Emma Brown, writing in the Washington Post, reports the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress: High school seniors showed a slippage in their test scores in math and no improvement in reading.
Throughout the entire period of “reform” that started with No Child Left Behind, scores of high school students have been stagnant. Brown writes:
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, also show a longer-term stagnation in 12th-grade performance in U.S. public and private schools: Scores on the 2015 reading test have dropped five points since 1992, the earliest year with comparable scores, and are unchanged in math during the past decade.
In comparison to the first year of the current trendline, 2005, the average mathematics score in 2015 did not significantly differ. In comparison to the initial reading assessment year, 1992, the 2015 average reading score was lower.
In short, NCLB (signed into law in 2002) and Race to the Top (launched in 2009) have been failures. They have been disastrous failures. How many billions of dollars were wasted no testing and test prep? How many teachers and principals were fired? How many schools were closed? How many public schools were turned over to entrepreneurs?
As a nation, we have endured fourteen years of failed federal policies. Will we ever learn that testing doesn’t produce higher achievement? Will we ever learn that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than threats and rewards?
Heckuva job, President Obama and former Secretary Arne Duncan!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So here’s a solution from a very experienced teacher who can be certified in SE and Social Studies and has an SLLA passing score but not the earned Masters: The scores can INCREASE if you allow teachers to teach!
“The scores can INCREASE if you allow teachers to teach!”
Only marginally. If I ever say anything else positive about any standardized test it is: NAEP is consistently reliable as defined by psychometrics. Now that doesn’t mean that it is valid in any way shape or form, but it is psychometrically valid. Having just completed reading the reliability discussion in chapter 2 of the testing bible “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing” (but not the standards themselves as I can only take so much bullshit at one sitting) the NAEP (from afar, looking only at results) appears to live up to psychometric reliability standards. Great-but it means absolutely nothing since there is no validity which is the number one concern for any assessment of student work.
Oops meant to say pscyhometrically reliable not valid.
Okay, but isn’t part of it that more high schoolers are staying in school long enough to get to 12th grade?
I have heard that from a principal here on our high school grad rate. He said his grad rate was lower than a neighboring school because that school makes lower-scoring kids feel unwelcome so they transfer or go to online charters.
If a school retains lower scoring students, either deliberately working with them so they don’t drop out or just NOT pushing them out (as schools should, I believe) then wouldn’t that tend to make the 12th grade scores go down?
Great question. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for an Ionesco quote!
Name names Chiara. What you are describing is unethical as can be conceived. Don’t allow that school (actually the administrators of it) to continue such malpractice.
Tim,
That’s a good cut! (TAGC??) Sorry KTA, but I think you would agree that the cut is subtle and requires some knowledge of the responses on the forum-ha ha.
Señor Swacker: I think there’s no question but that in her last sentence, Chiara posed an assertion in the form of a query in order to allow a charter/privatization advocate to indulge in his love of fulfilling John Steinbeck’s observation that—
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
Hence, I am not sorry that he worked very hard to Dial up the grit and rigor to tear up his own homework and indulge in the equivalent of throwing heavy desks—with the fury of uncontrollable five-year-olds—at rheephorm claims that $ucce$$ Academy charters don’t skim and cream and push out.
Otherwise he would have directly addressed the topic under discussion.
But then, Non Sequitur is truly in the 99th percentile when it comes to deflecting and avoiding…
Of course, he will claim to have said or implied none of the above. Sorry, he can’t use the El Chapulín Colorado defense on this blog:
“Mis movimientos están fríamente calculados” [my movements are coldly calculated].
While in the background we hear a voice eerily similar to Eva Moskowitz’s saying “Ka-ching ka-ching!”
Is a translation of the last really necessary?
😎
Teachers have been undermined and classrooms taken over by billionaires and politicians since “A Nation at Risk” stoked good old American paranoia and fear. It should come as no surprise that when teachers are not allowed to teach, children are not able to learn.
And let’s remember that the basic arguments of ANAR were wrong even then. There was clearly a political agenda to undermine our collective, communitarian view of education.
MathVale there were low performing schools long before billionaire school reformers. The problem is these billionaires offer no meaningful solutions, but instead exacerbate the problem with their wrong headed agendas.
Of course there have always been low performing schools. Can you believe that 50% of schools are below average? And, worse, 25% are in the bottom quarter and 10% are in the bottom tenth! And in all this time those numbers haven’t budged a bit. And you teachers are trying to say you’re not incompetent? For shame!
(In case it’s not obvious, /sarcasm)
“Lake Belowbegone”
Belowbegone
Is school reform
With everyone
Above the norm
Or, as a famous politician put it, “I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better-than-average job.”
Can we expect any significant change in achievement tests that are designed to place students along a bell shaped curve where 16% should be in the lowest quarter and 34% in the next lower quarter? Fourteen years of achievement tests used to evaluate schools and teachers violated the purpose of the achievement tests which is to identify the top performers and contrast every other student to them. The administrations of George Bush and Barack Obama have invalidated the achievement tests by misusing them.
This is a key point but the “all children can be above average” logic seems to persist.
“The administrations of George Bush and Barack Obama have invalidated the achievement tests by misusing them.”
NO!, they’ve been invalid longer than that. In 1997 Noel Wilson nuked (invalidated) the concepts of educational standards and standardized testing. Standardized tests have never been a valid objective assessment (as they are purported to be) of student learning.at anytime in their history. To understand that COMPLETE INVALIDITY I implore all to read and comprehend Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted study “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.
There is a political ploy of very (very!) long standing: invent a false problem and solve it! Since there never was a problem in the first place, solving it is not so hard. Ta da! Unfortunately some don’t know this ploy and they actually put a “solution” into play regarding their false problem and, worse, take money for their effort. This invariably leads to a decline and exposure of the scam.
And will someone please, please explain to me how extracting profits from a limited pool of funds can make anything better. Anybody? I am so tired of wishy-washy statements about the “benefits of competition.” Competition is what you do to people outside of your in group. Collaboration is what you do with the people inside. How is it our own children are being subject to competition using the funds we put up to collaborate?
Great, concise analysis. I add that when it comes to education, there are no people outside “our” group, and there’s no race anywhere in sight. Like at a concert: there’s no competition anywhere, just the musicians and the music, and we are all there to enjoy it.
“Great, concise analogy”, Máté
Steve Ruis: they’re just sticking to their Marxist playbook—
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
Groucho is, has been, and always will be their inspiration.
😎
So smart… read my comment to Duane and Lloyd referring today articles in the nY Times today!
Even by their own narrow, misleading and toxic metric, the rheephormers have failed.
Yet the very people that claim to live or die by “hard data” will not be deterred in the slightest by their repeated failures to live up to their own standards.
From this blog re New Jersey:
[start]
“In addition, state test scores have stayed the same or even declined. Amid protests, Christie’s hand-picked Newark superintendent, Cami Anderson, faces calls for her removal — even from some of her onetime allies.”
Newark is turning out to be a drag on Christie’s presidential ambitions, says Layton.
What’s astonishing is to read defenders of “reform” finding silver linings or straws to grasp at. Some claim that Cami has plenty of supporters, others say that success is around the corner. Just be patient. Christie’s state commissioner says, “Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. According to Christie’s education commissioner:
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
[end]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/04/lyndsey-layton-governor-christie-fails-in-newark/
For those whose first priority is the swelling of their egos and their bank accounts, when their sacred test scores stagnate or decline, they always find a silver lining of relief in repeating this mindless mantra—
“Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
Translation into standard English—
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” [Albert Einstein]
😎
Alternate definition:
“Insanity: electing the same people over and over again and expecting different results.”
Please help us bury this fake Einstein quote.
“Double Down”
Double down on standards
Double down on test
Double down on man-years
Prepping for a mess
Double down on Duncan
Double down on Gates
Double down on sunken
Ships and kindred fates
Double down on jailing
Double down on rot
Double down on failing
Failing’s all we got
Did someone say double down?
http://www.google.com/search?q=kfc+double+down&rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS414US414&espv=2&biw=1220&bih=885&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZlePK2LHMAhVJ6mMKHcn9Bm0Q_AUIBigB#imgrc=6XAvRYpfNCV5TM%3A
FLERP!: thanks for the heads up.
It’s a great quote—I will try to remember to put in brackets “variously attributed.”
😎
“The sobering news, released Wednesday, comes at the same time the nation is celebrating its highest-ever graduation rate, raising questions about whether a diploma is a meaningful measure of achievement.”
There are several conclusions to make from these results, and they are not the “value of a high school diploma.”
1. Obama’s test and punish policy is a failure.
2. Cutting budgets, which we have done since 2008, harms the performance of students.
3. Charter school expansion is not improving educational outcomes.
4. Our national poverty rate is increasing. This, I think, is the most logical explanation of all. Our poverty rates have soared since the 2008 meltdown. Earlier this year, it was reported than more than 50% of students in public schools live in poverty.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/08/24/map-how-student-poverty-has-increased-since-the-great-recession/
This is from one of Obama’s books. It’s about spending time with political donors and how doing that makes lawmakers distant from the people they serve:
“They believed in the free market and an educational meritocracy; they found it hard to imagine that there might be any social ill that could not be cured by a high SAT score. They had no patience with protectionism, found unions troublesome, and were not particularly sympathetic to those whose lives were upended by the movements of global capital. ”
He then became President and hired and took advice from exactly those people, exclusively 🙂
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/15/barack-obama-never-said-money-wasnt-corrupting-in-fact-he-said-the-opposite/
Chiara,
You seem to be assuming that Obama has actually read his own book.
AMEN! The FEDs are incredibly devious and so are their money machine from the rich who fund their tawdry campaigns.
Perhaps the president should spend less time writing books he doesn’t read and have a talk with some high school students.
Part of an article in today’s LATIMES entitled “As students across Burbank Unified begin state exams, one starts an opt-out movement.” There are two different students referenced below; click on link for more context and info.
[start excerpts]
Students began taking state standardized exams in Burbank earlier this month, but about 40% of Burbank High’s junior class chose to opt out of the process, according to Burbank Unified Supt. Matt Hill.
There were 269 out of 656 juniors at Burbank High who opted out of taking the exam after getting a parent to sign off on the request.
For Burbank High student Sam Gorman, the choice to opt out signifies his stance against a test that is based on “big data and redundant standards instead of the acquisition of long-lasting knowledge,” he said in an email.
He learned he could skip the exam last summer in Switzerland, where he attended a student leader summit hosted by Education First, an international company that runs study-abroad programs.
“Working with progressive education experts like Sir Ken Robinson and Nikhil Goyal helped open my eyes to the exciting possibilities of an educational system that treats students more like the individuals they are and less like the raw data they’ve become,” he said.
…
Daniel said many students like him latched onto the idea of not taking the standardized exam, in part because they knew it wouldn’t affect their admission into college, and they had a lot on their plate already.
As Key Club president, he’s observed fellow classmates working so hard to log volunteer hours they are sometimes more concerned about the hours they tally than the service they provide. On top of students’ efforts to rack up volunteer hours, they are still hungry for perfect grades.
“Our generation, it kind of dissolved into this mindset where everyone is so obsessed with getting the best grades,” Daniel said.
[end excerpts]
Link: http://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-me-0423-optingout-20160422-story.html
😎
Nothing will change. Deformers will just continue their rhetoric: Teachers aren’t good enough, teacher teaching programs must be made tougher and more rigorous, the unions are the problem. Solutions, more charter chains, more privatization, more technology, destroy unions, more testing, etc… There is absolutely no concept by those pushing all this garbage that they are responsible for these results. They seem to truly believe all the above is the problem and the solution, and it is the resistance to their reforms that is the real problem. If only the unions and all resistance would just capitulate, rollover and die.
If the “Reformers” prevail, who will teach?
I’m afraid that judging by history refutation by evidence won’t make a difference in itself. See: Economics, trickle down. But organized effort to leverage the facts to push back politically can change things. That is the hard part.
Don’t be silly Diane,
It was not the policies that failed, but just poor implementation by the teachers, who can’t seem to get anything right.
The takeaway: they should have fired more teachers, not fewer. Hell, they should have fired all of them.
Yes Poet, its the classic refrain of every know-nothing edufaker that ever made a quick buck as a consultant: blame everyone but yourself.
Got news for them: valid, workable ideas cannot be impossible to implement.
When 3 million teachers cannot make their ideas work for 50 million students over 15 years of effort – and under constant threat, it isn’t an implementation or PD problem.
Then, I guess, personalized education should solve all our problems and make Bill Gates “emperor of the universe.” That will rid us of all the pesky teachers.
..and when it becomes clear to everyone that Pearsonalized learning isn’t working either, they can just blame the bots.
Bots don’t organize to defend themselves…at least not yet.
“Blame the bots”
Blame the bots for all mistakes
Don’t take blame, for goodness sakes
Blame the bots for every err
Blame the bots and clear the air
It’s actually interesting that they are already blaming the bots, eg when things go wrong with online testing, saying the problems are due to “computer glitches”.
Computers are actually a very good way of sheltering/hiding people from accountability.
SomeDAM Poet:
The “blame the bots” excuse is an important part of a worst management practice: “fire your way to success.”
And the “glitches blame game” is very old—read Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING (2003 republication of the 1964 edition of the 1962 original).
The testocrats are always promising that things are going to get better. Just be patient…
😎
At the risk of sounding like an old codger (which I am), I do believe that our hi-tech, speed-of light culture is playing a somewhat harmful role when it comes to learning in school. The degree to which students seem addicted to their phones has provided a level of distraction in the classroom (and out of the classroom) that certainly doesn’t seem to be helping them excel in academics. The prevalence of chromebooks, smart-phones, and laptops has opened up a whole new approach to unauthorized collaboration (cheating). Students now take screen shots of their completed work and email it to their friends. Cut-and-paste has taken the place of original writing and there isn’t a math operation that can’t be solved easily and quickly with an on-line program. No getting the toothpaste back in the tube here, but the realities of the hi-tech era and its impacts on schools, students, and learning should not be ignored.
None of this gets NCLB/RTTT/CCSS policies off the hook on the 15 year record of FAILURE. Is their any proponent of test-based reform that can now defend the results we are seeing. By their own metric, the test-and-punish reform hypothesis has been disproved with a sample size that left no child behind.
My first-edition, first-printing hardcover copy of “Reign of Error,” published on September 17, 2013, stated that at that time demographically adjusted NAEP scores and graduation rates were at their highest point ever recorded.
So I am having trouble understanding the timeline. How did the NAEP scores manage to rise during the first 13 years of reform, but not the last two?
And given how much you have written about what you perceive to be the failings of standardized tests–in your mind, they measure nothing more than family wealth and education–it seems odd that you would jump to blame this drop on policy, curriculum, or anything else before ascertaining whether there had been a change in who is taking the test.
Easy to address you points raised. Get rid of standardized tests as the primary determinant of success. Let teachers teach and assess kids.
” . . . before ascertaining whether there had been a change in who is taking the test.’
The increase in graduation rates are a direct result of USDOE threats to school districts. AYP and graduation rate requirements under NCLB “encouraged” school districts to provide a variety of academic interventions to help keep students in school. From mentoring, and AIS to credit recovery – and even cooking the books. They worked to the extent that the school districts complied with the federal demands. Would you prefer to see the 40% drop out rate of Success Academy (by 8th grade no less) as a model for the public schools.
As far as NEAP and senior scores – try to remember that most students don’t drop out due to intelligence issues.
Campbell’s Law prevails
Or as Charles Goodhart put it:
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases being a good measure.”
😎
Tim, what do you think a math standardized test measures and how? Why not show me an actual test and explain problem by problem. Or, if you are not an expert in this, then why not show us a link with such a description? There sure are plenty of these since 50 million kids have been taking these tests each year for more than a decade.
Once we are done with this, I’d like to go one more step above the logic chain, and I’d like to know, what the relationship between measurements and education is. Any research you can point me to that would establish the connection?
In the meantime, I am adapting Wolfgang Pauli’s generic description of a theory which has no basis in physics to say
Standardized tests are not even wrong: We cannot even start qualifying them since nobody has showed us if they have any relationship to teaching and learning.
Bravo!
Mate,
I don’t have a link to a study or a description of what a standardized math test measures. I also can’t find a study explaining why more compulsory education is better than less, or how it benefits kids to have teachers who can pass a certification exam also be required to get a master’s in education. These are all leaps of faith, I guess.
However, a lot of the nation’s most elite private schools, including Sidwell Friends, Lakeside, UC Lab School, and Harpeth Hall, administer standardized math and ELA tests to grade 3-8 students. The head of school at Sidwell explains their thought process: “[S]tandardized test scores are only one measure of a student’s academic profile, a snapshot if you will. A more complete and accurate picture emerges when the scores are combined with classwork, daily performance, regular assignments, projects, and tests. Still, [standardized tests] can help parents and teachers understand more clearly and completely a child’s balance of strengths and needs. Teachers may review the scores in detail, looking for patterns that emerge from one year to the next, and then use that information to be more effective in the classroom.”
That sums up my stance perfectly: I have no doubt that my children’s teachers and their administrators will tell me that they have done a great job of teaching. The tests are a reality check.
A math standard in New York State is for each third-grader to know from memory all products of two one-digit integers. I understand (all too well) that some students will learn how to do this on their own or will have been taught it at home, and some won’t learn it at all, despite excellent or even flawless instruction. But I don’t understand your contention that asking a kid to solve 4 x 9 isn’t an indication of whether he has learned the standard.
Tim: “I also can’t find a study explaining why more compulsory education is better than less, or how it benefits kids to have teachers who can pass a certification exam also be required to get a master’s in education. These are all leaps of faith, I guess.”
What I wanted to learn about was research that shows a link between a kid’s mastery of math and the centrally conceived, administered and graded standardized tests on speedy calculations she has to take each year.
Instead, I was presented with unrelated things, like the possible benefits of teachers and their qualifications to their students, even mixing in an implicit claim about the measurability of these qualifications via some tests designed for professionals. Then I was given a quote by a private school principal who assumes, statewide standardized math tests measure something related to kids’ mastery of math.
Neither of these have relevance to what I was asking: teachers are not kids, and the principal assumes that the answer to the question I was asking is yes, without referring to any evidence.
If you told me about this stuff to draw some analogies and show me that other people share your opinion on standardized tests, I need to remind you that evidence by analogy or by quoting widespread beliefs are not considered evidence anywhere except perhaps in bars and politics.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems, you are convinced, the existence of the relationship between the state administered standardized tests on speedy calculations and kids’ mastery of math is self evident, hence you’d rather move on to talk about some implications of this assumption. I fail to see why you do this.
The private school principal works with the same assumption as you do. As could be expected, her apparently false assumption leads her to make other questionable statements. For example, she claims that scores on standardized tests are useful for teachers. The only useful thing about a test I know of if I can see with my own eyes what a kid did, so that I can help her out later on. But just seeing my students’ scores on tests unknown people designed and graded?
Other questions: Do parents really benefit from knowing how their kids did on the state test? Does the principal think, scores on math and ELA high stakes tests give useful information on how art, science, history teachers are doing in her school?
As for your remark about the third grader test on multiplication tables: it already shows the fundamental problem with these tests. Namely, third graders’ math education is not supposed to be about just multiplication tables. If all a kid learnt in 3rd grade was the multiplication table, then the teacher taught to the test.
To head off the possible presentation of some other evidence-looking facts and claims: the SAT and ACT tests are widely believed to test kids’ mastery of math. No, they just test how fast kids can calculate or how quickly they can plug into some of the hundreds of formulas they were forced to memorize. These tests never test how kids think because thinking requires time while these tests are primarily high pressure speed tests.
Math is not about content, it’s about the process as kids try to solve a problem, experiment, exchange ideas.
It’s about this
and what I’d like see is evidence that a standardized test will give me any kind of useful feedback on this process.
Tim
A WELL WRITTEN math test can provide some limited information regarding a student’s cumulative math skills. And a well written math test can be used to gauge STUDENT efforts and achievement. Never teacher efforts. Never teacher quality. never teacher ability.
Math is a subject that is rarely influenced by outside experiences; a more or less, discrete set of skills influenced almost entirely by teachers. However math teachers at the middle and HS levels are often up against accumulated skill deficits that make teaching grade level math nearly impossible.
There is NO such thing as a well reading test or writing test. Never has been, and never will be. Any ELA test is about a lifetime’s worth of language acquisition. The conversations, the books that were read, travel experiences, the education level of parents and friends, etc.
To think that one can put a number on reading comprehension and writing ability is a FOOL’S ERRAND.
Side Note:
Does Sidwell evaluate their teachers using Common Core test scores? Have they threatened their careers using invalid, fraudulent tests? Didn’t think so.
Seniors? That’s a good idea, make all people over 65 take standardized tests four times a year. We need more data!
Testing analytics elicit the important associated- demographic, socio-economic and psychographic data for targeted marketing. 65+ year olds have already been targeted for sales e.g. telemarking calls to sell products that they don’t want or need.
The tech industry was looking to tap a new market. Students hadn’t yet been tapped and info. gathering about them, presented some problems. Parents were wary about sharing their kids’ info. so, the politicians forced them to, through testing mandates.
But, I enjoyed your humor.
I thought seniors’ NAEP scores were meaningless because of senioritis.
FLERP!
I do believe that senior scores are unreliable because they know the scores don’t count. So the test compares one set of unreliable scores to another. But the same pattern of stagnation is found among 4th and 8th graders
You mean stagnation since 2013, when disaggregated scores for all grades were at their highest level ever, even after at least a decade of reform and a couple years of RTTT.
Or all the stagnation in various grades may be due to rising poverty rates, which is a reality in our country. Performance on standardized tests seems to correlate to socio-economic levels. This is a better explanation than blaming our “meaningless” high school diplomas.
The NAEP scores are meaningless by definition since all standardized tests RESULTS AND INTERPRETATIONS ARE COMPLETELY INVALID.
As I am want to bay: MMoOO!
For the Acronym Impaired like myself:
MMoOO = Mental Masturbation or Obligatory Onanism (is all any discussion of standardized test results is)
What, you’re knocking my hobbies now?
You’re stealing from Woody Allen now.
Actually NAEP scores only count against the Principals, the teachers and the schools. Never the intent though. Thanks Barrack and Arne and John King too!
I have learned through life that people like Gates, the Koch brothers, Trump, the Waltons, Broad, Duncan, Obama, etc. don’t learn from their own mistakes. Their failures are never their fault, so they tend to double down and ram their ideas and agendas through no matter how many people suffer from their idiocy until a corporate board of directors fires them or they fail so miserably the businesses they built go out of business or the country they rule collapses in anarchy.
I think Barbara W.Tuchman, a Pulitzer Price winning historian, touches on this fact in her book “The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam”
“A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review
You forgot to include Georgie the Least, the Dickster Cheney (don’t go hunting with me if your smart) and Duplicitous Donnie Rumsfeld (of the “Iraq oil will pay for the war and reconstruction” fame)
That’s why I added “etc.” for the rest of the cabal out to destroy the Republic.
I just wanted to call out the most egregious by name.
From what I’ve read in the last few years, the list is a lot longer.
Duane and Lloyd, you conversation addressed the large issue that lies beneath the failure of the ‘Reform” movement….which is the determination to undermine everything and anything that is crucial to promoting the common good, or upholding the laws.
I put up 3 article on Oped today which demonstrate the corruption running below the surface, as the cabal seeks to destroyer democracy.
1- Dark Money and an I.R.S. Blindfold
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/dark-money-and-an-irs-blindfold.html?emc=edit_th_20160429&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717
“It is plainly illegal for foreigners to contribute to American political campaigns. But reform groups are warning that the ban would be gravely undermined by a little-noticed bill advanced Thursday by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.
It would alter the current tax code provision that, while permitting the identity of donors to 501(c) “social welfare” groups to be kept firmly secret from the public, requires that the donors be privately identified to Internal Revenue Service officials responsible for enforcing the law. Politically oriented groups claiming dubious exemptions as “social welfare” nonprofits have proliferated in recent elections, allowing donors — including publicity-shy campaign backers — to work from the shadows.”
2- There’s No Such Thing as a Free Rolex
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-free-rolex.html?ref=international
“THIS week, the Supreme Court heard McDonnell v. United States, the case of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia who is appealing his 2014 conviction for public corruption. Although the court’s ruling is not expected until June, in Wednesday’s hearing several justices seemed set on undermining a central, longstanding federal bribery principle: that officials should not accept cash or gifts in exchange for giving special treatment to a constituent.”
What demonstrates the MINDSET of the JUSTICES who repredent OUR PEOPLE is the comments by our supreme court judges, who in effect, are saying; “EVERYONE IS DOING IT, SO IT MUST BE OK!
“Justice Stephen G. Breyer dismissed the idea that, in the absence of a strong limiting principle, federal law could criminalize a governor who accepted a private constituent’s payment in exchange for intervening with a constituent problem. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. expressed disbelief that an official requesting agency action on behalf of a big donor would be a problem. A majority seemed ready to defend pay-to-play as a fundamental feature of our constitutional system of government.”
Lloyd, Duane and fellow readers;;;THIS IS NOT THE FUNDAMENTALS THAT YOU AND I know… anyone who knows our founding father’s intentions, knows why our nations’ laws were established.
Our legislature is corrupt to the core, and our Supreme Court is condoning corruption. Undoing the public institution of education creates an ignorant citizenry which has no idea what went before. The pigs ARE in the farmhouse.
3- “The Racist Roots of a Way to Sell Homes ” Here the same criminals that robbed the people of their homes, are at it again, BECAUSE, there is NOT A SHRED OF ACCOUNTABILITY for the destruction they wrought…. just like education reform.!!
We THE PEOPLE, can cry “Oh my, LOOK WHAT THEY DID,’ but no one is stopping them.:
“Contracts for deed are making a comeback. They are increasingly being used by investment firms that have bought thousands of foreclosed homes and want to sell them to lower-income buyers “as is,” according to a recent report in The Times by Alexandra Stevenson and Matthew Goldstein. Many of the homes are in Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. In one example in the article, investors who bought foreclosed homes at an average price of $8,000 issued a contract on one in Ohio in 2011 for $36,300 at 10 percent interest.”
“Contracts for deed make gouging possible, because unlike traditional mortgages, there is no appraisal or inspection to ensure that the loan amount is reasonable. They also let an investor swiftly evict buyers for missed payments, rather than giving them time to catch up, as required under a mortgage. And they usually require the buyer to pay hefty upfront fees. Unlike a rental security deposit, however, the fee is almost never refundable.”
“What became evident from the crash was that many subprime borrowers who were wiped out — and who were disproportionately black and Hispanic — could have qualified for better terms and were misled.”
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau must assert its authority over these contracts, which are legally murky and hard to track. Some states do not require that they be recorded, and in states that do, noncompliance is high. The bureau’s mandate is to stop unfair, deceptive or predatory lending. Contracts for deed are all three.”
Believing THAT THE Consumer Protection Bureau will do something, is like believing that testing kids can determine teacher effectiveness…. pure nonsense!
The cabel is winning… and by the way… I first learned about the Cabal in 1992….and that is an interesting tale1
Don’t forget that the US Supreme Court has only 8 justices and this case could end up split 4 to 4 meaning the prior verdict would stand.
Here’s the latest word from the case: http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/a-view-from-the-courtroom/ and it doesn’t sound like all the justices are in agreement.
So glad he lost! Thanks for the update.
I really would like to understand the inner thoughts and feelings of these people who apparently are born without conscience. Any good book on that?
I read a good summary on Carnegie in “No such thing as a free gift”, but it’s descriptive, and what I’d like to see is quotes from private conversations, diaries and such.
Here’s a piece from Business Insider that might help explain why the rich think and act the way they do. I didn’t agree with everything in the article. For instance, I think I’m one of the “average” people ( whatever that means) and I don’t live beyond my means. I also don’t have a lottery mentality. I’m more of an action mentality type of guy but I’m not rich.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-people-think-differently-from-the-poor-2012-8?op=1
Using test scores to hold teachers accountable didn’t work? Shocking!
Despite our best, misguided test-prep efforts we still couldn’t budge the needle.
Time for the reform world to do some self-reflection.
These results prove, that in the big picture, it is nearly impossible for the influence of teachers to over-ride the influence of family (and community) culture. It proves that force-feeding knowledge and skills via threat and punishment will never work. It proves that the reform crowd is now stuck on the wrong side of history. And Bill Gates wants 7 more years to see if his ideas regarding Common Core and testing will work.
Reflection is not a skill that “reformers” have. Like climate change deniers, they wear blinders and plunge into their forced march to destroy public schools, democracy, and use our young people like pawns while they disregard the handwriting on the wall.
“Despite our best, misguided test-prep efforts we still couldn’t budge the needle.”
Thank god!!
retired teacher: your first sentence—
You hit the bullseye dead center!
😎
They were not failures so much as not having success as they were wrong-headed from the beginning. These scores should be flat, and if the test is good, will remain flat..within a reasonable variation. This just shows the we are humans not productivity driven, market forces, widgets. Think average height be race to the top.
“But making charter schools more accountable isn’t exactly what Faber and his accomplices in the Ohio House have in mind.
A key element of their May agenda is to dismantle many of the charter-school reforms they grudgingly approved late last year — reforms passed only because pressure from good-government groups, newspapers and other media outlets throughout the state left them little choice.”
This was the much-publicized “charter school reform”. They’re hoping no one will notice when they gut it.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/04/ohio_gop_lawmakers_in_thrall_t.html
Just remember Dianne, you were part of the Bush league that promoted this testing. The current admin just carried it forward and got on board with the republicant led common core standards and national test.
Of course, the NAEP scores reported are for those scoring at or above proficient, those scoring proficient (the bulk of the kids) and those scoring below proficient–a slight 1-2 percentage point gain). But it gets reported every year as though only 30% are proficient. Someday one of the news media outlets will get an education reporter that understands these issues and statistics and the policies.
I hope this effort to kill off the testing was not an effort of the ed reformers to avoid accountability after using test scores to bash unions and public schools. Now we see the ed reformers use poverty and lack of parenting as excuses for their status quo of poor test performance in charters and among voucher students. I might be cynical, but ending tests while pushing for more privatization sounds like the long term game plan of the bush league ed reformers.
It won’t matter. They’ll double down on the whole agenda rather than re-examine:
“These numbers are not going the way we want,” said William J. Bushaw, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent panel established by Congress to oversee NAEP policy. “We have to redouble our efforts to prepare our students.”
The next ed reform frontier is vouchers. In 6 months they’ll all be pushing vouchers.
“Redouble Trouble”
We simply must redouble
Our efforts to redouble
We’re living in a bubble
And that means double trouble
“next”….and, the one that follows is, for-profit Bridge International Academies.
Cross posted the report at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/NAEP–2015-Mathematics–in-General_News-NCLB_Nclb_Reform_School-160428-399.html#comment594232
I added this comment When teachers lost the autonomy to create the lessons and to manage what LEARNING LOOKS LIKE in their classroom, the schools were destroyed in the same way that hospitals would fail if the doctors were told by business men at the top, what procedures and medicines that must use to treat their patients.
The NCLB act was the nail in the coffin of the PRFESSION, not just our schools. Here is why: Pasi Sahlberg, who is currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, but has previously been director general of the Finnish Ministry of Education in Helsinki, writes here about the importance of teacher autonomy.
https://theconversation.com/do-teachers-in-finland-have-more-autonomy-48371
“in the same way that hospitals would fail if the doctors were told by business men at the top, what procedures and medicines that must use to treat their patients.”
That’s exactly what doctors complain about. Physicians are miserable.
You’d be amazed how much they have in common with teachers 🙂
You-all should really get together and plot strategy.
The corporations are the government. Our nation is on e where capitalism runs amok, where profit trumps the welfare of th people, and anything that supports the common good is eradicated.
Aspen Institute, where David Koch and Madelyn Albright (Clinton friend) are Board members, is having its “Urban Superintendents Network” meeting, April 27-30. The Network “was made possible by the generous support of (….you guessed it….) Gates.”
Gates also made possible the “Senior Congressional Education Staff Network.”
Princeton Prof. Martin Gilens’ research showed the opinions of 90% of the public have no impact on Congress. I assume that is because the public doesn’t sponsor meetings like Aspen’s (nor contribute big campaign bucks).
At least, the public shouldn’t pay the time sheets of the superintendents and legislative aids while they learn the education agenda of the richest 0.1%.
Diane should have the last word.
“As a nation, we have endured fourteen years of failed federal policies. Will we ever learn that testing doesn’t produce higher achievement? Will we ever learn that intrinsic motivation is more powerful than threats and rewards?
Heckuva job, President Obama and former Secretary Arne Duncan!”
“WE?”
We have learned. We talk about the destruction here and what has happened.
THEY, the corrupt , greedy oligarchs that run the show don’t care.
THEY, run the show, and they care not a whit for the people, who are little more than serfs to them
Here is who THEY are, in case you missed this… I have posted it often… when you get to the end, and he cuts the top of the chart to bring it down …THOSE are the folks who run things… people like the KOCHs who make million dollars a day, and are so far removed from what WE NEED as the gods on Mt Olympus were removed from the beggars on the streets.
Now that we stated, teaching and learning cannot be measured, and hence any kind of measurement data associated with the quality education is meaningless, let’s see a list of similarly pointless but still commonly discussed data as if they had any significance in describing or evaluating the subject they are attached to.
This is the second tallest pine tree East of the Mississippi.
That woman at the counter has a DD+ cup while the one standing at the door has only at most B cup.
If elected, she’ll be the first African American transgender president.
This is the longest symphony written in the twentieth century.
The average snake swims almost three times faster than a cockroach can run on kitchen tiles.
There are more words in The Old Man and the Sea than musical notes in the Jesus Christ Superstar rock opera.
Botticelli mixed 50% more oil in his paint than Picasso, and used the color blue a shocking 3 times more.
The Eiffel tower weighs 152 tons more than the Statue of Liberty and the Notre Dame combined.
He has played on more guitars than anybody else in Rock and Roll’s history.
In 2015, two million more people visited Michelangelo’s David than Leonardo’s La Gioconda.
He is the tallest Shakespearean actor in France.
How about this piece* of data, Máté:
You outdid yourself and all others with that post.
Gracias.
*and it’s not worthless.
Máté,
I wrote a response to a comment of yours about what the French do at the end of the semester in grading students on the Peter Greene post. It’s at the end of the comments.
Any thoughts?
Duane
Just in: After collecting the valuable data of meticulous measurements of crucial 21st century issues, my team of experts in Yalvard University’s Deep Rigor research lab wasted no time and spared no grant money to analyze the data. Our almost two hour long effort yielded several mass media publications, which then promptly got thorough peer reviews, providing research basis for future free market applications by policy makers and philanthropists.
Here are all the publications: each data followed by the in depth analysis.
This is the second tallest pine tree East of the Mississippi.
Our analysis shows that said tree is the most beautiful tree East of the Old Man River. All other trees, pine or not, need to show better growing performance in the next 6 months if they want to avoid being cut for furniture or used as Christmas trees.
That woman at the counter has a DD+ cup while the one standing at the door has only at most a B cup.
Clearly, the lady at the counter is lovely and very lovable while the one at the door needs to be removed from the bar without delay.
If elected, she’ll be the first African American transgender president.
Once this revolution is accomplished, and hence America will feel great again, there will be no need for African American transgender females anymore, hence they need to revert back to their God given birthsex role or face deportation to Raleigh, NC.
This is the longest symphony written in the twentieth century.
Classical musicians playing any other music should have their musician license revoked for 7 years.
The average snake swims almost three times faster than a cockroach can run on kitchen tiles.
This means snakes are better athletes than cockroaches hence cockroaches need to take rigorous swimming lessons or face extermination.
There are more words in The Old Man and the Sea than musical notes in the Jesus Christ Superstar rock opera.
As a first warning for his inefficiency, Hemingway will give his Nobel prize to Webber and Price.
Botticelli mixed 50% more oil in his paint than Picasso, and used the color blue a shocking 3 times more.
Our patented, secret formula enabled us to calculate Botticelli to be 3.50 times greater painter than Picasso, and hence we recommend Picasso’s math teacher to be sentenced to 3.50 years of community service.
The Eiffel tower weighs 152 tons more than the Statue of Liberty and the Notre Dame combined.
Our analysis confirms the common sense: Parisians have shown a steady increase in architecture productivity since the middle ages while New Yorkers’ output is unacceptable in the 21st century, hence American independence from England will be reversed on July 4.
He has played on more guitars than anybody else in Rock and Roll’s history.
We recommend that all female rock and rollers’ salaries are cut in half, and use the extra funds to buy more guitars for said musician.
In 2015, two million more people visited Michelangelo’s David than Leonardo’s La Gioconda.
This hard data leaves no doubt that the bipartisan effort of US lawmakers and investors has worked out, and Michelangelo has become a greater artist than Leonardo. We recommend replacing the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper by genuine, American made photos of David, and removing Leonardo’s name from public school textbooks.
He is the tallest Shakespearean actor in France.
Despite the $10 billion investment of federal tax dollars, American actors’ Shakespearean performance couldn’t reach the French level, hence we have no choice but terminate the tenure of all American actresses and dissolve their union.
See my comment to you, in the larger commentary here!
To Máté Wierdl who asked about the statistics on sociopaths.
The publisher at Oped News, has a series on this… here is the link with will offer the facts and studies that explain that one in five people lack the kind of empathy that lets them experience the distress that others feel… thus, they march to their own drummer, and do only what fits into their belief system. There, at eh esteem, lies the psychopath… like TRUMP and Cruz.
http://www.opednews.com/Series/Psychopaths-and-Sociopaths-by-Rob-Kall-130529-11.html
Did you read what John Boehner said about Cruz being “Lucifer in the flesh”?
Lloyd, I saw it on TV last night. Boehner would know. Peter King of LI agreed with Boehner. Boehner also said that Cruz would be President “over my dead body.” Strong words from a veteran of Congress.
I DID. DIANE DID, EVERYONE DID– AS THE MEDIA WENT WILD!
Both the Daily Show and the Nitely show repeated it, as did the NY Times, The huffington Post and every media outlet anywhere.
Boener nailed his character.. a mean son of a bitch, but his college roommate had a thing or two to say about knowing his attitudes — ‘back then’– and reconciling that knowledge Cruz’s and recent attitude toward mastubation… Just saying’ hypocrites actually believe what they utter.
I think Boehner was inspired by this GIF, which is more than a week old
http://giphy.com/gifs/xT1XGDzmK1iXHUPqSY
“Cruz a fix”
For Cruz a fix is in
From Boehner and his kin
They’re trying to inter
The flesh of Lucifer
was his mama a ‘bitch’ of satan, if he is as Boener called him, the son of one?