Do not underestimate the effectiveness of the Opt Out movement in New York.
Governor Cuomo, who made education policy his big issue last year, has gone off on other issues.
The Board of Regents is now led by an experienced educator who has the support of the Opt Out parents.
And Dr. Betty Rosa has not disappointed.
At a recent forum, she said that standardized testing was “abusive” for some students with disabilities and English language learners.
This is a new tone coming from New York State’s highest education official.
It conflicts rather sharply with the pro-testing, pro-Common Core, anti-opt out policies of the state commissioner MaryEllen Elia. This should be interesting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t you think the reformers have gone quietly onto other things because embedded assessments and competency based learning on being rolled out? They figure they will get their data without parent consent, and that suits them just fine.
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Agree! Follow the $$$$$ trail.
And those tests are ABUSIVE for ALL STUDENTS & TEACHERS, NOT JUST FOR SOME.
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That’s okay, Danielle–we will fight them there, too!
And we will win.
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It’s a great start. Now if we could just recognize that standardized tests (including the “competency based education” type) are abusive to *all* students we’d be getting somewhere.
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Yes, exactly.
As Yvonne Siu-Runyan commented, “Follow the $$$$$ trail.”
Forget about the kids, and what is in their best interests. 😦
Just look at who is profiting, and who stands to profit, from all of this.
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“At a recent forum, she said that standardized testing was “abusive” for some students with disabilities and English language learners.”
Excuse me! Sorry I’m hard of hearing but did I just hear that standardized testing was “abusive for some students”????
Ummm, WRONG! Standardized testing is ABUSIVE FOR ALL STUDENTS!!
Don’t believe so? Are you so culturally anesthetized to be numb to the pain to all students suffering under the educational standards and standardized testing regime that has been proven COMPLETELY INVALID by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted “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.
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YES! But it goes farther than that and I find it hard to understand why we’re still discussing standardized tests at all because they are statistically invalid when applied to human beings. A well-established statistical theory says that you can only use the concept of “average” to make predictions about a member of a group if 1.) every member of the group is identical; and 2.) every member of the group remains unchanged. Once again, policy makers ignore research!
Todd Rose’s book The End of Average provides extensive research evidence that there is no such thing as an “average” person, so how can a test be “standardized” in the first place? Standardized test applied to human beings have as much validity as a psychic reading by the Easter Bunny! Why are we still wasting our time nit-picking errors in something so fatally flawed?
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Not nit-picking errors at all. Just pointing them out as the vast majority of educators have no clue to those errors that are so fatal to the flawed standards and testing regime-so they need to be pointed out and reiterated. You are correct about the invalidity of the concepts.
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Understood, Duane! I guess that even when a structure has officially been condemned, it still needs to be dismantled brick by brick. I just find it frustrating that we’re forced to use hammers and chisels rather than a wrecking ball!
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Good way to put it about using hammers and chisels rather than a wrecking ball (although that is what these creative destructive types are doing to public education). It’s a long slog and we just have to keep going. I’ve posted that post probably a couple of hundred times at least, only because I figure everyday there is someone who is new here and hasn’t even the slightest clue about the complete invalidity of the standards and testing regime. My hope? To reach one person with each posting. May not be much but hey, what else can I do? Nothing???
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Said it many times: it’s not a big heroic thing to call tests abusive to “some” students. That’s what parents want to hear. I’m sure Cuomo is happy with her saying that too, as pacifying the parents is the name of the game right now. I’d focus on the “some” and the overall limited nature of the statement.
I’m waiting for a broad, loud, no-clauses statement about testing in general from Rosa. More importantly I’m waiting for an unqualified, very clear statement not only against current VAM but the entire philosophy of VAM. I fear that these statements will not be forthcoming from Rosa.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s better than many other options, but lets not think for a second that we have somehow turned a corner in NYS. The reformers are still at the door and their privatizing plans and goals haven’t been changed at all.
Everyone should keep their eyes on the new technology initiatives going on via state $$ to districts. Strong stuff. This is where the data collection will go. It’s also where our jobs will go. The technology in classroom myth is snowballing nicely.
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“It’s not the kids failing,” said Rosa, a former city schools teacher and superintendent. “It’s a failure of the system.”
While the tests may be abusive for some, they are inappropriate for all. Tests written at least two grade levels above the target grade, are on a frustration level, and they are designed to make most students fail. These tests need to be abolished as they serve no purpose other than to produce high rates of failure and ultimately privatization.
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When someone hits a child with a stick, do we call the stick abusive?
I don’ think it’s the tests that are doing the abusing.
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Bravo Dr, Rosa!
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Think of the experience of public education that all of the children exposed to reform ideology have been robbed of
How many hundreds of thousands of our children have been, and continue to be, victimized by this gutless charade on a daily basis?
How many moments of innocent childhood must be systematically crushed, in many cases destroyed, to satisfy the whims of the reformer regime, in collusion with legislative backstabbers?
What is the net profit acceptable to the reformer, and how many of our children, our teachers, and our public schools will be their accepted collateral damage, as their cash registers play “Ode to Our Cornucopia”?
And lastly, how long will our parents, our public educators, and our communities continue with their passive resistance against the criminals who have unleashed this nightmare on all of us?
Woe to those who harm our children, rob them of their dreams and their love of learning, while seeking to destroy a foundational leg that the United States has stood on for almost 250 years.
Imagine a nation where our children are free to pursue a free and vibrant public education…guided by parents and professional educators.
What an amazing idea…
Who would have thought?
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Diane – sometimes I just want to cry. Sometimes I am as fierce as you. Thank goodness for you & your plugging forward. It helps us all.
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Reblogged this on stopcommoncorenys.
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Dr, Rosa
I hope you find the mislabeling of 80+% of New York’s Black and Hispanic students as “failures” for four consecutive years under Common Core testing just as damaging and abusive.
At what point does the stigma of chronic failure become irreversible in the mind of a young Black or Hispanic adolescent growing up in a still fundamentally racist society? Society tells them that they are less worthy and now the the NY public schools reinforce this with institutional failure via fraudulent testing policies.
Please STOP the MADNESS!
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gee whiz. some of you guys are just as bad as the press that grab onto a sound bite and make it into a headline. In Rosa’s very first chat with the press she said if her children were in grades 3-8 she would have opted out of the tests. what more would you have wanted her to say within 10 minutes of becoming chancellor! Cuomo later said he wouldn’t have opted his children out of the tests but he actually did along with John King, Arne Duncan, Obama, Tisch and Gates etc….their children did not attend schools that had these tests.
Rosa has taken on a difficult unpaid job and is leading the charge but the undoing what John King and Merryl Tisch and Cuomo has done over the last few years will take a little time, that is, unless anyone can suggest a brilliant quickie solution. keep in mind that the most successful of revolutions take careful planning over a period of time….
The tests are abusive to many ELLs and special needs children….they are otherwise simply wrong for the vast majority of all other children. Hey some children actually score 4s, good for them.
Patience and persistence will be rewarded. Give the new Board support but work on your legislators….they too will need to reverse, repeal and rethink their prior acts that are handcuffing the regents.
There are very powerful force$ at work behind the scenes that want nothing better than to privatize education for their profit. That is what this is all about folks.
Cuomo is behind most of the current situation but has been noticeably quiet recently. He is now “leaving it up to Regents” to clean up the mess that he and Tisch caused. But every move the current Regents take will be criticized by Cuomo and the “reformers.” Bet on that!!!
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