John King, who served as Secretary of Education after Arne Duncan departed, went to the Cleveland City Club to praise high-stakes testing as the route to equity and civil rights. He spoke highly of No Child Left Behind and its successor, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
He is so wrong. Not just wrong, but misinformed, misguided, and ignorant of facts and evidence about the injurious effects of high-stakes testing on children, teachers, schools, and education. When you read things like this, you remember how the Obama administration sold public education out and paved the way for Betsy DeVos.
All that testing, he said, raises test scores.
Clearly, he never read the report of the National Academy of Sciences (2011) “Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education.”
I recommend that King read Daniel Koretz’ new book: “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.” Koretz shows that high-stakes testing produces score inflation, teaching to the test, cheating, and loss of instructional time for non-tested subjects.
Someone should explain Campbell’s Law to John King. Whenever high stakes are attached to a measure, it corrupts the measure as well as the social process that is being measured. That means that when you attach high stakes to tests, you can no longer trust the test results and you mess up what is being measured.
Tests are normed on a bell curve. Every bell curve has a top half and a bottom half. The most advantaged kids cluster in the top half. The most disadvantaged kids cluster in the bottom half. Could someone explain to John King that standardized tests never produce equity? That they measure gaps without reducing them? That they discourage children who are told year after year that they didn’t meet the standard? How does it promote equity to rely on a tool that is designed to measure and reproduce inequity?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
John king is not wrong! The problem is the implementation in the tests, teachers, and adminstration at the schools. My daughter would have been overlooked had it not been for testing. It’s a way to measure what a student is capable of doing. She’ doesn’t perform well in class, but great on tests. If we relied on teacher opinions, stereotypes, and biases in the classroom, she never would have been noticed. I’m still begging schools to look at the data and place her in the appropriate group with students. Just saying.
Why do you assume that the test is a better indicator of her abilities than her teachers? Because it’s in your favor? To the extent tests “measure” (sic) anything, they measure a one-shot performance on a very narrow range of easily game-able “skills” that really don’t translate well in the real world, which is why grades are a better predictor of college and life success than test scores.
Incidentally, are you aware that testing is likely to work against your daughter at the college level? https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/study-new-sat-is-biased-against-females-and-college-board-is-not-addressing-the-issue/
She is going to live in a world where she has to interact with people probably skills more important for success than doing well on a tests.
As a student who spent an entire HS career being bailed out on NYS regents . I can tell you that two weeks later, I was just as clueless as I was two weeks before . Like dienne said college was not the same . I had a rude awakening my first semester. There were no AMSCO reviews for a curriculum and a test made by the professor or at best the Department.
HUH? I disagree. Do you know about “Kid Watching?” That’s what great teachers do. They observe. Better than any TEST.
I believe that the posters comment was that teachers were NOT observing her kid or they were making assumptions based upon observations. A wise teacher once told me that just because a student isn’t raising his or her hand and openly participating doesn’t mean he or she isn’t understanding the material…Multiple measures are needed
Rule Of Thumb —
No one can be selling such a defective product without having a financial stake in pushing it.
The assumtion by reformers that the big test is the only way to assure accountability is ridicules. Not only is it not the only way, it is the worst way. Teachers assess on a regular basis and they assess what is real. It is time to take education out of the hands of the agenda driven politicians and put it in the hands of teachers, students and parents.
ridiculous
State-level Democrats in Ohio are all running against DeVos. There’s no discussion at all about how closely Democrats now align with DeVos.
At some point voters are going to insist that these politicians have some basic beliefs or theories on public education besides charters, vouchers and standardized tests because “standardized tests” is the only part of the ed reform trifecta that applies to public schools.
If Democrats have nothing to offer public school families but tests people will eventually notice. Does ed reform have one positive idea or belief on how to improve public schools other than charters, vouchers or tests? It’s been 20 years. When do we get to the “improve” part they all ran on?
Many public school students are now taking longer and more difficult tests as a result of the Common Core.
They were promised “support” for their schools if we all went along with this top-down mandate.
The support hasn’t materialized. In fact, DC and 34 states are more anti-public school than ever. The funding cuts and orchestrated political attacks continue.
When do the adults in ed reform hold up their end of the bargain? Public schools went along with Common Core on a good faith basis, with a promise of “support”
Where’s the support we were promised?
Calling John King “misguided, misinformed and ignorant” is far to kind, Diane.
Rather, he and his ilk are greedy, power hungry and deceptive.
The “supports” were punitive teacher evaluation systems, high-stakes testing and the continuing attack on teacher autonomy.
Maybe we could turn the question around and get an answer. What, exactly, would public schools have to do to garner the support of elected and appointed ed reformers?
Because adopting Common Core sure didn’t change anything. If you’re a public school parent what’s the upside of adopting these directives?
I watched my local public school struggle to put in CommonCore. They didn’t write it and they weren’t consulted but they did it, and they tried to do it WELL.
They STILL don’t get any support from the US Department of Education or my state ed reform government. So what’s the measure? What, exactly, would stop efforts to strip them of funding, trash them constantly and privatize everything that isn’t tied down?
Is there any way public schools can win at this game? “Compliance” sure isn’t working. When do the beatings stop?
King is as a wooden headed ideologue as DeVos in his own way. He is not looking to learn, grow or change his opinion. He is a “true believer” in test and punish. He is too busy focusing on the bark of one tree to notice the whole forest of information he chooses to disregard. If standardized tests were a civil right, why are the NAACP and Black Lives Matter rejecting high stakes tests?
Your clear, concise summary on the impact of standardized tests should be widely distributed to superintendents everywhere. Schools can use other criteria to identify students and measure student growth. Mere testing will not raise test scores. King should also consider that correlation is not necessarily causation. Low test scores from students are not directly attributable to the teacher as the VAM fiasco has proven. Maybe the low scores are due to poverty, lack of resources, health care, beneficial experiences, etc. King still refuses to acknowledge the role of poverty in test scores. “There are none so blind as those that will not see.”
BINGO, retired teacher. You are so intelligent and love your comments. They are so spot on. YOU should be Sec. of Ed. for this country.
We’re now being ordered to “embrace” ed tech. I don’t want to embrace it. I’m not in love with it. I want a rational, critical adult process to determine if and when it has value before my public school sinks a ton of money and time into it. Their time is worth something. These experiments aren’t “free”. Is there some reason we’re being constantly harangued and shamed into adopting these peoples personal policy preferences? It doesn’t make any sense to turn schools upside down until someone has some idea whether all this crap has any value for students. Betsy DeVos can tell me I’m “clinging to the status quo” all she wants. I won’t be bullied into buying a pig in a poke. It’s dumb and reckless and irresponsible.
Chiara,
I am WITH YOU about NOT embracing ed tech. I hate that some programmer is putting me in a perennial box and making me think and organize their way, which often does NOT MAKE SENSE.
The STEM crisi is a MANUFACTURED one.
King is wrong and you are right. All that high stake testing has done is to make more students hate school, intimidate teachers, and turn public schools into torture chambers. Sadly, almost everyone who has the power to dictate school practices in one way or another misunderstands what learning is. They see it as a mental and behavioral staircase that all children must climb in a specific order and within a set time frame. In reality, learning is much broader and more variable than that, and every child’s pace and choices are somewhat different.
A few years ago I coined the following axiom: Learning is not climbing someone else’s ladder, but weaving your own web from the precious scraps you find along your way.
Love your axiom! I might have to steal it sometime.
Like!
Great image in the axiom. Nobody in our monetized education climate wants children to weave their way. They want to dictate and process young people through the system like cattle.
“Standardized tests never produce equity”
There are two definitions of equity:
1)the quality of being fair and impartial
2)the value of the shares issued by a company
So I don’t think is is equitable to claim that tests never produce equity because for companies like Pearson, they do.
Less, and less ‘equity’ as the years go by.
Very nice SDP. Your ability to change the perspective on a word or idea always pleases and usually bemuses me. Thanks for a good sense of humor. Even and perhaps especially in these days, when satire is impossible because of reality and its hold on it, we need humor like yours.
I recommend that John King read my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education” to understand that standardized testing is nothing more than state-sponsored discrimination, discrimination by mental capabilities, no different than discrimination by gender, race, disability, etc. . . . (available on Amazon)
Man, I’m really sick of John King….
That kind of says it all. After a very long day at work, your comment made me laugh a bit. Thanks. Yeah, John B. King….what a creep.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
“Whenever high stakes are attached to a measure, it corrupts the measure as well as the social process that is being measured. That means that when you attach high stakes to tests, you can no longer trust the test results and you mess up what is being measured. . . . That they measure gaps without reducing them? . . . How does it promote equity to rely on a tool that is designed to measure and reproduce inequity?
Standardized tests measure nothing. Nothing is being measured in the standardized testing process. Literally NOTHING!
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”.
Now since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
Sure it does…It measures how much money they can steal from schools and give to the greedy Pearson’s of the world.
Like!
OK, I will join in, only to have Duane and others chime back at me…I get the lack of support for testing, completely get it. But I point to the first person who posted (Usually right), and also ask if not testing, where is the accountability. And don’t just say the teachers should be accountable. Because for YEARS we let that happen, and well, how many kids of color did we have low expectations for, etc. I get that the standardized test is not the best solution. I would argue you need multiple data points to show progress. BUT I do think we have to have some type of accountability measure in place – otherwise teachers could do whatever they chose (in some cases, this could be good, but in other cases it certainly isn’t good…)
If it were testing for prescriptive purposes then it might be more palatable, but it is testing for profit and punitive measures.
There does not need to be so many tests each year. The tests do not need to be used to determine the quality of a teacher of a school building or system.
Ok, so we agree that there don’t need to be SO MANY tests – I would even argue that having them every year may not be necessary…And I somewhat agree that tests should not ONLY be used to grade or measure the success of teachers or a school building. But I do think that there is some value to the data involved. My concern is that I have personally seen some teacher respond to the accountability by improving their teaching. Yes, just like the child behaves when he/she knows there are consequences. I would be fine with having one test every other year, and instead of teachers “testing to the test” they should find ways to weave into each activity lessons that will support students doing well on the tests…Has profit/greed ruined some of this…of course. But eliminating everything and having no accountability, in my mind, is NOT the answer.
High performing nations usually give three tests, spaced out every few years. Finland gives none
When I started teaching roughly three mornings of the year were spent on standardized testing, which did not carry punitive high stakes. By the end of my career, I lost twenty-eight mornings of prime instructional time to bubble tests. Absurd!
The reason I am “chiming back at you”, jlsteach is because your accountability focus is misplaced. Rather than insisting on accountability on the back end with supposed “student achievement” the accountability that is needed should be on the front end. Do we provide adequate resources-teachers, aides, support services, resources, building and facilities infrastructure so that ALL students can be provided with an education that fulfills the fundamental purpose of American public education as gleaned from those state constitutions that give a reason/purpose of public education:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
Providing anything less than what the most economically advantaged districts provide for their students (and probably more resources are needed for those students not so fortunate to have been born into the very upper SES brackets due to myriad reasons) is less than adequate and should be rightly condemned for not providing for ALL students that opportunity to “savor those rights”.
The accountability game has been hijacked to focus on false and error filled output data, whereas accountability should be focused on the input of providing the proper and needed resources for each child. Anything less is an abomination.
Good answer! (And I’m totally stealing that.)
Feel free! Pass it around! Please!
Duane ever hear of two wrongs don’t make a right. I agree with you that we need more resources and ideally even resources in all schools. But a lack of resources shouldn’t be a reason for a lack of accountability at the other end. Let me share an anecdote. My first year in a new school procurement messed up so we had no textbooks til Oct. no common standards. Etc. so does that mean the students in front of me didn’t deserve to learn algebra II? Of course not. I taught them anyway..
As for your ranting about tests – fine call them assessments instead. Yes I believe in some type of common assessment…why? Because in too many cases I’ve seen teachers not have high expectations for students…that’s why. It compeletely saddens me when it happens but it does.
I’m guessing Duane you’re for no grades, no measure of how a student is doing right except for a teacher to say he’s doing fine or she’s doing fine…then what happens when those students try and pursue their happiness and they realize he teachers who said they were doing fine lied to them? Then what??
Any teacher worth his/worth his salt should be able to teach without someone else’s curriculum. If not they shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Tests are a small subset of assessments, standardized tests a subset of tests, so it’s better to call them what they are so as to not obfuscate what they are-standardized tests. And yes that term comes with all of the rationo-logical problems many have pointed out.
And you are correct in that I believe that grading students should be dropped as an archaic practice. I’ve seen not using grades and having a “Responsive” frame of reference (from Wilson) wherein there is a dialogue between the learner and his teacher and parents. I guarantee that it works better than grades as a more descriptive assessment that involves the one who needs to be involved the most the student and as a means of having the student “take control” of their learning.
Just curious if you have that dialogue after every assessment. And how do you recommend that dialogue happen when the parent doesn’t speak english (or Spanish)…or works so many jobs they cannot meet with you…
There’s he ideal and then there’s reality.
I say make the ideal the reality!
As a teacher I dialogued with the students as needed. I used assessments (teacher made tests/quizzes) as a means of helping the students understanding where they were in learning Spanish. I had the students correct their own tests, I graded the quizzes and returned them the next day. As I used to tell the students, they were there to learn Spanish, not get a grade.
Is the process more time consuming? Of course but it is the way to do assessing, with the student being the one to know “where they are at”.
Do you wave your magic wand and make that happen? Part of the issue in education is that folks see one thing happen in one small setting amd them think it can happen everywhere…i noticed your magic wand didn’t address any of the issues I raised. I also noticed you said you gave tests (just wondering if Wilson would have considered your tests valid or not?) and on the kids report card was the grade left blank?
I’ve never said all tests and/or assessments were invalid. The teacher made classroom test is fine as long as it is used for helping the student learn and not as a “grading” device.
And yes, I had to assign grades, and I gave the students every chance and then some since we had to play the grade game, and that is how I presented grades to them, as a giant farcical game. If they did all the work they were guaranteed to get an “A” which certainly doesn’t mean that they necessarily learned the material to it’s full extent. I could never determine that, only an approximation of what they had assimilated. Not only that but what constitutes actual “learning” as one may remember and be able to use a concept one day, perhaps the next week, and then forget how to and then the following week remember again. Learning is not a linear nor step by step process.
How do you know the teacher made test is CS always valid? Just because the teacher made it?
Not all teacher tests are valid, I didn’t say that. Sometimes teachers put things on tests that they haven’t covered, or discussed only briefly. Unless I were able to read the test and discuss with the teacher I would have no way of knowing whether a given assignment/assessment/test might be valid or invalid.
“The teacher made test is fine…”
That is not the same as saying it is valid. Two similar but not necessarily the same concepts.
Ah but you rant and rave about how evil standardized tests are because they lack validity, what they seem to measure or not measure, etc…seems like your just playing semantics here when you were caught. Buenos Noches Duane
Not playing semantics. That’s a poor argument when one’s position isn’t logically sound. Fine and valid are different concepts. In essence you are putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say. And that is not right!
BuenAs noches.
Why don’t you read Daniel Koretz, who knows a lot about testing
JLSteach,
All you are saying is “blame teachers.”
Why don’t you read Deming?
You have no answers. Just accusations.
I will read Demming. And in all due respect I not putting all of the blame on teachers. I have seen some great teachers do amazing work. I also agree with folks here how standardized testing and accountability can be taken to an extreme where we only do test prep and focus on test results. I agree that is bad as well. What I am hoping for is some type of balance. My struggle here is that no one who says hat I blame teachers with accusations (more so facts based on personal experience) has been willing to say – “yes you have a point. Some teachers are like that. Let’s see if we can find a way to find a compromise and work on something that make more sense than going to extremes
I feel the same way about unions – in response to your comment about some states not having tenure or unions. Yes we need reasonable methods of allowing teachers to show improvement. We also need reasonable ways for poor teachers to be coached out of the classroom. The challenge, from my vantage point, is that the discussion, even here, is good or bad. You are either for or against tests, for or against teachers, etc. the black and white aspects here are not healthy at all…I notice that in this space I bring a minortiy perspective about teachers. Yet it’s not just out of thin air – it’s based on my reality of teaching for 10 yrs – half of them in urban settings…
Dr Ravitch – I woke up this morning realizing you had a point. I haven’t offered solutions. I have a feeling that below will not satisfy anyone here but here is an attempt to offer a solution off the top of my head
Each content has a orgnization focused on it (or National Council of Mathematics). What is a committee were convened though these organizations of teachers and higher ed participants to come up with a pen and paper assessment (think similar to AP but not on that level)…such an exam could be used similar to PISA to measure where students are at (my concern with using PISA as it currently is used is that it doesn’t address all students or schools – more so an average overall – which means kids in MA may be doing fantastic while kids in MS are doing poorly. The issue NCLB tried to uncover is that only looking at averages hid the lack of growth in poor students..
Such an exam is taking at the end of senior year. It should be piloted over a number of years as a tool for school improvement – not punitive.
I also think having testing in 1st – establish a baseline, 5th – end of elem, 9th – beginning of HS. No need for every year. Tests should not be he only data used for determining gifted and talented
I could go on and on but must get to work. One last point – both sides need to STOP using his one example of weakness or of success as a reason that things should or shouldn’t be done (yes I’m looking at myself too)…but that means posting an article showing corruption at a one charter school doesn’t mean all
Charters are bad in the same way sharing an article about a public school student scoring a perfect score on an AP test means public schools are all good.
I don’t have nor have any vet claimed to have all the answers. Rather I am raising questi Me and it sometimes seems here that any questions raised mean I’m the enemy. Which to me is pretty sad as it only stifles conversation and forces folks into corners instead of really listening to one another
Test.
Sorry, I’ve had two comments disappear into the ether – not even showing up as “waiting for moderation”. Not sure what’s going on. In any case, accountability is on the back end is simply not fair without accountability on the front end. How is it fair to hold someone “accountable” when they have more challenging students to begin with due to the effects of poverty and they’re given fewer resources to address those challenges? How do you propose making that fair?
There should be accountability on both ends…but I don’t feel that poverty should be a reason for not having high standards…
Also, incidentally, those of us opposed to grades are also opposed to telling kids they’re doing “fine”. “Fine” is about as descriptive as a “B” – in other words, not at all. Why did a student get a B? Because they didn’t turn in all their work? Because their work wasn’t up to snuff? Because they didn’t participate in discussions? Effort? Performance?
What’s actually helpful is a narrative description of how a student is doing in all aspects – meaningful feedback on strengths and areas for improvement, how a student presents as a learner overall, how well do they interact with peers and teachers, how well do they take feedback and are they able to use it, how do they present emotionally, etc. Much richer “data”.
Believe it or not, for generations kids have been graduating from grade-less schools, managing to get into college (or other further education), doing quite well and going on to live rich, meaningful, fulfilling lives. Such students tend to be the ones doing the most interesting things in life – they tend not to be cubicle warren denizens.
Yes. Often times in small schools with small class size. I’m all for narratives added to grades to explain. I’m all for teachers providing more feedback. But at 150 students per teacher how do you propose to not make it so time consuming
So how do you propose to “measure” (sic) high expectations? How do you propose to implement an accountability system that takes into account the difficulty of the students that any given teacher is expected to teach and the support and resources that teacher is given to accomplish that task?
¡Bueños nachos, everyone! Just got back from parent conferences, and look at all this I missed! It’s late, but I just want to add that I have met good teachers and great teachers, but I never met a teacher who didn’t try to do his or her best. Lazy teaching is difficult teaching. And I certainly never met a teacher (or a student) who did better concerning him or herself over standardized test scores. Attaching high stakes to test scores causes all kinds of toxic stress, overly harsh methods, and what behaviorists call superstitious behaviors. It doesn’t cause better teaching. We need to put to rest the media concocted myth of the lazy union teacher. ¿Comprendos? (Lo siento, Señor Swacker. Solo está la lengua de divertido.)
“But at 150 students per teacher how do you propose to not make it so time consuming”
How about if I propose that no teacher should have 150 students? They rarely do in affluent schools, so why must poor kids be herded 30+ kids per class? Yet another reason why accountability on the back end is not fair without accountability on the front end.
Dienne – you are right,. but two thoughts. One – not ALL wealthy kids attend private schools. There are plenty of rich public schools that have large class sizes.
Two – another recommendation (Dr. Ravitch asked me for idesa, so here goes)…I think that like sports teams, school districts should have salary caps – And if one goes over that gap, a “salary cap tax” should be paid and the money given to other districts that don’t have as much. This idea was somewhat done with the PTA funds in one small district in California (I forget which one) – where all PTA money was pooled together and then given out according to need (I think that was the case)…I think that is one way to help with the inequity…
“But I do think that there is some value to the data involved.”
How can there be value in data that is totally corrupt, unreliable and invalid?
The GIGO concept comes into play along with Ackhoff’s “doing the wrong thing righter” thought. “Garbage in garbage out” certainly applies to standardized testing data no matter how much one protests to the contrary (see Wilson’s works on invalidity). And those who support such inherently false, inaccurate and overblown data surely are “doing the wrong thing righter” which makes any results and conclusions “wronger” as Ackhoff puts it.
“. . . they should find ways to weave into each activity lessons that will support students doing well on the tests.”
Can’t get out of the “tests are fine” mode, eh jlsteach. Even after you’ve been shown how insanely corrupt and false the data is/are. I cannot wrap my mind around the thought that you are that impervious to rationo-logical thought. Truly blows my mind.
You would think, jls, that years of seeing students in well resourced, socially and economically stable communities do well on these tests would tell us that perhaps we needed to spend time working on providing a more equitable environment for those less well resourced, less economically stable communities. Unfortunately, that requires a societal effort beyond blaming schools and teachers for not being able to overcome these handicaps. It is so much easier to focus on raising test scores, something that no one has been able to do without focusing on providing a robust support system within the schools and communities.
Yes we need more resources – but one question – why did NCLB come about from bipartisan support? It wasn’t just about test scores. It was about the inequality in expectations and standards for education across the nation. Yes resources are needed in schools. But why don’t all kids deserve same Expectstions? I’m not blaming teachers – I am pointing out situations I’ve witnessed where teachers had lower standards and weren’t removed (because it’s noy as easy as one thanks to remove a teacher)…yes we need to stop pointing fingers…many here hate standardized tests and the way test prep overtakes schools. I hate it too. But I also hate students being given substandard education
Tests don’t make kids smarter.
I agree they don’t make them smarter – however could holding teachers accountable for what they are leaning be a good thing?
Standardized tests cannot show that they are getting a substandard education. The only significant correlation is between performance and socio-economic status. You cannot tweeze out poor teaching or lower standards as the cause of the difference.
I worked in a poor district whose population was predominantly latino and black. I was a special ed teacher at the high school level. I had students who were years behind their peers most of whom were significantly behind students in my well resourced, high socio-economic status home district. There was no way I was going to catch my students up. Most important was proving to them that they could think, that they weren’t stupid. Many of them were already helping to support their families. They needed to know that they could solve problems, that they could argue an issue effectively, and that they could make a positive contribution to their families and community. The curriculum I used with them was not grade level. They did not have the necessary skills for that, but that does not mean they could not think on a fairly sophisticated level. That is the challenge in a lot of low income districts: to address complex issues in a manner that will engage your students. Requiring that they engage with reading and writing assignments beyond their ability would have been counterproductive.
I understand what you are saying, jls, although I see no utility in your solutions. Really what is required must start at the youngest ages with community based wraparound services that support families as well as students as they move through the entire (pre-)K-12 system. “Dumbing down” would not be an issue then. Incidentally, over the three years I taught in that high school I built up a classroom library that included primer through high school level reading materials. Tell me how you read Shakespeare with a child who struggles to read Magic Tree House.
An accountability measure that is hurting the situation should not be “in place”. There is no evidence that these tests eliminate incompetent or uncaring teachers. To the contrary, evidence shows that driven thousands from the ranks of potential teachers, shrinking the pool down to those who can make peace with the browbeating that goes with accountability “measures”.
It used to be that measurable aspects of the school were a part of a school evaluation. Every ten years or so, the association of schools would come in and we would report things like numbers of books in the library and numbers of students in each class. These are indications of whether the school system is working.
The most recent perversion of this is the use of ACT to evaluate high schools. Like other test-based evaluations, it violates the logical caveat that the observer affects the experiment, corrupting the data. We are getting pretty good ACT scores from children who do not know that much.
I know that you have had the experience of creating a problem on an Algebra II test that students missed for reasons you did not foresee. I was often caught, when I taught Algebra, making up a question that they missed for one reason when I was trying to test for another type of understanding. Conversations with students brought this out in a classroom setting. The test became a point of teaching. Since this can never happen in a format of testing that prevents this discussion, I see no point in that type of testing.
“The most recent perversion of this is the use of ACT to evaluate high schools. Like other test-based evaluations, it violates the logical caveat that the observer affects the experiment, corrupting the data.”
It also violates the ethical use of the results of standardized tests (or any tests for that matter). The ACT is designed to evaluate a high schooler’s readiness for post secondary work. It is not designed to evaluate teachers, schools or any teaching program, therefore it is not an ethical usage to do so.
Anyone who took a testing and assessment course (and all prospective teachers should) should have learned in the first week what the ethical usage of tests is about.
Roy – I agree with you on that note that accountability measures that are hurting shouldn’t be in place…but I hope that you would agree that some accountability measure SHOULD be in place? Or maybe not…I also was a bit confused – do you really think that counting the number of books in the library or the number of students in each class should be a real measure of the system working. Because I don’t – let me provide an example of what my school district used to do (I am not there to know for sure if it still does). On a given day, school system officials came in and counted attendance – there was a HUGE push for all kids to come into school that day – do not be absent. That was the number used to determine things like budget, staffing, etc. Kids names were called out – they even got stickers that said “I counted”…
Yes, I am cynical and somewhat pessimistic – I think part of the problem in education is the rush for a quick fix rather than really sitting down and thinking about options. I could imagine schools hauling in boxes of books from anywhere to make their library seem like they have more books.
But I do agree that things like the ACT should not be used.
Here’s a measure that I think SHOULD be used – six year college graduation rate for a high school (meaning the percentage of kids that graduate from college within six years)…Why do I say this – because I think that in some cases even the best schools, the ones that have 100% college acceptance, are still somehow not meeting the needs of its students – as they end up years later without college degrees. YES, I know that this is controversial (why should a HS be responsible for a student who makes decisions in college?) Well, I’d argue that a position at every HS should be a person who keeps in touch and offers support to all HS graduates who are in college…I will agree with the person who mention wrap around services – but they don’t only need to happen at the younger levels. I have noticed with the students that I taught a pattern – for years they had tons of support at the HS level, but then they were let go into the world, and without those same supports some have floundered.
There is better information and more honesty than John KIng can ever provide and it is coming to the Cleveland City Club, if the members show up.
THE COLOR OF LAW: HOUSING, SEGREGATION, AND EDUCATION IN THE U.S. December 8, 2017 – 12:00PM RICHARD ROTHSTEIN
Author, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
“Since Brown v. Board of Education ruled to desegregate schools, the percentage of African-American students in white majority schools increased to peak at 43.5 percent in 1988. Today, the trend is reversing – a recent report from UCLA’s Civil Rights Project showed that number had dropped by nearly half to 23.2 percent, a comparable percentage to 1968. In the U.S., African-American wealth equals about 5 to 7 percent of white wealth.
Richard Rothstein, in his most recent book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, attributes that gap almost entirely to the federal housing policy of the mid-20th century. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 provided some enforcement to prevent housing discrimination, but by 1968, the federal government had already demolished many integrated neighborhoods to create segregated public housing, and had subsidized the development of segregated suburbs.
Today, almost one quarter of African Americans in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas live in neighborhoods where at least 80 percent of residents are of color. Cleveland is no exception with 45 percent of African-Americans residents living in neighborhoods that are comprised nearly 80 percent of minorities. If we are to measure segregation by exposure to other races, the Cleveland metro area ranks as one of the most segregated.
Join us for a conversation with Richard Rothstein, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as he returns to the City Club to trace the roots of housing, segregation, and education in the U.S. ”
Tickets: $20 members/$35 nonmembers.
The Colleen Shaughnessy Memorial Forum
This forum is part of our Education Innovation series, sponsored by:
Nordson 2014 The City Club of Cleveland’s Authors in Conversation Series is supported in part by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
So I agree with Rothstrein and agree that the housing gap/economic inequality, is a large part of the reason for the differences…HOWEVER do you not think that there are SOME cases where some teachers provided lower expectations for students who were from lower income areas? That some of those students did not have the same opportunities as others (were not even given the chance?)
What you state may be true in some cases. To solve the low expectation concern, integration is the cure. When diverse students learn together, something called the “peer effect” happens which allows the “tide to lift all boats.” Integrated schools promote more pro-social behavior and support the mission of democracy.
So yes, I completely agree…but do we force integration (with busing) or how do we do this…really do this? I guess one person at a time…I send my kids to a public school where they are the minority (two upper middle white kids at a school that is majority Ethiopian/Hispanic)…
The logistics would have to be worked out. How to integrate and how to do it effectively would have to be done in a way to minimize disruption. Despite the fact that integration works, most school districts are reluctant to try to figure it out.
As for your own children’s situation, if you have concerns, you should make an appointment to discuss them with the building administrator.
“HOWEVER do you not think that there are SOME cases where some teachers provided lower expectations for students who were from lower income areas?”
Trying to alleviate/prevent the very few cases to which you refer is an example of overcontrol in using policies. Those few cases should be and usually are handled by the local administration, if they are doing their jobs. From an unnamed source:
“The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.”
That overarching, stultifying, smothering control serves only to obfuscate the true needs of the students.
Duane I am not talking about smothering – however I do believe in some type of standardization – it’s the final destination. If you want to go the scenic route and I want to go the highway that’s fine. As long as we went up in the same spot. The problem now in education is some people will stop after 5 miles (of the 15 mile journey) and say that’s all my kids can do. Or maybe they aren’t willing to put in the efforts. I’ve seen it with my own eues
I’ve never seen the problem you describe in 21 years of teaching. So where does that leave the discussion? (I mean that question seriously and not facetiously)
By the way I did take the scenic route back from the NPE conference in Oakland. Took US50 from Tahoe to the western edge of Kansas. If you’ve never driven it may I highly suggest it. In Nevada it’s called “The Loneliest Highway in America”. And it’s true to it’s name.
Then Duane I guess you’ve taught in some amazing schools. I’ve seen it happen many times (or worst case students aren’t really taught what they should have been taught)..come to inner city DC and I’ll show you what I’m talking about
I wouldn’t consider the schools in which I taught to be “amazing”, really pretty par for the course around here in Missouri. One a suburban/rural school of around 1,800 students (after the third HS opened in the district) and one rural of 1,000.
Any teachers that were not up to snuff were usually counseled out in one fashion or another, usually after a year or two at most.
It sounds like you have serious administrator problems in your school, those who do not know how to properly evaluate teachers.
Duane, reading your riff tonight reminds me of watching Mike Tyson fight Michael Spinks. You never let him/her get up. Great stuff! Proud to call you my virtual friend.
Thanks, GregB, for the very kind words. Makes my day! Sometimes I feel that what I have to say is all for naught, but words of encouragement like yours help keep me going after the errors and falsehoods that abound in education discourse.
@jlsteach. I’m in bucolic Howard Co right outside of DC. Lots of money in our area. TONS of teaching to the test because it looks good on the US News and World Report….all in the name of test based accountability. The testing drives the curriculum so the children who get the most attention in school are the majority of the kids in “the middle” who’s scores can be improved. Those special ed kids get to interact with children their own age, but not much is expected and the kids that are above average will always be ignored…. because their test scores will always be good. I think a lot of younger teachers don’t know what good teaching is or the true meaning of an education because they grew up in the age of test based accountability and it’s all they know. I’m in my 50’s and I remember school fondly, but when I hear what my children talk about and see the fragmented mess of garbage that they bring home as homework, I feel bad for them.
Lisa – So again, as I have said before, I AGREE that we cannot let accountability control everything. I AGREE that the competition to be the BEST in ratings can ruin things. And YES, I agree that with accountability and the focus on scores that a huge amount of resources are put in the kids that are on the bubble (i.e. the ones that can help increase the overall scores of the school or the state) and that the kids on the extremes are left behind. I agree with all of that – and I think that accountability CAN be taken to an extreme (check that – it HAS been taken to an extreme in many cases)…That being said, the opposite swing of the pendulum, no accountability, teachers can do whatever they want – in my opinion that is NOT a solution either.
as for the teachers learning – I can tell you at the University that I work at there is a huge focus on NOT test prep – on having students interact and dialogue with one another, on creating more meaningful lessons…Interestingly enough, some of these ideas are emphasized in yes, a teacher performance assessment that some of our students do. My dissertation research has revealed that in some cases teachers are continuing some of these better practices that they used in this assessment…So take heart there are plenty of teachers that want to teach in ways that are not just teaching to the test.
When I was a high school English teacher my end of the year test was to have students write about the most significant things they had learned that year. The test took one hour, but I let students who had not written all they wanted write for a few minutes more. Students knew from their class experience how to handle that type of writing. What I was looking for was breadth and depth in their memories of what they had learned about specific pieces of English literature and how they had affected their lives. I graded those tests as A,B,C, D or try again. I didn’t know how to pin a number on a human being.
A,B,C,D is pinning a “number” on a human being. Same difference!
Pinning a grade on an assignment is not or should not be the same as pinning a standardized number on a kid. The problem comes with whether you are grading the student or the student’s work. It is not the student who is an A; it is the quality of the work that is being assessed. One of my kids had an English teacher who refused to put a grade on their papers. They had to go in and talk to him in order to get a grade. It forced them to pay attention to how they could improve their product. Only then would he tell them a grade, which they always had the opportunity to improve through revisions if they so chose. Another teacher, a middle school math teacher, required all students who did not get at least a B on a test to do corrections for which they would receive half credit. He also provided retakes for those who really appeared lost and needed reteaching before they again attempted the test. Both these teachers used assessment to inform their teaching and their students’ understanding, something these high stakes, standardized instruments can never do.
No, it isn’t the same. You can’t get percentages with letters or add them up to get s total number of points. It would also be much more difficult to determine whether a student is doing better, worse, or the same as last year.
Yes, it’s the same difference. In other words it doesn’t make any difference whether we designate the assessment in terms of letters or numbers, they both mean the same thing and serve to label students unnecessarily and many times speciously.
Duane – they only “serve to label students” if teachers, parents, etc, let them be used as labels. Recently the county I live in moved from having ratings like P = proficient, N = needs improvement, etc. to letter grades for kids in elementary school. On one had, I see the change in the expectations – there are third graders feeling bad they don’t have all A’s….yes, we need to address that. But on the other hand, I have two daughters that are VERY different academically, yet from grades K-2, they both had P’s. I could see at home they were different in terms of academic performance, yet they received the same rating…
I tell my kids all the time (both the students I taught and my own children) that grades do not define them as people, but only represent the work they did at a particular point…
Thoroughly agree with your last statement.
Unfortunately that is not how the vast majority of folks, whether parents, students or teachers look at the labeling* that we do with student’s work. Somewhere along the way we need to get out of the stunted grading game, whether with terms like proficient, advanced etc. . . or A,B,C. . . etc. . . . A responsive narrative between the teacher and the student and his/her parents/guardians is truly the best option. Does it cost more? Yes, but this country has more than enough wealth (think trillions held offshore by US corps) to supply the needed manpower to get the job done.
*I have recently spoken to two successful businessmen who throughout most of their lives they have believed themselves stupid because of the labeling that occurred to them in elementary school. I suspect that there are many, many more than just those two who have believed/believe that they are “stupid”, “dumb”, etc. . . due to said grading and labeling.
Duane – the issue isn’t with the rating or the grade, but rather how it’s used….I won’t argue with you that narratives are important and should be included. But as for your trillions of dollars in off-shore accounts, again, are you going to waive your magic fairy wand and suddenly make that money be used towards education. It’s not realistic…What is realistic is educating parents, etc. about the use and misuse of grades – how they should be used or not used. I’ve seen the opposite effect happen as well – the pride that a student has when they have an “A” paper – because of the hard work that it represents, etc.
As for the businessmen who were labeled dumb, etc. I am sure that has happened before and sadly will happen again. Just as there are people in this nation that still use racist terms and throw them at people. That being said, just saying, “Let’s get rid of grades” won’t solve the issue…parents and teachers and students need to know how they are doing. And last I looked money does not come in infinite supply – choices must be made – so if the choices were better schools OR money into having a system for narratives, which one do you choose (or for that sense – money for free college for up to two years, etc)
The money for having a system of narratives would result in better schools. Mainly because it would lower the student/teacher ratio by necessity (and add an aide and SpEd teacher where needed to each class).
The problem with reality is that we all see it differently. The reality of those with the most paying more has been accomplished before in this country, we can do it again. It is not impossible.
(And no I’m not some starry-eyed educator who has no concept of the supposed “real” world. I didn’t come to teaching til I was 39 and know full well what that “outside of education” realm is about. The question is “Do we have the political fortitude to stand up to those with vast wealth and make them pay for they are the ones receiving the most benefit of the “system”.
Would this really happen: Mainly because it would lower the student/teacher ratio by necessity (and add an aide and SpEd teacher where needed to each class OR would the case be that narratives will be asked of teachers without lowering the student teacher ratio? As for the latte r- I already know of many classes where there is a paraprofessional aide where needed – so not sure how that would change things…
To jsteach: The fact of the matter is that even calling some of these tests “standardized”
(Pear$on’$ te$t$, at least, have not proven to be valid or reliable, thus they are NOT standardized) is ludicrous. The testing companies, themselves, are not accountable to ANYONE. As a taxpayer (who pays the property taxes that pay for test), I would think that the state that contracted for the tests (here, in ILL-Annoy, it was a no-bid {illegal!}, 4-year, million dollar + {I think $1.4 or $1.6} contract w/Pear$on) would provide some oversight. As we have seen before, their tests are more than faulty: ?? w/more than one right answer, ?? w/no right answer, ??/material on the test that are above the grade level being tested, & on & on. And then, there are the people they hire to grade the tests–off of Craig’s list, they’ve had people scoring reading comp./long answer tests who were ESL adults! People scored tests after their long, regular work day (6-10 PM! How tired are you after work?!)
I highly recommend you read the book, “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry” (sorry, I know books are italicized, but can’t do it on a blog post) by Todd Farley, paperback, Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. (When I last bought one in 2015, it was $19.95.)
And–here’s the kicker–the book was written in 2009, and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
Oh…except the whole hot mess has gotten worse.
&–writerjoney–welcome to the blog! I love your axiom & I love your end-of-the-year test.
(I would write a test question on my tests that asked, “Why do you think you had to take this test?” or “What did you learn in this class? {or from this unit, these chapters, etc.}.)
So you’re right – the testing companies should be more accountable…but shouldn’t the teachers be held accountable as well? Like I said to Duane two wrongs don’t make a right
How do you propose to hold teachers “accountable” in any sort of fair way? Preston’s school can afford teacher salaries in the $100,000 range along with brand new facilities, a fully-stocked library, a rich curriculum, expansive extracurriculars and the latest technology. The students who attend the school are mostly affluent kids who have never missed a meal, are safe and well-cared for, have their medical needs met, etc.
D’Quan’s school, on the other hand, is housed in a moldy building where the bathrooms don’t usually work. When the weather is bad outside, it rains inside. There are 45 kids per class and the teachers are nearly all new and even those who stay get rotated grade to grade. The textbooks are hand-me-downs they got from Preston’s school in the 1980s, along with the Apple 2es that make up the “computer room”. There are no extracurricular activities because it’s not safe to stay after school. Many of D’Quan’s classmates face hunger and most have experienced or witnessed some form of major trauma. Several have untreated cavities and other dental problems while others have uncorrected vision problems.
How exactly do you propose using a test to hold Preston’s and D’Quan’s teachers accountable in any sort of way that’s fair to both of them? Preston and his classmates are guaranteed to far outscore D’Quan and his classmates on any kind of test you could put before them. Does that mean that Preson’s teachers are better? That they have higher expectations? Should D’Quan’s teachers be fired?
First off I agree these schools aren’t equal. And the lack of equal resources is a huge issue. And yes there should be differences in how we measure success at either school (the whole growth vs proficiency argument and DeVos didn’t seem to understand.
Here’s my issue. Algebra at Preston school is with the right curriculum that prepares him for geometry. He gets a B and goes on. At DeQuan’s school the teacher doesn’t think Dequan is really good at or can to algebra. But he’s still in a class called algebra. His teacher gives him worksheets on adding and subtracting all day. Assumes he cannot donhigher level math. Dequan gets an a in algebra. In fact he gets a’s in all his math grades before leaving school (Preston gets bs in the same classes but actually studying the material). When they get to college. Dequan discovers the teachers he thought were teaching him the right methbreally weren’t going that. He has to take numerous remedial math classs for no credit. He can’t afford it and ends up dropping out…
This happens ALL the time…
Teachers are held accountable. I know of no public school/district that doesn’t hold their teachers accountable through yearly evaluations and other observations of abilities.
It seems to me that your beef should be with administrators who don’t do their job in monitoring/evaluating the teachers.
You’re just kidding yourself if teachers are held accountable all the time Duane. In every district there are teachers that get away with poor teaching – they manage to skirt by
No I’m not kidding myself. I know that some teachers (very few actually) do manage to “skip by”. And that is an administrator problem, not the problem of the other teachers, many of whom probably informed the administrators that there was a problem teacher. Hell, even the students can tell you who the “problem” teachers are. It’s not that hard to determine. Again, it’s an administrator problem not the other teachers.
My last comment for the night – you see it as an administrator problem. But if it’s happening everywhere I see it as a systematic problem beyond administrators
Sorry but I refuse to let administrators off the hook on this one. And no, I don’t see it as a systematic/systemic problem. Perhaps in your district it is. What district do you teach in?
Doesn’t matter what district I teach in…Ive seen this issue nationally…
Why not name the culprit as I’ve not seen the issue nationally, except from the edudeformer crowd, to whom I give no credence.
Behind every truly incompetent (educationally harmful) teacher stands a FAILED ADMINISTRATOR who culled resumes, who interviewed and vetted, a cast of candidates, who hired, observed, and evaluated said untenured teacher, and who ultimately granted tenure. Bad teachers obviously will not fire themselves. Inept administrators don’t either.
In many districts thanks to tenure and job protection there’s something called involuntary transfers – aka pass the bad teacher from one school to the next. Furthermore in some districts it can take two years (in part because of unions setting up roadblocks along the way) to remove a teacher. It’s not just administrators that do hiring, etc. there isn’t just one reason. Those that point fingeres at just one reason are fooling only themselves
JLSTRACHER,
Many states don’t have unions or tenure. Are they more successful than those that do?
Saying that standardized tests are invalid is not to say that teachers should not be held accountable. It is curious that anyone would imply that it is.
The central problem with the push for standardized testing is the same as the problem with most other “reforms”: the policy — and claims about what it can/will accomplish — are not based on evidence.
Reformers just make wild assumptions and from there, jump to their (in many cases, pre-ordained) conclusions.
If standardized tests are not valid for evaluating teachers (and there is no evidence that they are), they should not be used to evaluate teachers. period.
And no, they are not “the best thing we have”. If that is indeed true, then we have nothing.
That statement has nothing to do with believing teachers should not be held accountable.
It has to do with acknowledgement of reality — something which is seriously wanting (if not entirely absent) among school “reformers”.
These people would not know a scientifically based approach to education if it dropped out of the sky and hit them in the head.
Or maybe it did and that is actually the problem.😀
I didn’t say they were the same. What I did say is that one of the reasons King or others are calling for maintaining tests is for accountability. And what I am raising is this – if we remove standardized tests then what methods will we have in place to hold teachers (and districts and states) accountable to make sure all students have access to the same opportunities?
“…if we remove standardized tests then what methods will we have in place to hold teachers (and districts and states) accountable….”
In the early days of the AIDS epidemic there was no real treatment for HIV/AIDS. So should we have used leeches because, well, that’s better than nothing and if we don’t use leeches, what else are we going to do? Doing something harmful is not better than doing nothing at all. (Not, in either case, that we’ve ever really done “nothing” – teachers have always been evaluated and all patients have always been treated).
Funny you mention leeches, because that’s basically what testing companies like Pearson are.
They suck the life blood out of schools and provide nothing of any value in return.
Well, John King also supports charters with unaccountable finances and questionable practices that divert resources from the vast majority of black students. He is, therefore, opposed to the NAACP and the true Civil Rights Movement. What do you expect from someone who spent his adult life relying on rich white men for money (especially on the grandson of the one who owned his grandfather)?
An utter fool
Maryland advocate here. Need help/info on Strongschoolsmaryland.org. They are making a huge push to get local advocates to join their effort to influence the Kirwan commission in Maryland which will, in turn, have a huge influence on public schools.
.
https://www.strongschoolsmaryland.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-francaviglia-53794318/
I think they are very pro-charter and backed by all the corporate reformers. This treatise that underlies their work comes from an organization called National Center for Education and the Economy. Strongschoolsmaryland is pushing these 9 building blocks hard. Local advocates are becoming team leaders without realizing what these people really support because the website is so non-transparent.
Click to access 9-blocksv011217.pdf
Just their list of funders makes me really nervous.
http://ncee.org/who-we-are/funders/
Diane, others, we need help help.
I’m not finding much information on NCEE or what their agenda really is. Seem very pro-high stakes testing.
Maryland Advocate,
The Republican governor of Maryland is very pro-choice, pro-DeVos. He appointed choice advocates to State Ed Board.
Be on guard. Organize. Protest. Don’t be fooled.
This is a really good, civil exchange. Where else can we get dialogue in our country today like this. Thanks to all who provide it.
To add a bit to it….. JLS notices something I have felt in the past. I have seen teachers who did not seem to be doing what I thougt they should. I used to think tests might show these teachers up to be slackards. But, with the advent of testing, I discovered, to my amazement, that many of the teachers I thought were too interested in the ball game or the prom were actually getting better test scores than some of the ones who were slaving away at human ignorance with the sword of intellectual righteousness. I was puzzled. I remain puzzled.
Duane has had the experience of living in Missouri. My experience with the show me state is that they have a good educational program there. In my travels, I have met many articulate and impressive students and teachers from that place. This probably accounts for the experience difference Duane describes in opposition to JLS.
It is my feeling that testing has failed to eradicate teacher incompetence. I also feel this incompetence is exaggerated by those who profit from the belief in society that it exists. I further assert that the rarity of total incompetence is a different issue from that of professional difference and outlook. Any group of people disagrees.
Democracy, education, and harmony are all messy concepts. Rational thought and discussion are the only tools we have to push toward these goals.
Especially like your last paragraph. Excellent thought! Thanks!
Roy – I see your point…and I agree partially (not a surprise)…I hate to be cynical, and this is one of the reasons why changes to the accountability movement need to happen. Look at the testing scandals that resulted from the pressures to raise scores. Not saying that didn’t happen with the teachers that you thought were more focused on prom or the ball game than teaching…In my cases I saw the actual teacher created tests for the same subject I was teaching where the teacher didn’t have the same expectations. But there was no final test to show the differences (teachers made their own final exams). No standardization. No accountability. And yes, Duane I agree that in this case the administrator wasn’t willing to hold the teacher accountable…he’s still teaching the same school the same class today….
It is true my reactions are from the students and the schools I have taught in. But I also have heard and seen students and teachers in schools from across the nation mention the same thing. Is there a crisis – probably not. Is is a problem. I’d say yes.
Furthermore, I think some of the accountability issue came back to common standards for all, which comes back to the fact that the constitution allows states to set their own standards. I am curious how many other nations that are mentioned (for example Finland, or even New Zealand mentioned in the other post – have expectations for all (see here for the NZ document: https://www.teachnz.govt.nz/teaching-in-new-zealand/school-curriculum/)
SO…I notice one of the things some of these other nations we look to as examples have: 1) lower populations, 2) national standards….What does that say about us in the US? Not sure. but I do think we need to consider the reasons why things were put into the first place…
Prior to this…kids in Missouri may take four years of math to graduate from HS. Kids in Alabama only two. Is this fair? Is this right?
JLS: thanks for the response. It makes me think of the French solution to this problem during the Napoleonic period. He created the lycee to produce people who would be competent administors of his vision for France. Even the dictator did not assume that the best way to build citizens was total control. Autocratic as he was, Napoleon saw a need for dispersal of educational practice. Later, the French Normale was instituted for the teaching of common standard to college kids. The idea was simple. If norms were established, everyone would get a better education.
Modern advocates for standards neglect to realize that the level where this takes place is beyond high school. The university might need to pay attention to the list of things students need to know, but we are in the business of finding children where they are, then moving them as far as possible, hoping that their march now begun will continue throughout life.
The standardized tests were needed to help build the state longitudinal data systems. Gates helped fund the Data Quality Campaign that gave grant money to states to build these data systems that are suppose to follow students P-20. Just google State Progress Data Quality Campaign. PA’s system is called Pennsylvania Information Management System or PIMS. These systems link multiple programs over several years. The next step was to build a longitudinal database of workforce data and link it to education data .
“In 2012, Pennsylvania received a Workforce Data Quality Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to build a longitudinal database of workforce data and link it to education data to help improve the overall performance of workforce development programs.
The PA-WDQI integrates data from multiple sources:
• Workforce program participants
• Human services program participants
• Wage data of workers
• Job postings
• Occupational employment projections
• Postsecondary education completers”
Google PA Launches Data Warehouse http://www.workforcedqc.org/news/blog/pa-launches-data-warehouse. They state”All individual-level data is kept in secure systems that protect privacy and limit access. “ But given the timely article in the WaPo yesterday “Education Department warns of new hacker threat as ‘Dark Overlord’ claims credit for attacks on school districts” can we trust that all this longitudinal data is truly secure?
So you be the judge. Are the standardized test truly about accountability or a way to control, manipulate and collect a massive amount of data on the worker bees.
The latter!
As with anything, the use of data can get corrupted. However, I would argue that there is some value to collecting data in order to determine where one needs to improve…which I think is the main reason that King or others are advocating for having some type of measurement.
First of all, there are other kinds of data than numerical data. Teachers have been observing students forever to figure out ways to better help them learn. In fact, I think I would argue that assessment that relies solely on scores is sadly limiting. What data you collect and what you think it tells you shapes the answers you get. King and others have been choosing “data” to make decisions for which it was never designed. Blaming schools and teachers for not making all students “college and career ready” (whatever you choose that to mean) is like blaming doctors for not making sure all their patients stay healthy.
So yes, we agree, using ONLY test data is unfair and shouldn’t be done. But the fact is for years, parents have no idea what their children are learning or HOW they are learning. Just trusting the teacher isn’t enough. Furthermore, the mentality has often been – we are good enough. There wasn’t a push for schools to really look at how they were doing and be critical of oneself. Everyone is fine was more of the mentality.
The standardized tests don’t measure learning
They are best at measuring family income and education
Yes,…almost. High stakes standardized tests are NEVER appropriate for assessing the success of a school system much less of an individual student or teacher. As a matter of fact, we are well aware of ways to better serve all our communities with well resourced public schools that include a robust community based social service safety net that is not dependent on local property tax. We really do need to believe in our hearts that a healthy society depends on recognizing the concept of common good. With all the talk of the necessity of bringing tech dreams to scale, we cannot deny that spreading the cost is the only way to bring caring for everyone’s welfare “to scale.” In the long run, the costs to society will be less.
YES. Especially when media, social norms and legislated subsidies push junk food and soda: blame the doctor?
Recent research suggests that standardized tests score differences reflect, at least in part, different brain anatomy in students from relatively wealthy homes compared to students from relatively poor homes. See http://news.mit.edu/2015/link-brain-to-anatomy-academic-achievement-family-income-0417
So, being rich means you have a better brain? Maybe the brain develops better when you have good nutrition and medical care, as well as Security.
While the researchers are not sure about a causal relationship, being raised in a repetitively rich household is correlated with having a thicker brain cortex in areas that are associated with visual perception and knowledge accumulation. Having a thicker brain cortex in those areas, in turn, are correlated with higher standardized test scores.
The researchers speculated that the differences in brain anatomy for children from relatively poor households might be caused by higher stress, limited access to educational resources, and less exposure to spoken language, but the research did not address those issues.
Better inform Raj Chetty of that MIT study so he can can quickly develop a teacher VAM based on student cortex growth over a school year.
Wouldn’t want him to miss out on a sure (fake) Nobel Prize.
SomeDAM Poet,
Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think Chetty’s research is relevant here.
I have never understood why the posters on this blog have such hostility to Chetty’s work. At the core, his research shows that good teaching has a positive impact on students long after they have left the classroom.
I am very troubled that teachers would argue that the research that shows this is false.
Chetty made ludicrous claims about the long-term effects of a fourth grade teacher in affecting pregnancy rates, lifetime earnings, etc. of course, teachers matter. But his argument was that test scores could be used to fire teachers, sooner rather than later. There are many other variables beyond teachers that affect test scores and life outcomes.
If good teaching in fourth grade has no perceptible impact on student’s lives perhaps we should not worry about the quality of fourth grade teachers. If that is true we are wasting resources on training teachers. Those resources would be put to better use improving the health and nutrition of fourth grade students.
It would be wise to do both.
From my perspective as a woman, anyone who thinks my child bearing decisions were determined by my fourth grade teacher is demented.
Perhaps you could drop the disingenuous act. Disputing Chetty’s ability to predict the impact of a teacher on student future success is not the same as disputing that teachers have an effect on student learning.
What do you think did determine your child bearing decisions?
The fundamental issue is why society devotes resources to schools of education if the training at those schools have no impact on education on students. Perhaps schools of education are the equivalent of the J. Brinkely Schools of Goat Gland Medicine.
My choice, my life: not my 4th grade teacher. Only a man would say something so stupid, then illogically blame professional education because my 4th grade teacher taught me reading, writing, math, social studies but did not determine my child bearing
I am surprised that you think good teaching does not have impacts on children long after they have left the classroom.
Every one thinks good Teaching impacts students for life. Most readers of this blog think that standardized tests are not good measures of those impacts.
What many people think is not evidence about what is true. There was a good example recently on the Freakanomics podcast about the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study and how what everyone thought turned out to be completely wrong. Here is a link which includes the transcript: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-helping-hurts/#disqus_thread.
Everyone may well think that good teaching impacts lives well beyond the classroom, but Chetty found evidence that this is true. Advocates for high quality teaching should be comforted by the echoes of good teaching that Chetty found in the lives of former students.
Chetty based his findings primarily on test scores, and most teachers understand that the scores are a shoddy measure of a student’s potential or accomplishments. See the new book by Daniel Koretz, “The Testing Charade.”
If you think that Chetty did a poor job in identifying good teaching, doesn’t that make his finding that the echos of good teaching can be found in students long after they have left the classroom more remarkable?
Presumably better identification of good teaching would find that good teachers have a larger positive impact on the lives of their students than Chetty found in his work. If it did not, I would have to change my opinion about the importance of good teaching just as Geoff was forced to stop being a mentor when faced with the likely impact of mentoring.
Nonsense.
Chetty proclaimed a commonplace: good teachers affect students’ lives. He then went on to make ridiculous claims, including the assertion that good teachers could be identified by student test scores and that those who didn’t raise spurious test scores should be fired. One of his co-authors told the New York Times that the lesson of their work was that it’s better to fire those allegedly bad teachers sooner rather than later. Their study reinforced belief in the invalid VAM, demoralized teachers, created a national teacher shortage, and ruined the lives of many dedicated teachers. VAM will be studied in years to come as an example of fraudulent policy.
There are few things more dangerous than commonplace knowledge.
It was commonplace knowledge among cardiac physicians that the best place for a patent to recover was in specialized cardiac units in hospitals until Archie Cochrane looked at the data and found that the best place for patients to recover was at home. The commonplace knowledge of the trained physicians, it turns out, was killing their patients. (see https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford/transcript).
It may be a common belief among your readers that mentoring programs for at risk youth improve the lives of those children when the evidence from the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study program shows that mentoring made there lives worse and that the longer a boy was in the program the worse his future life would be.
It should be a comfort that Chetty found evidence that good teaching, however imperfectly measured, actually does have long lasting effects on students lives. In this case the commonplace appears to be true, but the only reason we have some confidence in that is because Chetty, like Archie Cochrane and Joan McCord, looked.
No one but you ever doubted that teachers gave lasting effects.
Otherwise why would we have schools?
The mistake Chetty made was to jump to the false conclusion that good teaching can be measured by bad standardized tests.
You share his assumption, which many scholarly associations have declared invalid.
The American Statistical Association chastised Chetty’s research, not based on common sense but based on evidence.
Oh my god! Does that mean we should abandon all attempts to mentor youth? That does in the Boy and Girl Scouts. How about 4-H? How about Big Brothers? Big Sisters? I’ m pretty sure the list is near endless, but if this one study says that all mentoring efforts are for naught, well then, we must cease and desist immediately!
No one ever doubted that it was best for cardiac patients to recover in special cardiac units at hospitals, no one ever doubted that mentoring at risk youth would improve their lives.
I am curious about you claim that no one doubts the importance of good teaching to students lives. It seems to me that half your posts are about chastising “reformers” who doubt the importance of a teachers influence on students. Chetty’s work is evidence that you can use to show that these people are wrong.
Without Chetty’s work and other similarly done research, can you find any evidence that good teaching has positive impacts on students lives after they have left school? I don’t think any such evidence exists, but if so I think that a discussion of that evidence would make a very interesting blog post.
TE,
I will not waste any more time on your stupid nit picking. Everyone who reads this Blog acknowledges the importance and lasting effects of teachers. They inspire love of learning and creativity and diligence and a sense of self worth. These important outcomes cannot be measured by standardized tests, which is what the fake reformers believe. Go away.
speduktr,
I would say that this one extremely well done study should cause us to do other extremely well done studies to verify the negative effects of mentoring at risk youth that was detected in the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.
You are right though that it is possible that all the mentoring programs we have might have long term negative impacts on the students in them. The podcast reported that while participants in the mentoring program regarded it as the best time of their lives, participants in the program had, on average, a shorter life expectancy, longer criminal histories, worse mental and physical health, higher rates of alcoholism, lower rates of job satisfaction and lower rates of marital satisfaction than did the boys from the same neighborhoods who did not participate in the mentoring program.
All individual-level data is kept in secure systems that protect privacy and limit access. “
As we learned from the massive Equifax breach and the previous NSA “breach” by Snowden, there is no such thing as a secure system.
Even ones that are difficult to breach from the outside by hackers can be “breached” from the inside by those who actually have authorization, as Snowden did.
Parents and students payed a HUGE HUGE price for testing accountability. In order for the longitudinal data systems to link all the data FERPA had to be amended which weakened parent and student rights. “The proposed regulations REMOVED limitations prohibiting educational institutions and agencies from disclosing student personally identifiable information, without FIRST obtaining student or parental CONSENT. ” EPIC challenged this in court and lost because it was found they did not have standing.EPIC v. The U.S. Department of EducationChallenging the Department of Education’s Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) 2011 Regulations. It would be interesting for someone of standing to challenge this. Here is the EPIC link: https://epic.org/apa/ferpa/.
On the page Under Legal Documents –if you scroll down towards the bottom there is an interesting document titled: Data Quality Campaign email!
BTW—Data Quality Campaign Funders:
Our Funders
Our work is made possible by philanthropic grants and contributions from the following organizations:
Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, ExxonMobil, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, New Profit, Wallace Foundation, Walton Family Foundation
Statistical sampling is well-established and scientifically accepted. If you want to administer standardized tests and track scores for sub-groups over time, you don’t need to test everyone. You can do it with a very, very small sample population.
But then you can’t tie scores to individuals, so there is no accountability!!
(Wrings hands. Huff’s and puffs, paces back and forth, glares)
The audacity! The unmitigated gall!
Julius Caesar: “The unmitigated Gaul!”
Forgot “The impudence!”
That man has always been a quack-in-chief until Devos “the Ignoramus” succeeded. He is now a quack-in-the-air while singing his one-hit-wonder song, “KING NOTHING.”
Hope this is not so late to this post that no one will read it. Have been watching the over-the-top (I find it hilarious–the actors are so great) HBO series “Vice Principals.” If you watch no other episode & can catch this, watch Season 2, Episode 6, “The Most Popular Boy in School”–“A plot to sabotage a standardized test jeopardizes Russell’s job as Gamby is caught in the middle.” (If you have OnDemand, it ends 11/05, but it’ll come back on again eventually.) This episode says it all–the teachers (save one)have secretly made a pact to NOT teach to the test, in the hope that all the students in the school will fail, this leading to the firing of a principal they despise. (In TV land, it’s the PRINCIPAL who is fired…not teachers!)
Trust me…you just have to watch it.
(In fact, watch the whole series–I have found it to be very enjoyable {&, perhaps in some cases, not so over-the-top.})
As NYS education commissioner he was a total SELLOUT. For years he ignored the destruction of education of 9000 Black and Brown children in East Ramapo by a school board that ILLEGALLY took money and dire ted it instead to fund religious education. He even allowed the sale of public schools resulting in serious overcrowding.