The National Grange, which represents rural communities across America, released this resolution. The Grange moves deliberately and thoughtfully before it takes a position. Its resolutions are initiated locally, then reviewed at the state and national levels before adoption.
The resolution says:
WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being; and
WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money and energy on high-stakes standardized testing, in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators and schools; and
WHEREAS, the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators’ efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in democracy and an increasingly global society and economy; and
WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness; and
WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession and undermining school climate; and
WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all backgrounds, and especially for low-income students, English language learners, children of color, and those with disabilities; and
WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that promote joy in learning, depth of thought and breadth of knowledge for students; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the National Grange lobby the U.S. Congress and administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently known as the “Every Child Succeeds Act”), reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I couldn’t agree more.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Deliberate and thoughtful is right!
Nicely said!
Meh. So long as we have testing, or at least so long as the tests hold any stakes (whether for students, teachers or schools), we will have all the attendant problems we have now. Reducing the amount of testing or “reducing the mandates” (whatever that means) isn’t going to change a thing. Didn’t we go through a whole rigamarole a year or two ago about limiting testing to “2% of school time” or some such nonsense? Where did that get us?
Until we (ideally) eliminate standardized testing altogether or, at the very least, completely eliminate all stakes of said testing, nothing is going to change.
2% of instructional time in a year is about 20 hours a year of testing. Way too much. An engineer in Texas said to that if his company inspected every single product, they wouldn’t have time to make products. He is a School board member
Exactly. But whenever the pressure to “reduce testing” gets to be so much that lawmakers can’t actually ignore us, they give us this kind of nonsense to silence us. See, look what we did for you. What more do you want from us? Stop being ungrateful.
I agree. After a terrific lead-up, I find the the “Resolved” paragraph a turn-off. Standardized testing is at best a broad-brush. Using it for anything beyond periodic rough comparisons of regional areas is taking a sledgehammer to a thumbtack.
“WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness”
often unreliable? How about always unreliable. And “inadequate” is quite possibly the biggest understatement I’ve heard all year. And don’t even get me started on “measure”. Do I need to call in Noel Wilson?
Calling Duane!
I’ve been on the back burner in reading and responding on many of my usual haunts for a while now in trying to get some of the pain that I experience constantly reduced. The last course of action has helped greatly-had my left hip replaced and that has in a matter of 18 days alleviated a lot of the pain (adding others from the surgery but they are temporary and lessening every day). So I’ve not been in good mental and physical shape to contribute much to the discussions. Constant pain is very fatiguing and debilitating and one has to fight just to get out of bed (until ol Ma Nature forces the issue-she always wins in the end, eh!) Next up will probably be a right knee replacement. Oh they joys of having too much fun when I was younger (which I’d still do if my body would let me without pain). That’s life, eh!
It seems that there is a groundswell gaining against the standards and testing regime that has not been so growing as now. (See New Zealand for instance) You and others have recently been pointing out various books articles, etc. . . that also destroy that regime but that don’t get to the fundamental onto-epistemological fallacies that Wilson has shown. (Hey, but whatever works to hasten the demise of these malpractices I’m fine with.) What Wilson wrote in his 1997 dissertation, THE most important education policy analysis writing of the last 50 years, still holds true. How can the truths he has revealed be denied? So far no one has even attempted, nor has anyone answered my challenge to prove Wilson or my analysis false in any fashion. We are ignored because Wilson’s arguments are irrefutable and explode to smithereens the standards and testing regime.
Wow, that’s the most I’ve written in quite a while. It’ll get better and I’ll have more psychic energy as we work to get this pain nonsense under control.
See below for my Wilson post.
Duane, I hope you heal quickly. Pain is no fun, but it’s worth it if you are able to move about better in the future.
Ellen Klock
Duane,
Best wishes for a complete recovery and minimal pain.
Diane
Wishing you a quick recovery, Duane. Should I light a candle and say a prayer for you? 🤣 But seriously, hope it all goes well and you’re up and grousing soon!
Incidentally, before I shut up for now, you know that that the rephomers are a step ahead of us on this, don’t you? They already have their perfect answer to standardized tests. They won’t need them at all once they get us all switched over the “Competency Based Education” (or whatever other flavor they peddle it under). All very personalized – nothing standardized about it. [Uncrosses fingers]
Yes, but I can and do find ways to outmaneuver local mandates for CBE. I can’t get around federal mandates for annual testing. Grade span testing is the answer. It’s heartening to see a group lobbying Congress to move away from, at least high stakes testing, maybe one day annual testing.
I see depersonalized learning as one more type of standardized learning. A lot of standardized testing is a conduit to computer instruction. Even though students may take various paths in the program determined by the students’ performance, that path is predetermined in the programmed software. It is still a behaviorist right/wrong system of learning for students. It is not remotely creative or thought provoking like written response, free discussion or multiple solutions to problems.
I absolutely agree, but the problem is that it’s much easier to market – in fact, has already been marketed to the masses desperate to get rid of standardized testing as a panacea. Holistic! Personalized! Twenty-First Century! Creative! Whoo hoo! What’s not to love?
The beauty of the ,”depersonalized” learning ,,for the standardized testing proponents is that the testing is built in. It’s an integral part of the program.
Once it is in place, there is no longer any need to fight the opt out faction because the deformers will have won.
Depersonalized learning is essentially a parasite that takes sustenance ($$) directly from it’s host (the child)
It’s the ultimate goal for the tech companies.
CBE is, as you know, the ultimate standardization. That’s how machines work.
The National Grange call is going into the right direction. But from an educational expert’s point of view I think the call is insufficient. We should demand a) much valid tests (we have them!), b) a clear separation between grading tests and (anopnymous!) tests for evaluating the quality of educational services, and c) a more thoughtful testing design which gives us information on how effective educational policiies and methods are (e.g., cross-sectional and longitudinal data).
Your love of standardized testing is beguiling, Georg. I’ve pointed you to Wilson’s work and my critique of what is actually going on in this supposed measurement horse manure, and you still embrace it. I challenge you to answer Wilson’s and my critiques, take them apart, show us where we’re wrong with our analysis. . . . .
Yep, tain’t gonna happen, I know. It, any critique, never has yet.
Georg,
Please explain to us the agreed upon standard unit of learning which these tests supposedly measure. . . . .
I await your response.
(Everyone else in the meantime see below for my analysis of the falsehoods of supposed measuring in education)
“Test Unit”
The dollar is the unit
By which they measure test
You really can’t impugn it
Cuz dollar is the best
Of course there is no standard unit of learning.
Good to have you back. I too hope for the best recovery and least pain.
Go wise Grange elders! The median age of a Granger in my hometown was 90.
Where do I begin? First let me preface my critique of this by saying that I agree with getting rid of standardized tests, including state tests, PISA, TIMSS and NAEP, etc.
But as to the reasons given here —
Whereas number one:” WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being;”, our nation’s future does not rely very much on education of the masses (in the macro). Even if it does then what changes that have taken place since a Nation at Risk came out has dumbed down our k-12 system.
It should not and cannot prepare all of our kids for college and the workforce. We have a glut of college graduates for the number and types of jobs we have now and into the near future. Making them career ready for which careers—STEM? There is no STEM SHORTAGE, as I have before.
As I have said before only 27% of all college graduates get a job in their chosen field and about 50% do not even a get job that requires a bachelor’s degree or any college degree at all! There is an article on the web that states fully 1/3 of all Computer Science graduates will never get a software job. I can believe it not only because I am one of them but because of the increase of gig jobs, in that one will need somewhere around 20 jobs in one’s lifetime, as the jobs last 1-2 years.
What careers is one to pursue? Nobody has a functional crystal ball.
It is ironic that the bogus, A Nation at Risk report that was published in April of 1983, stated that we should make kids ready for college and the workforce, when before that that is exactly what we did without even trying. If you did well in high school (were a scholar) then you went onto college otherwise you went to work. This is how it should be.
Lifelong-learning? I hate to burst your bubble but age discrimination begins now at 35, especially in the high tech field? So, learning may just end there!
It should help prepare our kids to be knowledgeable citizens, yes.
Whereas number two: “. . . efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in democracy and an increasingly global society and economy;”
These are just buzzwords. Innovation means change but these changes are generally not proven better before implementation, in education or in technology. It used to be an analyst would be called in to access the feasibility of or install a new computerized system. They would not make anything and then try to sell it en mass to consumers, later. What they do now is backwards.
Innovation nowadays is costing us more jobs than it is creating at a time when the world’s population is growing and not shrinking. So, I would not be pushing innovation. Also, teaching this stuff in high school is premature. Unless they get a job that requires it (a college level job) then we’ve just wasted our time on this goal.
The 4 Cs of Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking are not even teachable and even if they are they are more needed in college as opposed to High School. Most jobs will not need Creativity. It may even be frowned upon.
Collaboration is just another term for teamwork, which we’ve had since caveman days, In business you do your job and allow other’s to do theirs and if the manger put together the team correctly you will have a better time of it. Collaboration need not be taught.
Communication? Do you mean English? This is taught already. PowerPoint presentations are a waste of time at the K-12 levels.
Critical Thinking is near the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy Pyramid. But without the lower levels it will yield bogus results. Time spent trying to develop critical thinking skills beyond 1<2 is time not spent on Bloom’s Taxonomy levels of Knowledge and Comprehension that you say we need to concentrate on, which I agree with.
This is used mostly in upper division college courses and graduate school.
Problem solving is again used in college and in jobs that require college degrees, which is small proportion of all jobs.
Again, I do agree that high stakes testing needs to end.
So, this reason is bogus.
So, the main reasons for this resolution are bogus.
What we should have are age appropriate education to pass on knowledge and hopefully understanding. Do not teach college in high school and yes, that includes AP courses and dual enrollment.
While I may not agree with every detail, I think your analysis is right on. It points up the reason fed ed should stay almost completely out of the testing game. The premises are bogus. I can see some basis for a periodic general test — something focused on basic literacy and numeracy– for regional comparison, in order to identify areas that are falling behind the norm, suggesting targets for further investigation/ support (in the interests of equal access).
Per Diane’s request:
#1: “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. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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 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!
Yay, Duane! Here’s hoping jumping back into the fray charges up all the healing feel-better endorphins!
Test measures wallet
Of maker of test
Short and the tall of it
Fattest is best
You are correct, but the language of calibration and alignment, especially “alignment of standards, curriculum, and instruction” dominates discussions from people who think training is the same as education.
Reblogged this on readingdoc and commented:
This is a powerful statement from an often neglected segment of our country. I couldn’t agree more.
Thanks for the Wilson Rant (trademark it, Duane!). Don’t know what we’d do w/o it–it’s the most concise, sensible, best reasoning against testing (because there is NO SUCH THING as “standardized” testing, & especially not the regurgitated garbage peddled by Pear$on). It is ALL about the $$$$ (Pear$on–“always earning”–& the total destruction of public schools (& schools are judged failures {& closed} because they don’t score well on faulty, invalid tests?!) –which IS all about the money (if “other people’s children” have their public education ruined, those undereducated will become non-questioning, authoritarian-obeying robots who will work for no benefits & low wages, rendering them powerless, while the Waltons, Kochs, Gates, et.al. exploit them to make ever more money)
Thank you, Duane, & wishing you VERY good health & freedom from pain from this day forward, for 2018, & for all the coming years.
Let’s all hope (& continue to work & fight to make it so) for a MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better new year!
Thanks rbmtk for the kind words. It means a lot to me to hear from the good folks here! Supposedly some snow tonight!