Emily Kennedy Talmage, and she can connect you to our Stop Proficiency/Competency Based Education group. We would be grateful for your comments.
The “Standards + Standardized Test + Test-Based Teacher Accountability” model of education reform has FAILED for predictable reasons. Any experienced teacher who has worked in a community ravaged by generational poverty, dependence, crime, drug and alcohol addiction, family dysfunction, mostly single parent homes, violence, high incarceration rates, mental illness, insufficient health care opportunities, child abuse/neglect, and generally dangerous and stressful living conditions would be glad to tell anyone who wanted to listen that changing math and ELA standards and making tests purposefully impossible to pass – was no way to improve teaching and learning. This was a no brainer from the get go which says a lot about the people that unleashed their non-solution on such communities.
Is “Policymakers” the proper term to use in the U.S. political climate at this time? Who is actually making policy: our elected leaders or Bill Gates, or ALEC or Eli Broad or the Waltons or all of them struggling to see who controls the elected alleged policymakers?
Excellent point.
Just think. For the amount of money spent on curriculum, testing, standards, computers, data analysts, inflated administrative salaries, etc., we could probably hire a teacher for every student in poor communities. Each student would get one on one attention and teaching and really feel cared for. Surely, there would even be money left over to fix broken down schools and equipment. 🙂
How long will it take for this to sink in?
Science and research was never a consideration when coming up with Common Core, SBAC, PARCC, and VAMs, so how reasonable is it to believe that science (and scientists) will have any effect on the continuation of such things?
The folks who came up with this stuff neither know nor care one whit about science.
The fellow who indicated this best was Bill Gates when he stated that “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”
That’s a profoundly unscientific approach to be taking toward national education policy. A scientist would never implement polcies that affect (basically experiment on) millions of children and teachers without knowing whether whether it will “work” — or even properly defining what “work” means
The Common Core Agenda brought to us by Gates, Duncan, Coleman, and Obama was NO experiment. It was nothing more than a whimsical, random, baseless roll of the dice. Any serious group of educators would have run a pilot study (complete with a control group) and would never have purposefully excluded any mechanism for evaluation, improvement, or dissolution.
We don’t need 10 years to figure this out. It has been four years here in NY and we can say unequivocally that the CC agenda has produced a record of complete FAILURE. Common Core math and ELA standards and the companion tests from Pearson have accomplished nothing worth the astronomical investment in time, energy, money, and lost opportunities.
Over 9,300 email and letters sent to Congress and the President. The ESSA has let them off the hook, sort of, as long as you ignore the winks and nods. And as long as you ignore the new Common Core SAT.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/
This report recommends an Orwellian system, a hollow hoax already in force in many districts, where assessment means continuous online accountability embedded in the instructional units assigned each child by her personalized algorithm, and schools are scored on the basis of their embrace of corporate domination, with a little subsection of community “input”. That’s a BIG caveat.
“CARE ED” calls for the following:
Specific to California, we should link the development of a
robust assessment framework with the new Local
Control Accountability Plans, which specify parent
and community involvement in developing and
assessing clear measurable outcomes for school
improvement and success…
Assessments should be holistic;
that is, they should be multifaceted and
comprehensive, as when using multiple data sources
to assess multiple areas of development or
performance, not instruments that measure only
certain items in only certain ways…
When we assess students, the focus should be on formative assessments that reveal where they are struggling so as to improveinstruction;
in contrast, the occasional summative assessments should primarily be used to reveal where the system is ineffective (as when showing how historically underserved groups are faring, as already revealed in the National Assessment of Educational
Progress data).
Rather than ask what impact the individual teacher/school
has on student test scores, assessments should focus
on what contributions the individual teacher/school
is making to the system, their engagement in the
collective enterprise of education.
Instead, our schools require more robust
instruments and the use of assessments in ways that
are formative and that aim for improvement of
systems, not merely individuals
(see, for example, the resources prepared by FairTest and the National Educational Policy Center).
We encourage the state of California to work collectively with other states that have already begun such reforms.
Mary, I do not do facebook, twitter and the rest. I am still organizing information on the CORE Districts and the School Quality Improvement Index, an effort initiated by non-profits with many “partners.” The rationale came from a perceived sluggishness in Kirst and California State Board of Education in submitting an application for an RTT waiver on accountability. The CORE Districts by passed the Kirst and the California State Board of Education and applied directly to USDE for a waiver. The Wiaver was granted to six districts, but at last count ten districts were on board for the new system of gathering data, putting almost everything on a 10 point scale, and then averaging scores. Those scores are transformed into ratings posted on the greatschools.org website. Surveys of school climate and social-emotional learning will count for 40% of a school’s rating. The surveys appearto be optional for the coming year. The vendor is Panorama Education, cost per student in CORE Districts about $1.60 per enrollee. Surveys are administered online and are designed for students in grades 5-12, plus instructional staff, non-instructional staff, and parents/caregivers. The CORE District promo materials say that the new accountability system is for about 1 million students. Kirst was an early supporter of the Common Core, recycling the boilerplate PR provided to everyone.
Think “text book publishers.” How convenient to be able to publish/sell “packages” that include texts, workbooks, handouts, power point presentations, and tests, plus all the computer support packages. Districts will no longer have to hire credentialed teachers (think: no unions) and be able to hire non-credentialed and, especially, TFA recruits. What saving textbook publishers will be able to sell! It’ll be better than the California Gold Rush!
All in the name of improving student test scores.
I opted my kids out last year and again this year, especially after participating in the CA PTA webinar about these tests. Thank you Diane for educating all of us on these ineffective and harmful tests. So grateful!
Thank you for opting out your children!
“Testing experts have raised significant concerns about all (SBAC, PARCC, Pearson) assessments, including the lack of basic principles of sound science, such as construct validity, research-based cut scores, computer adaptability, inter-rater reliability, and most basic of all, independent verification of validity.”
Well, In 1997 Noel Wilson pointed out the myriad epistemological and ontological errors, false assumptions and psychometric fudges used in the standardized testing regime that render any conclusions/results as “vain and illusory”, in other words, COMPLETELY INVALID. It’s great that these folks point out some of those invalidities but why hasn’t academia been onto these aspects before? I guess better late than never, eh!?!
Be that as it may, to understand what Wilson has proven, read and understand his never refuted nor rebutted seminal treatise “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.