In response to a post where I explained the uselessness of the state tests, their lack of any information to help students or teachers, a teacher sent this comment:
“It isn’t just ENd-of-Year exams. It is also the beginning of the school year where less than 3 weeks into the school year we test kindergarten students (as well as the rest of the school). Nothing like a 7 year old wetting their pants because they don’t know how to use a mouse. But we need to rank and sort this kid right off the bat.
“Then of course there is the middle of the school year exams. Need to check growth and all. That is followed by the EOY exams.
The sad part is we waste millons on the test prep books, the test and not days but weeks of testing window each session. Then they base the science teachers evaluation on the math test. The art teacher on the reading test and so on. Makes perfect sense.
“The really hard part is telling parents the test means NOTHING. “We’ll how will I know if my child is progressing?” Well there are these things, we call them teachers. They know if your child is progessing or having issues. They knew before your child sat down in front of that computer monitor. Yet, because the teacher doesn’t whip out some magical number on a piece of paper, we would rather trust the computer. Why? because computers don’t lie. Only the people who program them.
“OPT OUT”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This issue is big enough for a STRIKE. It is more than important enough. And parents and communities should JOIN IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Why on earth are the unions putting up with this nonsense??? [Never mind. I can answer that one. Can anyone else???]
Why should parents opt out their children? Because the whole standards and testing regime is foundationally conceptually bankrupt. It defies rationo-logical thought that one that can “measure student achievement”. Noel Wilson has shown how all the onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudgings involved in promulgating standards and standardized testing render any results COMPLETELY INVALID.
Why would we subject the students to such wildly invalid schemes, that serve only to sort and separate and rank students discriminating against many and rewarding a few? Should the state, through the public schools discriminate against students due to natural inherent characteristics such as mental abilities? Constitutionally we don’t allow for discrimination by the state for other natural inherent characteristics like skin color, gender, age, sexual orientation, physical and mental disabilities (lack of ability). Why do we, as a society think it is okay to discriminate on natural mental abilities?
So much harm to students with no benefit whatsoever, for how can any social benefit derive from policies and processes that have been proven to be full of error and falsehoods and therefore any results COMPLETELY INVALID???
I have yet to read, see, hear any rebuttal to that discriminatory aspect of standardized testing.
Someone help me out: Why is that discrimination just fine and dandy with the majority of educators, politicians and many parents?
To understand what Noel Wilson Noel Wilson has proven about the complete invalidity of the whole standards and testing process please read and comprehend 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only upside I can think of regarding kids taking standardized state tests is that it gives them some exposure to the world of SAT, AP, and GRE. (Believe me, I have plenty to say about these tests!)
Is there any evidence indicating that “opt out” kids do worse on standardized tests than the kids who take them every year? I’m just curious.
I seriously doubt that the standardized tests that third graders take influence the SAT, ACT, AP, or GRE exams, and since there seems to be considerable evidence that these tests have little impact on whether a student will succeed in college, many institutions seem to be downplaying or eliminating their role in selecting students. I have real trouble with this idea that we need to prepare children for events that they will face years ahead of when they are even thinking about them. Just think about what you wanted to be at age eight and decide whether testing you to death made you ready to be…a fireman? Heck, I had no idea what I wanted to be in high school, and people were just starting to care what college girls might want to be. Do we really need endless studies to validate common sense?
” Do we really need endless studies to validate common sense?”
How else will the powers that be be able to determine whether or not you might be valuable for them to use or whether you should just be discarded and left to grovel on your own.
Lots of parents agonize over the opt-out decision … especially when they have a very confident and competent youngster who’s anxious to show his or her proficiency. This seems especially true with the math assessments.
These parents know the inherent flaws of the entire assessment experience, but they think this one exception … for this one test … might be okay.
Think again. There’s a larger life lesson here.
Sometimes we all have to teach our children hard lessons. And, as they grow older, we have to let them know that they’re not the center of the universe.
That there are issues larger and more important than their lives … larger than their comforts. And larger than their personal triumphs.
And that sometimes … being right and noble … is very uncomfortable. Especially if it involves going against some authority … or some peers … for the very first time.
I get this dilemma. Lots do, too.
Folks know these tests are wrong. Educationally unsound. Hurtful.
I get that their child is the confident sort … and that he or she wants to ace those tests. I dig kids who dig challenges. I had kids just like that. They made me proud. Still do.
But there are longer-lasting life lessons in refusing these tests. Lessons of much more value.
First, your child learns to champion others … even if it dims some of their own spotlight.
Second, your child learns to take the “first step”. That’s how leadership is learned. And how leaders are made.
Third, your child will gain an understanding of the important process of resisting a wrong … and the uncomfortable feeling it sometimes creates. And how to manage that unease.
And last … and most important … it teaches your child that an injustice is still an injustice even when it never touches them. And that it requires them to act.
Now, tell me … over a lifetime … what lesson will have more permanence in that child’s character?
Shining for a moment on some bubble test? Or standing tall … as a leader … for themselves and for others?
Denis Ian
Excellent post, Denis. One of the best ever on this blog.
May I repost, with proper credit to you of course?