Ohio testing is bogged down by failure of the online system supplied by vendor AIR.
Can anyone remind me why everyone began switching to online assessment?
What was wrong with paper and pencil tests?
What was wrong with tests written by teachers?
How many billions have been wasted on testing in the past 20 years that could have been used to raise teachers’ salaries, reduce class size, repair buildings?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What’s wrong with paper tests? Don’t be silly! How can the tech companies profit off of that?
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The amount of time and worry our staff puts in to get the test tech lined up is staggering.
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My best guess is that it is FOR THE CHILDREN or is that more profit for vendors? I’m thinking option 2, but I have cynical tendency syndrome (CTS).
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If you find a cure for CTS let me know.
And if I find a cure for a syndrome that plagues me-AIIDS*, I’ll let you know.
*Acronym Identification Impaired Disorder Syndrome.
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Ms. Ravitch – It’s not for all of our kids, but many of my students with IEPs feel more successful testing with technology.I do appreciate that cheating is more difficult with online testing. Papers don’t go missing. No system is perfect, and I’m grateful in CA that our systems are checked and rechecked and updated often. Liz Weaver, Glendale
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To answer the questions:
#1–That bit of knowledge has been lost in the dustbin of time.
#2–Has to do with archaicness.
#3–Teachers don’t know how to write tests, never have.
#4–Not as many as Bill Gates or the Waltons have.
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Why doesn’t everyone take the NAEP? I know it’s not perfect but only 3 hours vs. 10 hours for an 11th grader in CA.
Just looked up the Los Angeles Schools who were picked to take the NAEP tests.
Los Angeles High for the Arts has 430 students and 22 teachers!
Wow- our suburban high school has 40 or more in our English classes.
How does this high school rate for small class size?
At any rate they should not be double tested. If they take the NAEP and skip the SBAC test.
https://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/index.asp?search=1&State=CA&city=&zipcode=&miles=&itemname=Los+Angeles&sortby=name&School=1&Status=Search+Finished&Records=0&CS=D7E50C16
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NAEP is only to selected schools and students. And the students that do take the NAEP only take one section–math, or English, or science, or whatever.
And guess what the kids get for being forced into another test? An NAEP pencil and a “certificate of public service.”
But NO ONE needs to be doing standardized tests every year, regardless of what the test is. They’re all deficient, culturally and racially biased, and don’t show schools, teachers, or states any actual data.
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They’re all deficient, culturally and racially biased
I assume you are talking about the Deformers’?
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HAR! The tests, but it works both ways.
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Paper tests go to those old printing companies.
Online tests profit Silcone Valley, the tech industry. The tech industry is treating anything that doesn’t profit them as a business that should be gone.
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Paper tests AND worksheets go to printing companies. What is wrong with good old notebooks plus textbooks? A textbook can survive ten years of usage, a notebook is from 25c to $3, and it will last at least a trimester. How can the printing companies profit from this?
People in this country seem not to understand that this country is build on making money. Our business is business. As long as this is the motto and the way of life, we will see disposable plastic stirrers, non-refillable printer cartridges, and single-use worksheets.
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And the US will continue to be the fattest country on the planet thanks to junk food that is designed to addict people so they continuously crave eating food that is killing them slowly and painfully and even that leads to profits for the healthcare industry.
For two years in a row, the average life expectancy in the US has declined … not improved, but to the Trumps of this world that is okay as long as they are making more and more money off their crappy products.
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Tennessee also had a breakdown in the online testing system and it is a version of the one used in Tennessee.
Both states are still using VAM scores to rate teachers. In Tennessee, those scores count for 20% of a teacher’s evaluation.
The Tennessee system came into existence by way of Dr. William Saunders and his students who had worked in the field of statistics and measures of productivity in agriculture—sows and cows for example. As the story goes he volunteered to throw test scores into his formulas for productivity, and lo, the teachers and schools of Tennessee could be rated for productivity–value added–in about the same way as cow and sows and see for crops. The statistical measure is known as VAM for valued-added metric or methodology
for teachers and schools that raised test scores.
Sanders died but not before he sold his calculations for VAM to SAS which in turn has inflicted variants of that measure on many states including Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Go to the http://vamboozled.com website to see the damage from this measure and the slow turnaround from some legal cases instigated by teachers.
There may be hope for Tennessee where a House Republican from Cottonwood, Rep. William Lamberth, has introduced amendments to House Bill 1109 seeking to require the state to use paper tests and to prevent test results from being used to gauge teachers and school effectiveness.
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Testing historically has been a problem for the state. Last year, state officials announced nearly 10,000 assessments were scored incorrectly by Questar. At the time, school officials said three Hamilton County schools were affected.
In 2016, Tennessee terminated its contract with Measurement Inc. after the North Carolina company’s online platform failed in a number of districts. After the failure, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen directed districts to stop testing online.
The state then was forced to suspend testing for grades 3 through 8 after the company was unable to get backup paper tests to a number of schools.
“We are approaching a point where the entire testing system is becoming questionable. Students who start and stop exams may suffer emotionally or become distrustful, which may hurt concentration,” said Tennessee Education Association President Barbara Gray in a statement. “Students and teachers across the state are told these are high-stakes tests. Teachers’ jobs are on the line, students’ futures are on the line. … Now the test has been offline for two days, damaging the integrity of Tennessee testing.”
Questar had not released a statement by Tuesday afternoon. End Quote from http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/breakingnews/story/2018/apr/17/tennessee-education-commissioner-tnready-online-test-may-have-experienced-deliberate-attack/468512/
The Internet shows that Questar appears to have been hacked in Misssissippi and New York.Perhaps that has happened because it subcontracts work. Last year Questar became a wholly owned subsidiary of Educational Testing Service (ETS). ETS is developing an avatar-based test of teaching performance, based on “an “advanced technology” developed by the US Military with ‘simulated students and trained, calibrated human ‘inter-actors’ who use standardized protocols.” The test, called NOTE is being designed to compete with the edTPA. http://www.teachingworks.org/work-of-teaching/note
http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/05/the-brave-new-world-of-teacher-evaluation.html
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““We are approaching a point where the entire testing system is becoming questionable. . . ,” said Tennessee Education Association President Barbara Gray in a statement.
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“BECOMING questionable”???
And only “approaching a point. . . “???
Where the hell has this supposed education leader Gray been for the last couple of decades???
We’ve known for 20 years that the tests are COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson.
Clueless is as clueless does and Gray is clueless in regards to the standards and testing regime. I’d bet a dime to a dollar that she supports “standards” also.
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Because Utah has been online testing for a decade now, the computer labs and library are completely closed for all of fourth term. We don’t have enough tech to get all of the testing done at once, so it’s spread over six weeks, plus another week or two for make up tests.
That means we cannot use the library for 1/4 of the year, for research or anything else. It’s appalling.
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What a gigantic waste of time and money. What is those weeks of testing could be devoted to teaching?
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Indeed. It’s beyond frustrating, but our districts and legislature don’t care about actual education, obviously.
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MA DESE has mandated that all MCAS 2.0 (sic, er sick) tests will be given on computers and that districts must be ready to do so by next year, despite research that shows that kids scored better on paper and pencil tests.
They haven’t funded that mandate, of course.
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MA DESE has mandated. . . , BECAUSE OF research that shows kids scored better on paper and pencil tests.
There, Christine, fixed your sentence! 🙂
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sneaky truth
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We switched to online tests because the web is so future-y. As John Oliver often says with tongue in cheek, “Cool.” More than half of global commerce today consists of the buying and selling of people’s private data. Cool.
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When you are online, you are the product
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Last week when New York was testing, some districts were using an online version of the test, my district included. Testing began around 8 am for all grade 3-8 students.
At about 9 our principal came on the PA and announced that all secondary schools in the district and the three counties served by BOCES had to go offline to provide additional bandwidth for the 3-8 testing because so many schools were having trouble with the online testing. They expected that schools could start to use the Internet around noon.
So get this…dozens of junior and senior high schools were affected by this testing problem. Lesson plans, videos, presentations that depended on online content were thrown out. Email was gone. Even our classroom phones were inoperative since our standard phones were removed several years ago and replaced with phones that use the internet.
Internet was restored just before 1 pm.
In my opinion, this online testing has to be halted until it is nearly perfected. It clearly has the potential to affect far more than just the grades tested, it can affect all grades.
End it, please.
Now!
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No, internet based testing should be outlawed. Go back to pen and paper. You get to use more of your faculties.
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And God forbid you have an emergency and you can’t use your classroom phone? Lawsuit waiting to happen.
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“The Borg”
The Borg demands the power
It sucks up every Watt
The gigajoules per hour
It siphons all you’ve got
You’re sitting in the dark
When Borg is on the loose
Cuz energy for PARCC
Is what the Borg will use
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I just refuse to accept that “resistance is futile”!
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The Borg, you can’t resist
Though maybe for a while
So cease and then desist
Resistance is Fu-tile
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The Bjorn Borg.
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And with computerized testing, NF, school get to use more of their faculties (as in, staff
members, to have to tend to situations in which there are computer glitches & other problems, & additional staff have to be called in to help).
Oh, & don’t forget that comment by Threatened Out West. School libraries across the country are closing for months at a time, in order to accommodate ridiculously long periods of testing.
Pencil-&-paper testing doesn’t require closing down the library.
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The test wss awful in the first place. This is inexcusable.
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The push to move everything OFF of hard copy paper is relentless and pervasive throughout our culture. It’s frantic. (One recent pitch from a company I use: “Get $5 off if you switch to online billing!” What?? A one time “gift” of $5? Big deal. They probably raised the prices $10 before making the offer.)
What happens the day (or week or months) when all this stuff goes down? We lost power for 5 days this winter and I still have a hole in my living room floor where I drilled through so I could snake an extension cord from a generator down to the sump pump in the basement. (BTW who profits when a reliable, community energy supply becomes a thing of the past and citizens are all running out and buying these cheaply made generators? Green energy producers are not one of the multiple choice options for that question.)
Meanwhile, if the power goes down in our schools, do we even have paper back-up listings of where the faculty, staff and students are located at any given moment in the buildings? What’s plan B when the computers at school don’t work? I can’t tell you, though I think about it all the time. In the rush to modernize, in the wake of all this fear, what have we left behind? Or, more accurately, WHO have we left behind?
Of course, on 9-11 terrorists flipped our technology against us using box cutters to turn state-of-the art jetliners into human-guided missiles. The lesson of modern history for 50+ years: the bigger and more high tech we are, the harder we can potentially fall.
Americans are now spending significant amounts of money transforming our public schools into something more akin to fortified bunkers. Instead of teachers and books we’re getting school resource officers with firearms and piles of surveillance cameras. (Credit those Parkland protestors for calling out this fact right off the bat!)
Anyone who spends some time reading this blog can see that the threat to our schools, to our children, to our country is much, much more complicated than what we are often being told…and SOLD..
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“the bigger and more high tech we are, the harder we can potentially fall.”
Yup. I often think about what would happen if widespread power went out. Everything would grind to a halt. But….we have an “it can’t happen to us attitude.”
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Remember when the power went out in NYC? EVERYTHING did come to a halt. I just wish the whole entire internet/computer thing would go out for a few weeks.
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“What was wrong with paper and pencil tests?”
Wish I could find it, but I can still remember Arne Duncan’s comment about “going back to” the days of pencil and paper as if he was talking about the Middle Ages.
Forget about the intricacies and nuances; these people don’t even understand the basics of education. The tools are secondary to the people (teachers/students/admins) involved.
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The irony is that people like Arne Duncan would have fit right in during the Middle Ages, with all their irrational, faith based beliefs.
Of course, that was before basketball, so Arne would never have got his gig working for Obama back then.
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True dat
and
True dat, 2
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“The Paperless Office”
Remember the paperless office?
You don’t? Well, neither do I
‘Twas simply a ploy to entice us
To fork over money and buy
The slogan was hatched by the sellers
Of desktop computers and such
By silicon oil-peddling fellars
For whom there is never too much
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I was in management, working for a large company, before I began teaching.
They had just completed installation of a mainframe system when I first came in, and were beginning to put these new “personal computers” into the different departmental offices.
As a young buck, I was designated the “PC Specialist”. The people with seniority were resisting. I taught myself dBase and Lotus and began transferring paper records into these programs.
I forgot to back up my data after a week of entries, and paid the price when the computer crashed; having to stay very late for a few days, re-entering the data.
The specialist I spoke with after this bummer event told me something I’ve held dear for decades:
“Always (ALWAYS) have a hardcopy backup to refer to; because the system can and WILL crash”.
Technology provides many things, but in it’s essence, it’s an organizational tool. Fast and efficient. But it’s not foolproof. The users are the heart of the matter. It’s our job to make sure we have a backup system firmly in place when problems arise.
We seem to have forgotten this basic premise.
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The hard copy is critical for pretty much everthing that requires “definitive” (not easily manipulated) proof..
E-voting is basically a joke without the production of a printout of every person’s vote that can be verified by each voter and collected in a secure box like paper ballots used to be.
It has been show time and again that the vote tallies in e-voting machines can easily be manipulated and without the paper trail, there is no way of doing a recount.
I’m surprised that any state would use such an insecure voting system.
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My friends got sick of my rants when we first started using E-voting…so I keep it more to myself, now, Poet. But it’s just so ripe for abuse and fraught with problems.
“I’m surprised that any state would use such an insecure voting system.”
Me, too…kind of…
The cynical side of me is not surprised at all and has it’s radar beeping loud and clear at the moment.
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E-voting is a welcome mat for hackers.
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Ah, this brings back memories of my early days writing on a TRS-80, otherwise known as Trash-80. I owned two, because one was always in repair. The days I spent and the nights I lost, searching for a way to find lost paragraphs, pages, chapters. The tears I shed. 1983-84
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The “Model 1” (aka: we’ll get this right somewhere down the road), by Tandy, with a whopping 4K RAM!
🙂
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Agreed Diane, and those billions have been gained by companies that help themselves, instead of the students.
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It seems that standard tests can be a lot of fun, are they? Here is another one for inquiring minds, again from a well-established testing company. No matter, whether it is presented on paper or on a computer. I wonder how many of you will get the correct… um, the “correct” answer. So, a store sells dog food. 70% of what it sells is dry food, 25% is canned food, 5% is semi-moist, this is presented as a pie chart with corresponding percentages. Question, quoting verbatim: “How much more dry dog food is sold than canned dog food?”
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