Johanna Garcia speaks about “The Unconfortable Truth About the Tests.”
The videos were produced by professional videographer Michael Elliott, assisted by Kemala Karmen, on behalf of the Network for Public Education.
Please watch Johanna Garcia and share the videos widely through your social media networks.
Johanna Garcia: The Uncomfortable Truth About the Tests
Johanna Garcia: La Incómoda Verdad Sobre Los Exámenes
Watch here also: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2018/03/10290/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane,
Could you please resend that last post with the links to the videos. They didn’t come across in the last email posting.
Thanks! Bill Leacock
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Bill, the links are posted and I added another one
Fund our schools then administer testing. Just saying.
Fund our schools and don’t waste money on testing that is meaningless and worse.
The most basic “uncomfortable truth” about standardized testing is the fact that the whole process of making, using and disseminating the results of said tests is COMPLETELY INVALID due to the myriad onto-epistemological errors, falsehoods and psychometric fudges as shown by Noel Wilson in THE MOST IMPORTANT educational writing of the last half-century “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)
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.
Duane,
You know perfectly well that there is a magic solution, silver bullet, for all the pitiful students who internalize the meaning of grades.
Dr. Carol Dweck markets it.
Visit her Brainology website.
It is all about having the proper “mindset,.”
also capitalizing on the the fear of failure.
Call me snarky today.
very 1950s “knowing your place”
I don’t think most people realize how scandalously broken the tests are, and how they’ve ruined ELA curriculum:
“Schools are intensively practicing techniques like making inferences and finding the main idea, and now they are also practicing close reading and complexity managing in preparation for the new versions of the high-stakes reading tests that, as before, PRETEND to test the general skills of close reading, complexity managing and main-idea finding –general skills that DO NOT EXIST.” –E.D. Hirsch, Why Knowledge Matters, p. 29. (my emphasis added).
So what are the tests actually testing, if these skills don’t exist?
“The external forms of the test questions are constructed to give the impression that they are testing the various skills that were being practiced so endlessly in test-prep classes…Their form indicates misleadingly that strategy expertise rather than specific knowledge is being probed.”
In other words, the questions give the illusion that they’re probing skills, when in reality success on the question depends mostly on the background knowledge one needs to comprehend the passage.
“Answering such items is easy for students who understand the passages, but not for those who don’t –no matter how many drills in comprehension strategies the students had before the test.”
Hirsch believes the only educationally valid reading tests would be ones linked to specific content. That way schools would be incentivized to teach content –i.e. mentally nutritious fare –rather than non-existent skills. This would benefit underprivileged kids the most, since it would help level the background knowledge playing field. It’s a scandal we’re not doing this, isn’t it?
Johanna Garcia should speak to many other PTA and parent groups. In some cases Latino parents too willingly accept authority, and they need a nudge to stand up for what is right. They are unaccustomed to challenging authority. Some Latino parents are afraid to speak up due to immigration issues. Minority parents need to fight for their children in the current political climate that wants to diminish opportunities for children of color.
We need African American parents and organizations to reach out to black families as well. They need to be informed that all that glitters is not gold. Not all charters have the best interests of their children at heart, and young people do not have the same rights they have in a private school. Only public schools make students the #1 priority, not profit. A well funded, comprehensive public school can be transformative for students.
Standardized testing is being used as a weapon against minority students with the ultimate goal of turning young black and brown students into a profitable commodity for wealthy corporations. Parents need to understand this.
What is interesting is that Garcia reframes the discussion on test scores. Unlike “reform” that places the blame on public schools and teachers, she understands that standardized tests are inadequate measures of students’ capabilities. The scores reflect the size of parents’ paychecks and the students’ opportunity gap. This is important for minority parents to understand, and it gives parents ammunition to demand that states and cities more fairly fund public schools.
There’s no content to access.
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Refresh the post. I added the links.