To my knowledge, the United States is the only nation in the world that requires students to take standardized tests every year from grades 3-8. I believe that it is surely the only advanced nation that requires annual testing in these grades. The tests are required by federal law, a hangover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, and the requirement was re-enacted in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015.
This testing regime has been in place since 2002, when the law was signed by President Bush the first. The consequences attached to the tests have been harsh in many states, which use them to stigmatize students, teachers, and schools. Teachers have been fired, and schools have been closed based on test scores. That is called test-based accountability, and there is growing evidence that TBA is ineffective. NAEP scores have been flat since 2013. The number of people entering teaching has declined sharply. Schools have cut back on the arts, physical education, and other subjects that are not “counted” in the test score calculus. It is difficult to find any real benefits to our national investment in high-stakes testing.
Why do our policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels continue to require and enforce annual testing, despite the non-existent benefits? I believe that testing survives for two reasons: One is that there is a lobby that loves testing, composed of testing corporations and groups like Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers organization. The other is that our policymakers are still inhaling the stale fumes of NCLB and the non-existent “Texas Miracle.” It is hard to break away from a practice, even a bad practice, that has become ingrained. Annual testing began with NCLB, became more punitive with Race to the Top, and survived in ESSA. Bad habits are hard to change.
Testing authorities have a general rule. Tests should not be used for any purpose other than the one for which they are intended. Tests are supposed to be diagnostic; they are supposed to provide teachers with information to help them improve instruction. They never do, because the results are reported long after the student has left the teacher who administered the test and they never provide enough detail about the strengths and weaknesses of individual children to be useful.
Standardized tests should not be used for high school graduation or for firing teachers or closing schools. Yet they are. Obviously, they are misused on a regular basis.
So, I have a modest proposal.
I am not aware of any legal requirement that the annual tests required by Congress must be offered in the spring.
Why not give the tests in the first week of school and use only a test whose results may be returned within a month? Let machines score the standardized questions, and let teachers score the constructed responses. The testing vendor would know that they would be chosen only if they could report the results in a month, in a format that informs teachers what students do and do not know. That way, the teacher can find out where students are as they begin the year and tailor instruction to address the needs of the students.
That way, tests would no longer be high-stakes. They would be expressly designed for diagnostic purposes, to help teachers help students. The results would come too early to misuse the tests to stigmatize students, punish teachers, and close schools. There would be no punishments attached to the tests, but plenty of valuable information to help teachers.
How would we know how schools are doing?
We could rely on the National Assessment of Progress, which reports on states and many districts and is disaggregated by race, gender, disability, and other categories. It reports on achievement gaps as well.
With this fairly simple but drastic change, we could put testing in its proper place. We could stop terrorizing students and teachers.
We could let teachers gain at least a month, maybe two, for instruction instead of test prep.
Tell me what you think.
Some of you, I know, will tell me why all testing is a waste of time.
But so long as the requirement for annual testing is in the law, there must be a good faith effort to comply.
Why not comply in a way that is not harmful to students, teachers, or schools, but that might actually provide useful information?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You accurately predicted that some of us would object to testing. I am among some of us, which will be no great surprise. As to good faith compliance . . . I’m ambivalent. Anarchy is not civilization, but laws can and must change and that is a better focus of energy. The entire structural premise – instruct children and then test them to see what they absorbed – is a fundamental mistake. Learning is discovery and imagination, not receipt of instruction. I agree with Diane that the execution could be less damaging, but we must simultaneously question the faulty premises of nearly all education policy.
“It is hard to break away from a practice, even a bad practice, that has become ingrained. Annual testing began with NCLB, became more punitive with Race to the Top, and survived in ESSA. Bad habits are hard to change.”
I’ve commented before -educators need to stop delivering the test-and students need to stop taking them. This needs to occur state-wide. This is how you break away from bad practice. Bad laws need to be changed and it’s time to take a stand against the unfair testing law. Testing students in grades 5, 8 and one year of high school was reasonable. Testing has become unreasonable, profitable for testing companies and of little value to educators and public schools.
Many thoughtful points…but be careful what you wish for, Diane. Ed Reform would probably tie the results to the prior year’s teacher. You may be solving some of their problems for them. No pre-test prep cramming. Tests could theoretically be helpful (though I suspect the value would be limited). Money that could be used elsewhere continues to pour into testing companies.
Testing is narrowing the curriculum of today’s students like me. Your proposal is more reasonable and would tailor to students learning rather than interrupting it to test in spring. Here in Ohio, we take three tests for measurements, and once we come back from Christmas break, we start preparing for the spring tests. We spend not enough time on teaching our kids and too much time on tests.
Welcome, Nadia!
I hope you stick around and read all the comments as there are many astute folks who know of which they write. It is also good for us to get a student’s perspective. And apologies from this retired teacher for all the lost instructional time that has been wasted on testing. The adults in the room don’t know what the hell they are doing.
These tests themselves are flawed, they don’t accurately show what a child knows or can do. If moved to the fall, I could see test prep starting the spring before with special tutors during the summer or the school year starting earlier. As long as these types of tests exists, there are ways to “game” the system to influence outcomes. I prefer authentic assessments like those of the consortium of portfolio public schools in NY, a few in NH are doing it well too, and in MA check out the work of MCIEA.
Wouldn’t “…the faked Texas Miracle” be more accurate?
I love the simple, practical suggestion, Diane. From our standpoint, it seeks a workable compromise in a thorny policy issue. It puts the entire matter back in the court of the pro-testing people. This jis the #1 complaint of teachers. They feel demoralized by the tests— an effect we sometimes wonder is intentional.
“It puts the entire matter back in the court of the pro-testing people.”
No it doesn’t. It’s still on the backs of the students who have had valuable instructional time stolen from them and would still have that time stolen from them with this proposal.
And it isn’t “a workable compromise.” It’s still a bargain with the devil.
Thanks to all for an excellent discussion!
😃
I waited an entire day to make my one comment so here goes…
As I see it, “discussion” is the operative term. I too would eliminate high-stakes standardized testing in all its forms. No ifs, ands or buts.
However, IMHO, Diane’s “modest proposal” is not so important in its details as in what I think she is asking of the entire country: HAVE A WIDE-RANGING FULL DISCUSSION about the goals, values, history and priorities of public education.
And make that discussion PUBLIC.
The corporate reform education crowd in all its iterations rightfully loathes, and avoids whenever they can, something that even remotely resembles this blog. Let them try to tout the wonders of New Orleans, Detroit and Chicago. Let them try to bray about the miracles of ‘100% graduation rates’ and ‘chess champions’. Let them try to praise themselves for providing leaders that (when teaching and supposedly all by themselves) took their students from the 13th to the 90th percentile. Let them try to rhapsodize on the ‘no-excuses’ discipline that supposedly cures all that ails public education.
They can’t stand the public heat, that’s why they don’t go into the kitchen of public debate. Their “truthful hyperbole” and actual record can’t stand public scrutiny.
It would be the death knell of $tudent $ucce$$ in all its political, partisan and self-serving guises.
That’s how I see it…
😎
Krazy TA,
I love this post!
That is exactly what we need. An honest, truthful, discussion instead of policy being run based on “facts” promoted by highly paid public relations firms. And you are correct that the reform movement is terrified of that.
Thank you.
This makes good sense to me as a teacher. The beginning of the year is the time I take inventory of the strengths, gaps and needs of the particular group of students in front of me. Getting data about how last year’s class performed on a standardized test may help me identify trends but your proposal would give me useful data on the group in front of me and allow me to deliver more effective instruction.
“This makes good sense to me as a teacher.”
How can implementing a completely invalid education malpractice make good sense?
Oh the madness of ALL the testing. In MD we still have PARCC, but each county is allowed to test even more. MAP and/or IReady are given several times per school year (3-4) in most counties. We don’t have opt-out so I REFUSE all standardized testing except what is a graduation requirement for my oldest in public HS. I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to a small amount of testing that could be useful to teachers, but it is the “rating and ranking” of students across districts and the nation that bothers me the most about the tests…and that will never go away as along as school/learning have become competition among “the betters” in society. There is also the problem that the computer adaptive tests suck data from children. Who knows what they will use the data for, what will happen to the data (especially if the testing company is sold to another company), and how it is being protected. Limited value in all of these tests and certainly not worth the amount of money being spent on them. I’d much rather that money be used for making schools better learning environments, paying decent teacher wages, fully staffing a school with all support staff, librarians, books etc. I will consider myself anti-test at this point.
If we got rid of school “choice” and market based education, the interest in testing would diminish. The main objective of tests is to undermine public education and provide a “failing” narrative. The testing craze will continue in some form or another as long as there is money to be made for a select few.
BINGO. So much massive money sucked up over the past decade by those arguing that they are needed to “fix” failing (low-test-score) schools.
Improving standardized testing is like trying to make slavery more “humane” or using drones instead of boots on the ground to have a “clean” war. When something is fundamentally inhumane, trying to make it more humane (or seem more humane) is actually harmful because it perpetuates the notion that the thing itself is okay, it’s only the way we’re implementing it that’s bad. If I may steal from Sr. Swacker, there is no way to do a wrong thing righter. In fact, trying to make it “righter” makes it wronger.
I’m sure Sr Swacker will chuckle knowing he is now being quoted. He has made the big time!
Dienne77 and I communicate outside of this blog (which I do and have done with a number of different posters here over the years-even some that many consider as “outcasts”). She is a very astute thinker and individual, excellent writer and wonderful parent. And the quote which Dienne77 references is not mine but Russ Ackhoff’s. I just quote it fairly often because it has a certain off-beat ringing of truth. I have a tendency to like “off-beat” things.
I am guessing you’ll be flooded with no-tests-at-any-time comments, most of which will be thoughtful and evidence-based and child-centered. And, in my heart of hearts, I’d like to see standardized testing, comparing one school to another, go away, forever.
However. You’re correct in noting that the general public and state legislators and the media often follow years behind, coasting on those fumes of ‘rigor’ and ‘bar-raising.’ The only way they can conceive of change is the way it’s always been done in education–incrementally. Having just read Daniel Koretz’s ‘Testing Charade’ I see that he’s left room for a gradual decline, and using tests in the way they were intended. And he should know.
So–I’m giving your plan a thumbs-up. We’d still be testing, but we could reduce the tension and angst, eliminate the worst misuses of testing, and potentially provide teachers with baseline information. (Potentially–I have a lot less faith in what tests show, unless the test has been designed by the person who’s been delivering the instruction.)
It’s a reasonable step. And reasonable steps are probably how we can get to policy-making that actually improves public education.
You’re right. Standardized testing will most likely not go away, particularly if we continue with market based education madness. Prior to NCLB my district gave annual standardized tests without test prep or any big consequences attached to them. They were like a litmus test so parents could get an idea of how their children were doing. Nothing more than that! These tests had no rigged cut score, just a percentile and grade equivalent. The students had test booklets. The students did not have to take the tests online with all the tech problems, which was better for students. In general, standardized tests are not a useful diagnostic tool without an item analysis, and I understand the current tests are shrouded in mystery. How can teachers use tests if they cannot see them?
Standardized testing will go away when the people decide it will one way or another, just as slavery finally went away. Don’t give in to neoliberal “There Is No Alternative” thinking.
It would take an army of disgruntled parents going after state representatives in each state and much larger opt out group for this to happen.
Slavery didn’t just go away. We fought a bloody, devastating war to end it here. It took the civil rights movement to remind us of that fact, and we are still trying to digest it. I don’t have any idea what my point is. I suppose I would go along with the incrementalist thinking but urge everyone to not give up the fight to end the fascination with standardized testing. (First step, everyone, no more taking silly tests that purport to tell you how smart you are, or creative, or artistic, or…)
“You’re right. Standardized testing will most likely not go away,”
Although from retiredteacher, I am putting it in a response to you, Nancy, as you stated “And, in my heart of hearts, I’d like to see standardized testing, comparing one school to another, go away, forever.”
Take heart as standardized testing IS GOING AWAY in New Zealand. The Kiwis elected a new prime minister last year and she is doing away with all the national testing. So, getting rid of the monster that is standardized testing can be done. We just have to keep at it. I may be dead before it’s accomplished but I do believe that we will eventually vanquish the standardized testing beast.
” I may be dead before it’s accomplished but I do believe that we will eventually vanquish the standardized testing beast.”
Hear, hear! Not that you may be dead before it happens (:)) but that we can vanquish the beast.
The only way a teacher can really tell if students know the material is to test them with their own teacher made tests during the instruction of their own curriculum. Teachers also do a lot of in class observation of students to know whether students are understanding the material. Isn’t this logical? Of course, there’s no money to be made by big companies when we do it this way and validate it. We’ve seen the ridiculous questions on many standardized tests. Teachers can’t control that. Who will make the questions? What will the language level be? Teachers can control that in their classrooms. Mostly, students are taught HOW to take the standardized test (I’m thinking NYS Regents exams.) and the cut off scores are constantly changing. Also, WHAT material will students be tested on in the beginning of the year?? On material they have never learned? If so, that would be ridiculous. On material they SHOULD have learned previously? When previously? A year ago? Two years ago? You see the problem we have here? Why is it not enough for teachers to give tests on material they have covered in the way they have covered it? Why is it not enough for teachers to correspond with parents (like we always do) and tell them what their kids are having problems with? Why do students who need help never take the responsibility of getting that help? Why do parents never respond when they are told repeatedly that their kids are failing a class? Why are many teachers never supported when students skip class or are disrespectful to teachers or disrupt class? Why the hell have I been giving all these quizzes and tests in class if they haven’t been good enough (according to “the experts”) to tell me what the kids know and don’t know? The answer is not to have standardized tests that “inform” the teacher. The answer is to respect the teacher enough in his/her professional opinion and help parents, students and administrators find a way to help the student with his or her own particular needs. That will help teachers and students more than results of any standardized tests.
Thanks, Diane.
The key problem is that ESSA also requires states to use tests to judge schools. So under your proposal, they would be judged by fall scores. This could exacerbate the consequences of ‘summer learning loss’ (wider gaps between wealthier and lower-income etc). It could propel schools to inflict more test prep over the summer for those predicted (by more tests) to do less well. Perhaps it could lead to less test prep or multiple preliminary (‘benchmark,’ etc.) tests over the school year because of the time lag before fall testing. Partly that would depend on how helpful or punitive a state is (since ESSA allows either).
As a result of these considerations, I don’t think it would be much of a step forward. If accountability were thoroughly detached from testing, then it could make sense. But if we could detach accountability, we’d pretty well certainly have the power to end testing every year, as well. Those are the two most important steps, along with ending grade promotion and graduation testing in states and districts that still require them. (On these, see FairTest fact sheets at http://www.fairtest.org/fact%20sheets – scroll down a bit.)
Another issue is that the tests don’t measure much. Not critical or divergent thinking, or the ability to understand concepts or apply knowledge to real world situations, and certainly not creativity. So having the results back quickly is not very helpful if the curriculum is rich and deep. I get quite nervous when teachers praise interim tests like MAP for fast turnaround. What is it they are finding out that they don’t already know and probably should if it is imp0ortant? And if it is not so important? And what about that which is not measured? The overall process reduces teaching to what can be measured by standardized tests. Per above, maybe fall tests would reduce that pressure, but I doubt by much. We still have the parallel of GIGO: not much in, not much out.
ESSA does allow states to overhaul assessment in potentially helpful way. NH is the one state doing so. It can be improved and ESSA allows more flexibility than NH got from its NCLB waiver. For a discussion of what could be done, see http://www.fairtest.org/assessment-matters-constructing-model-state-system. Only a few other states have indicated they want to use the provision, and so far they have not (to my knowledge) explained what they will actually do. Terrible options such as repeated testing on computer during the year to produce cumulative scores are also options and states may plan on doing that.
“Another issue is that the tests don’t measure much.”
Close!
Another issue is that the tests don’t measure anything.
Fixed!
Monty,
What is needed is one major state that says NO.
That’s why I support Cynthia Nixon for Governor.
Diane, How much latitude does the law allow in changing the content of the tests, or opting out of them?
I have for long thought the most useful test would be one testing for a core academic skills standard at age 15. This would be benchmarked to the minimum academic skills needed to hold a career track job in the economy. After 15, those below it could be helped to gain those skills, and to be prepared in other ways to have skills needed for the work force. Below 15 tests could measure minimum need progress toward the goal. These would be a very helpful guide to teachers, students and parents, rather than a counter-productive, punitive stick to beat them with.
“Another issue is that the tests don’t measure much.”
Tell me Monty “What is the standard unit of measure that these standardized tests use when they measure whatever they measure?”
They measure the number of zeroes that can go in the “test makers” bank.
Also the number of zeroes in the test-makers corporate office.
We used to do this at the end of the year. Students who were about to be in 8th grade would take a test we made up to see if they could do enough math to,be considered for Alg I. We parsed teacher recommendation, test scores of a couple of types, parental desires, and administrative concerns to place kids in the appropriate math class. It worked well. Then along came the diploma project and every student had to take Alg I as a freshman. This and other distant commands were degenerative instead of improving things. Students who were not ready were placed into classes where either they failed or we passed them for good behavior.
This is the logical result of top down reform. I personally think that some observation of student behaviors on test might help at the first of the year, but mandating such would be as bad as the present system unless schools and teachers drove the thinking about how these things were to be used. I realize the ESSA requires testing, and that the modest proposal tries to fit this law, so it is a start. Still, if it is a good idea, it will have more positive influence if it is used because people are persuaded to consider it. Put simply, we are mandated to death. I hate to ruin a good idea by mandating it.
“Testing authorities have a general rule. Tests should not be used for any purpose other than the one for which they are intended.”
“Use tests only as intended”
Tests should not be used
Except to test and fire
The rest is just abuse
(Except eval and hire)
I wish we could disabuse ourselves of the idea that high school students are going to come out of high school and “think critically” or “think divergently” and “apply what they know to real life situations.” To a certain LOW degree, maybe. But to the extent we WANT them to as adults, NO WAY.
Good point.
High school students already think critically — about their parents and other adults.
Very few elected officials think divergently
They must be able to think before being able to think critically.
EX: See little dan patrick, ted cruz, betsy, and the list continues.
Now, that’s what I call critical thinking.
Gonna work a little backwards here in responding:
“Tell me what you think.”
You forgot the magic word! 🙂 Not that you needed it in my case. 🙂
“Some of you, I know, will tell me why all testing is a waste of time.”
I am not part of that “some of you”. What? Has Swacker gone crazy? No, (well, how can one go crazy when one already is?) because I’ve never been against all testing. I’m against STANDARDIZED testing and am all for teacher-made classroom testing and assessments designed to help the students learn where they are in their own learning.
“But so long as the requirement for annual testing is in the law, there must be a good faith effort to comply.”
This gets into the ethical components of the teaching profession. I discuss those components in Ch. 7 “Ethics in Educational Practices” in my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”. Basically, according to the various professional education organizations, there are two main components to ethics that a teacher should consider, that to the profession and legal mandates and that to the students and protecting them from harm. Now which one should hold sway when those two concerns conflict? For me protecting the students MUST outweigh obedience to legal mandates so that “good faith effort to comply” must give way to the obligation to protect students from the harms of the standardized testing regime.
“Why not comply in a way that is not harmful to students, teachers, or schools, but that might actually provide useful information?”
There is no way to “comply in a way that is not harmful to students, teachers, or schools” in the standardized testing regime due to the inherent onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and the psychometric fudgings that result in completely invalid results and the misclassification of many students wrongly rewarding some while punishing or denying others, or even in the case of supposed diagnostic tests, misclassifying students for either needing or not needing certain interventions. These grievous errors cannot be avoided, the standardized tests are that inaccurate and invalid.
“Why not give the tests in the first week of school and use only a test whose results may be returned within a month?”
Because a month is too long a time frame. A test should primarily be an instrument for the benefit of the student in helping them in their learning process. As such anything more than a day or two in getting the assessment back to the students is too long. And using the test as a “diagnostic” device should be secondary to the primary purpose of having the students use it for their own learning. The teaching and learning process is not a medical diagnosis situation, even though it has evolved into that and many believe that the teacher is supposed to “diagnose” the student.
“How would we know how schools are doing?”
Your question is in the “Let’s look at the ‘output’ of the school mode” and not in the “Let’s look at the ‘input’ of the resources, is it adequate to do the job so that each and every student can learn to their abilities and desires mode?” By being in the ouput mode you are falling into the trap of the edudeformers and privateers as the output will never, ever satisfy their greedy demands for ever-increasing test scores that falsely show the supposed quality of a school. Until we insist on focusing on the input mode and what it takes to ensure that ALL students will have ALL the resources available that they need, ALL the resources that are available to the most advantaged in society, we will short-change far too many students, mainly those in the lower socio-economic status brackets who arguably need the most help. What a cruel and harsh society that boots the most unfortunate to the side and kicks them up side the head even before they’ve had a chance to get up-and this is modern America today.
“Why not give the tests in the first week of school and use only a test whose results may be returned within a month? Let machines score the standardized questions, and let teachers score the constructed responses. The testing vendor would know that they would be chosen only if they could report the results in a month, in a format that informs teachers what students do and do not know. That way, the teacher can find out where students are as they begin the year and tailor instruction to address the needs of the students. That way, tests would no longer be high-stakes. They would be expressly designed for diagnostic purposes, to help teachers help students.”
Again, This proposal assumes that the main function of a teacher is to be a diagnostician and that the teaching and learning process is one in which the disorders, maladies and/or afflictions must be rooted out and “cured”. What a sad way of viewing the teaching and learning process. All tests and assessments should primarily be used as a means for the students and by the students to help them understand where they are in their own learning of the subject matter at hand. Secondarily, it can help guide the teacher in also understanding where the student is, but the teacher should already have a pretty good idea from the day in and day out interactions with the student. The test/assessment should just be a confirmation of those daily observations.
So, overall, thumbs down on the proposal.
For many years, Japan has relied on standardized tests. Here is an article (five years old) that provides a cautionary tale. I believe that we have a lot to learn from the Japanese. see
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/japans-cutthroat-school-system-a-cautionary-tale-for-the-us/281612/
Japan does not test every child every year.
It has a very important college entrance exam that determines the course of every student’s life.
Why would we want to copy Japan? We believe in second chances, third chances, fourth chances.
Japan also has several high school graduation tracks.
academic high schools (to get ready for college – these high schools are ranked too)
vocational high schools (learning skills to get a job out of high school)
http://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat23/sub150/entry-2804.html
It is misleading when the media (alt-right or traditional) compares the high school graduation rate in Japan to the U.S., because the U.S. doesn’t have a vocational high school graduation track. All high school graduates in the US graduate from academic high schools.
Currently, “over 95 percent of Japanese high school students graduate compared to 89 percent of American students. Some Japanese education specialists estimate that the average Japanese high school graduate has attained about the same level of education as the average American after two years of college.” …
“Between 75 and 80 percent of all Japanese students enroll in university preparation tracks. Most university-bound students attend separate academic high schools while students who definitely do not plan on higher education attend separate commercial or industrial high schools.”
https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/japanese_education
BUT and this is a very big BUT, Japan’s college graduation rate is 53.7 percent.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0809/Countries-with-the-highest-college-graduation-rates/Japan-53.7-percent
What happened to the other 21.3 to 26.3 percent that enrolled in university prep tracks but never graduated from college?
Then there is “The Countries With the Most Unemployed Graduates
% of graduated unemployed in select OECD countries in 2013
Canada 4.8 percent
The United States 4.1 percent
Japan 3.2 percent
Germany 2.4 percent
Norway 1.8 percent
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/10/13/which-countries-have-the-most-unemployed-graduates-infographic/#17b189942c99
Charles,
Immigrate to Japan and take up Sumo Wrestling.
NF, I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles replied and said he’d already worked in Japan for the CIA, State, or Defense, and that he knew some champion sumo wrestlers.
The article I cited is “cautionary”. I do not believe that we can or should import the Japanese system “in toto”. Nevertheless, there is a lot to learn from foreign nations’ experiences. Finland has some terrific ideas. I am particularly in admiration of the Germans’ apprenticeship programs.
The USA does not have all the answers.
(I have never been to Japan)
“(I have never been to Japan)”
Some place you have never been! Sorry, Charles, I couldn’t resist. I did catch that you were presenting a cautionary tale, and you are right about looking beyond our own borders for good ideas. While my rugged individualism gene balks a little at being steered into an apprenticeship program, I admire the German system as well. They are training highly skilled professionals.
“Why do our policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels continue to require and enforce annual testing, despite the non-existent benefits?”
Because Pearson (and other for-profit test factories) the Kochtapus, and the Walmart Walton family and all their (about) 2,000 Far Alt-Right allies keep funneling huge sums of cash to keep the abusive testing machine alive with help from the Alt-Right lying, misleading, conspiracy theory generating, media machine that thinks the lies they tell should not be revealed by the traditional media.
“Let machines score the standardized questions, and let teachers score the constructed responses.” — I less care about machines vs humans, but I disgusted by any test that does not provide full list of questions asked, answers given, and answer keys. Also, in case of a dispute there should be a simple way to approach whoever is capable to discuss the results and to make changes if needed.
Yes! If there is real retention by the student , then it should show up by taking the test Sept. 1. I’m all for that. Common sense. Let teachers get on with teaching for the year, cost savings to districts, and let’s stop trying to destroy, students, professionals and state budgets .
Even in the highly regarded public schools I attended, there was always a period at the beginning of a school year where we reviewed material from the previous year. Teachers had the opportunity to do some reteaching if necessary. How these proposed test would be used would become very important. As just a small piece of data that a teacher might use in planning, they might be some limited use. I would hope that time would clearly show that the time spent testing was not worth the expense.
Before NCLB Connecticut used to test every other year (grades 4, 6, 8) in October. I had taught 3rd grade for years and felt even then the pressure to get the kids ready for the 4th grade test. I switched to 4th grade and I spent some time getting the kids ready for the test in September mainly to get them comfortable with the format. Some instruction time was lost, but once the testing was over I felt free! I could do my end of the year play and our school could spend time on our Young Author books in class (now the PTO runs Young Authors and it is done entirely at home with far fewer children participating). At least the test results that came back listed the different objectives and how each of my students, as well as the class as a whole, did on those objectives so it did help inform my instruction. It certainly was better than the present testing regime.
I have been retired for 9 years now and am serving on my local Board of Education. I have made it known how I feel about testing and the current ed reform (so opposed) and am also a part of the District data team, not because I’m in favor of all this number crunching, but because I want to see what data is being used and how. It certainly is mind boggling. Our district uses i-ready because it supposedly correlates to the CCSS. We spent 2 meetings going over the piles of data from these tests to zero in on a couple of standards to focus on. To me that’s still teaching to the test and I’ve made that known to my superintendent. He feels it’s teaching to the standards. I must say though, that he’d like to back off using test scores as the main measure of student success. And although CT no longer requires using the SBAC in teacher evaluation, other test scores (like i-Ready) can be and are used.
“To me that’s still teaching to the test and I’ve made that known to my superintendent. He feels it’s teaching to the standards. I must say though, that he’d like to back off using test scores as the main measure of student success.”
Teaching to the standards or teaching to the test is the same thing, potatoe or potatah?, Missouree or Missourah?, heads or tails, same difference. But adminimals being adminimals your supe adminimal cannot recognize that fact.
Test scores are not a “measure” of anything. Are they an assessment? Are they one criterion of supposed student success (whatever the hell that is)? I guess they can be. But to assign test scores anything but a very minor bit in evaluating a student’s learning is to give more credit to testing than it rightly deserves.
Most school districts already administer a beginning of year test of some kind to establish “bechmarks”. As many have said here, we need to question the premise that annual testing is even a good use of teaching and learning time. In the beginning of the school year, teachers and students need to develop relationships, not data walls.
I’m a retired public school teacher and community college history professor in Michigan. When I started my career in 1966 we tested grades 3-8 annually with the tried and true old “Iowa Test of Basic Skills”. We did the test in the Spring and when we came back to teach in the fall the scores for my incoming students were printed with our new class lists and were being put into the student’s “C64” (permanent records). As teachers getting ready for a new year with new students we could know going in what each student’s individual needs were and could begin helping them overcome any problems.
Then Michigan’s new Governor, John Engler, was a “Conservative Republican” and for the first time in years the Michigan State Legislature was also controlled by Republicans. Since many of them hadn’t received support from the Michigan Education Association or the Michigan Federation of Teachers they immediately began declaring Michigan’s schools were failing. They used the report President Reagan’s Department of Education had published titled “A Nation at Risk” to accuse the nation’s teachers of goofing off and failing t do their job. These lawyers (seems most Republican leaders are lawyers) in the State Legislature demanded that methods had to be developed to hold these “lazy teachers” accountable. What better way than test every kid at the end of the school year and use the poor scores the Legislature was certain be the result of making kids that a test that the kids knew was silly and and would have no affect on their grades or future.
Then the anti-union administrators could use these scores as evidence that the expensive,experienced, tenured, union teachers were not doing their jobs and then fire them. Then they could bring in new graduates from the schools of education, pay them half as much as a tenured teacher, fire them before they would be granted tenure or be vested in the state’s retirement system. These lawyer/legislators could then reduce the percentage of the state budget spent on schools. They didn’t worry about where each new crop of teachers would come from because there were so many idealistic young women who viewed teaching as the only profession open to them so there would always be more than enough applicants.
But, teachers studied previous state standardized tests, figured out what material the state would be stressing and taught their kids to take the tests! After a few years the test scores began to improve! The lawyer/legislators couldn’t have that so they had the testing companies constantly change the tests and the scoring system ever few years. No matter that the data from all this testing was useless because objectives being tested were constantly changing.
Your idea is a step in the right direction. If we must have mandated testing of all students do it at the beginning of the school year. Mandate that the testing companies must have the results back to the teachers in a month or less and in a form that points out which students are lacking key skills and what they will need help with. If a company contracts to write, provide, and grade the tests they must be held liable for any mistakes, any failure to meet the timelines, proving that their test is educationally valid. If they fail to carry out any of these and any other tasks the state departments of education decide to assign to them they should be required to return their fees and at least an additional sum equal to that fee.
As far as any truly “failing schools” the following steps should be followed. It it is a publically funded private school (a Charter Accademy) it should immediately loose its charter. The management company should be required to return all state funds the school received from the state to the state. The owners of the management company should be financially responsible for any remedial classes and programs the students that were in these schools need to be brought up to their grade level.
If it is a regular public school, the District Administrators and the building principals should be fired and an entire new administration hired. Maybe then the money that comes into a school district will be used to improve the buildings, materials, support services that actually help the students. Most importantly of all, used to reduce class sizes, one of the few “reforms” that has been proven to make a difference in the children’s learning.
Teachers have been fired, and schools have been closed based on test scores. That is called test-based accountability, and there is growing evidence that TBA is ineffective. ”
The evidence should have been required BEFORE it was ever allowed in the schools.
This is the basic problem with ALL so called “reform”.
There is/was no evidence required AT ALL.
Not for NCLB and yearly testing. Not for Common Core. Not for VAM. Not for Pearsonalized learning. Not for charter schools. Not for vouchers. Not for TFA. Not for WMD (oops, how did that get in there?). Not for anything.
The deformers just went ahead and did whatever they pleased with virtually no evidence that any of the stuff they were doing would actually improve schools — and lots of evidence that it would hurt them.
How did this happen?
If an engineer claimed to have a new type of airplane, would he or she be allowed to just try it out on the public without first proving it actually worked and was safe?
If a doctor had a new surgical method, would he or she be allowed to just try it on patients without first proving that it was effective and safe?
I don’t think so.
So why were George Bush, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and others allowed to essentially experiment on millions of American children without first showing (on a small scale, at the very least) that what they proposed would not only be effective but would not have negative consequences?
Of course, doing things without evidence and experimenting on millions of people is common place in economics and I don’t think it is any coincidence that economists are actually behind many of the worst abuses related to Deform.
I think it’s important to note how much influence wealthy power brokers have over not just the federal government, but over state governments and large, urban school districts as well. California mandates that the tests be given after 80% of the school year is completed. And when California refused to mandate test-based teacher evaluations, several districts signed MOUs overriding the state “to avoid NCLB 100% ‘competency’ requirements” that were clearly about to be repealed. (Good Lord, the billionaires managed to buy the LA Superintendent position today, it appears.)
I just finished my second day of secondary English testing. Eight days to go. What a waste. Do you know how difficult it is to get adolescents raised in poverty to sit still for eighty minutes at a time and keep from picking the keys off the keyboards during testing? These kids perform wonderfully in the safe and warm confines of my classroom during regular instruction. I control that. But during test stressing, no. Do you know how angering it is to peer over a student’s shoulder at a screen and see an SBAC reading selection lauding a Republican politician from the divisive Bush administration? Pure propaganda. Do you know how frustrating it is to have an administrator annually and publicly blame and shame you as a teacher because a student was flagged years ago for using foul language in a typed “performance task”? Ugh. What a horrible day. And yet, I won’t let it get to me because my students’ wellbeing is at stake, and I must remain positive. I have a job to do.
We live in a guilted age. The wealthy will buy our democracy out from under us at the federal, state, and local level. Corporations will diminish us. All of us. All. Of. Us. I believe they will bring us to the point where we will all walk out on them. The propaganda will fail. The more they succeed, the closer they bring themselves to failure because they do not know when or how to stop. They will bring us to rock bottom and we will rebel. Greed knows no end. One day, we will all opt out, no matter the consequences.
Whew! I am beat. Time to read some Locke from my beautiful five foot shelf. The only question is tea or coffee.
LCT,
So pleased to know that the Eliot five-foot-shelf in in good hands and read.
Every day starts and ends with a little of Ben Franklin’s thoughtful letter to his son, Adam Smith, John Locke… Every page is beautiful. I am so grateful.
And it’s not just the fifty fine books, Diane. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without you. Probably promulgating data driven drivel at some corporate charter school, not knowing any better.
Province of Ontario, Canada is in the process of cutting some tests and revamping others. Most likely to go is lowest grade test in grade 3.
“Good faith,” first and foremost, means adhering to principles. Our first faithfulness is to the children. So, with the wave of heated opposition at our backs, why should we voluntarily compromise now? First of all, if we want to make sure that children hate school even more than they already do, sure, let’s test them during the first week. Don’t start to immediately build individualized relationships of trust with them, don’t ease them through their transitions and into routines, don’t facilitate their getting to know each other and building a community, don’t present ourselves as more than test proctors and school as more than an academics factory, just sit them down and test them. What an awful idea! There’s no sense within this proposal that children, or teachers, are actually people, which is exactly what’s wrong with education today. Let’s start using our own mindset, not work within the limitations of “theirs.”
Yes sir, Alan, yes sir!
When I was in elementary school in the late 60s and early 70s I remember taking a standardized test every few years. There were a series of short timed section and we spent all day testing. It was exhausting, but we weren’t particularly stressed about about it because the results didn’t particularly matter to us. Eventually(a few months later) scores went home to my parents–who learned what they already knew–that I while I was a poor speller and not too skilled at arithmetic, I did well at reading comprehension and math problems that were more conceptual than computational. There was no specific test prep so I suppose the testing was about as painless as it could be. I’m still a poor speller, but my arithmetic skills have improved (I teach math.)
heaven help ANY of us if we had been endlessly labeled by standardized testing: what I did well or poorly as a kid or middle schooler or high school student has changed notably with life experiences
Why do legislators and those who elect them want to use standardized tests to measure schools? Because they are relatively cheap, relatively easy to administer, and provide seemingly precise data that can be used to sort and select students and schools in a fashion that is easy to understand. And so schools are using tests designed for accountability of adults instead of tests designed to measure student’s understanding.
It strikes me that teachers could crowd-source formative assessments using social media, formative assessments that would enable them to accomplish what Duane Swacker suggests: “… teacher-made classroom testing and assessments designed to help the students learn where they are in their own learning.” Such tests would be untethered from “grade levels”. These crowd sourced formative assessments would not only promote self-actualization on the part of students but also provide classroom teachers with valuable feedback on how the approaches they are using are work for the specific children in their classroom. Assuming someone with technological expertise would be willing to provide the expertise needed to design this kind of “testing network” without making an unseemly profit, these crowd-sourced tests would be very inexpensive to design and relatively easy to administer. Indeed, these formative assessments might replace the “unit tests” teachers use to measure student performance. The only downside of these assessments— or any formative assessments— is that they could not be used to rate schools.
I believe we have the technological ability to design specially tailored FORMATIVE assessments that would enable students to progress at their own rate in subjects where there are clear hierarchical skills to be mastered. Instead of using SUMMATIVE assessments to hold SCHOOLS and TEACHERS accountable for students achieving specific outcomes based on the artificial construct we call “grade levels” we should use FORMATIVE assessments to “…help students learn where they are in their own learning.” We should let time be the variable and learning be constant instead of the other way around.
“I believe we have the technological ability to design specially tailored FORMATIVE assessments that would enable students to progress at their own rate in subjects where there are clear hierarchical skills to be mastered.”
wgersen’s thinking is an assumption that all children/students are motivated to master the skills they learn in schools from teachers and books.
This only works if the child is onboard and making an effort to learn.
Do you know and understand what poverty, drugs/alcohol, and/or dysfunctional family environment does to a child?
Do you know what it is like to grow up in a house where there is no reading material and the child never sees their parent read anything and the first time they see a book is a kindergarten?
Do you know what it is like to grow up an orphan or abandoned and end up in “the system”?
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. …
“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.”
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
― Jonathan Swift
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/assumptions
My assumptions ARE a window on my world. Despite current evidence to the contrary, I assume that most voters would prefer seeing their money spent on helping disadvantaged children have a better life. I believe this with a knowledge and understanding of the current conditions too many children AND adults encounter. I believe this because to believe otherwise would require that I assume our fellow human beings are indifferent to the suffering too many of us experience due to the warped “system” we now have in place. My admittedly rosy view assumes that once voters see that the “system” is failing they will take the steps necessary to change it… and those steps would ultimately lead to a world where all children have a desire to learn. Whether that learning takes place “…in schools from teachers and books” is a different subject.
I agree with that assumption, but we could both be wrong, that most people want to help disadvantaged children, but for sure without a doubt the Koch brothers, ALEC, the members of ALEC, and many elected politicians and the Kremlin’s Agent Orange in the White House do not care about anyone but themselves and maybe their immediate family members. To them, the rest of us can rot.
Alas… I agree with that!
“Because they are relatively cheap, relatively easy to administer, and provide seemingly precise data that can be used to sort and select students and schools in a fashion that is easy to understand.”
Wow, there is a whole lot in your statement, Wayne. You are correct in that most people view the tests that way. But. . . . .
While seemingly “relatively cheap,” the hidden costs are tremendous to students and to the teaching and learning process. And I know you know that by your posts here. 🙂
They certainly aren’t “relatively easy to administer” in comparison to a teacher made classroom test when one considers all the test “security”-virtual lockdowns of schools, pre-test in-service training, bathroom patrols, etc. . . .
And don’t get me started on that “seemingly precise data” which Wilson has proven isn’t precise at all and is in reality completely invalid. Unfortunately, that completely invalid “seemingly precise data” IS USED to sort and select students rewarding some, castigating others, however, it is not in a “fashion that is easy to understand”. It is a convoluted psychometrically fudged messy hodge-podge soup of all sorts fallacious and unscientific gobbledygook.
There is way too much testing and the tests being used are awful.
But I believe that is because the tests have been grabbed onto by terrible and greedy people as a way to justify the abandonment of public education. There wasn’t any public support for their idea of privatizing public education so they needed to convince the public their schools were failures and only failing parents would put their kid in one. They needed tests with guarantee failure rates and they got it. (See Arne Duncan complaining about suburban moms…)
I don’t think the occasional standardized test – used properly – is inherently bad. Private schools annually have their students take CTP-4 exams designed by ERB – a non-profit made up of members of those schools. The Board of ERB – who design the test – ARE the heads and faculty at the private schools that use it. The purpose of the CTP-4 is not to say that private schools are failures, or that they were better 20 years ago. It is simply an internal assessment used by the school.
And the ERB is NEVER used to compare one school to another. No one has any idea whether the students at one private school have higher ERB scores than at another school. There is no “PASSING” rate. There is merely an assessment of the student at that time on a standardized test to be used internally by the school.
Just like the Iowa tests that my school gave over 40 years ago.
While I am a big fan of teachers, it is near impossible for a teacher with a class of 28 or 30 active — and sometimes disruptive – 8 and 9 year olds to have a clear idea of where they all stand. As a parent, I know my kid was lucky to have one teacher who spent an inordinate amount of time and had a gift for that, but my kid has also had perfectly decent teachers whose assessment of many individual students was quite off. And I suspect that it happens more with at-risk children whose strengths may be overlooked as long as their learning is “okay”.
Doing poorly on one of those standardized exams doesn’t have to mean anything. A private school that saw this with a student who excelled in the classroom might take a closer look while understanding that the reason can range from a student whose academic strengths have nothing to do with a standardized test, to having a bad day to even an undiagnosed learning disability. And doing well isn’t a sign that a child is a genius. But sometimes an overlooked or even a seemingly struggling student might score very high and having a different — not better, but different — assessment outside of the classroom teacher or school is not a bad thing. It might help the teacher reassess how to approach that child’s learning.
There should be no high-stakes to these. Teaching should not be changed to have a child “pass” a standardized test. But using them – as private schools do – as simply another educational tool to supplement whatever means of assessment the classroom teacher designs should not be a bad thing.
I don’t believe that schools changed their teaching methods or punished teachers based on those Iowa tests back in the 1960s. Private schools aren’t “teaching to the test” to make sure their students score high on the CTP-4s. It’s when the tests turned into the means to convince parents how bad public schools were that they became completely meaningless political tools that they became not just worthless, but harmful to education.
On reflection, and reading the many thoughtful comments to this post, I offer the observation that we are somewhat missing the point. While almost everyone agrees that testing has been overdone, or misused, too many comments concede that tests are needed for either “diagnosis” to better “instruct” individual students or as a means of learning how all the kids are doing.
Both of those purposes exist only because education continues to be seen as a system that can be at least partially automated, with inputs and outputs, to be tweaked by analysis of data. This view of learning, along with the mythology of technology, has enabled the increase of class size to the point that teachers are operating a system, not actually loving and learning with children.
In a school with appropriate class size (15 or fewer) a teacher needs no test to “assess” individual kids or systematized testing to “assess” all of the kids. A good teacher with an appropriate sized class knows how every student is doing, every day, and needn’t resort to such nonsense. It is beyond ironic that teachers have to resort to testing and test prep, which exacerbates the problem and provides even less time to know and care about the individual kids.
Steve Nelson, thank you so much for your comments. I always find them very thought-provoking and important and I always appreciate reading your insight.
I certainly agree with you that it would be pretty nice to have small class sizes in public schools!
But I don’t have the same faith that you do that “A good teacher with an appropriate sized class knows how every student is doing, every day, and needn’t resort to such nonsense.”
Teachers have different gifts and strengths just like students do. For example, I have seen teachers who are brilliant at conveying ideas and leading discussions with engaged students. But they have no idea what the individual strengths and weaknesses of the students are beyond what happens during those discussions. A teacher might be superb at engaging most of the students and not particularly good about how to reach — and help a child understand — if he is struggling.
And there are teachers who are brilliant at assessing students’ strengths and weaknesses and helping the struggling ones to shine, who are not particularly engaging when they teach.
So when I post I am starting with my own assumptions that great teachers have all sorts of different strengths and a standardized test is simply having one more tool that might help them reach some students they have overlooked.
To me, a standardized test isn’t about test prep or believing the score defines the child. I have never found a teacher who is perfect for ALL students, no matter how small the class or how amazing the teacher. Some use the data as a supplement to their own classroom observations to better understand individual students’ learning differences that might not be evident in the classroom.
Teachers are imperfect humans – even the very best ones. Standardized tests don’t make them perfect. But using one additional tool that might provide more insight beyond what they see in the classroom can also help. Not to do more “test prep”. But perhaps to understand that child’s strengths a bit better. With the caveat that of course the standardized test is simply a snapshot of a single day and not given undue importance.
I am not really arguing for regular standardized testing as a good thing. I just don’t think it necessarily has to be a bad thing and can have some uses.
Did your private school avoid giving the CTP-4 tests? Do you feel as if that made the learning environment less “teach to the test” than at the private schools that did? It would be interesting to hear that from an educator’s perspective.
I think it worth mentioning that most teachers don’t teach one class.
They teach several and even at 15 students per class, if a teacher has five or six classes, that’s still 75 to 90 students. A lot lower than the class loads I had as a teacher that was 34 per class, minimum meaning I was working with 170 students when I taught five classes and 204 when I taught six and sometimes more.
There were times that my classroom was so crowded, it wasn’t easy walking down the aisles between the desks. I had to walk sideways and I’m skinny. All those bodies generate heat and often when the weather was hotter, the HVAC system couldn’t keep the room cool.
Then it was not only crowded but stuffy and hot. The few windows were painted shut and couldn’t be opened and we were encouraged to keep our doors closed and locked for safety reasons (you know, those crazy shooters).
And when it rained, the ceiling often leaked soaking to worn carpet adding to the room’s stench.
Thanks, parent! You are correct in assuming that my school evaded all testing. At one point the Commissioner challenged us, but not much he could do about it. It was among the many dimensions of privilege that I enjoyed (with much self-aware ambivalence).
Your point is well taken, but my objection to “standardized” tests is that they are predicated on the completely illogical assumption that kids are “standard” and that it is reasonable to expect them to do the same things at the same time in the same way. The test may reveal something, but it cannot account for the reality that an individual child may simply not be developmentally ready for the question or that the child could express the answer or solve the problem in a way that the test doesn’t allow or account for. Although it is a complex issue, tests which require “right” answers diminish critical capacity. Kids should take intellectual risks. As has been amply demonstrated, there are questions on many standardized tests that could have any of several answers. I could go on, but I don’t mean to be “preachy.”
And, however gently described or administered, tests can demoralize children.
At my school we did, of course, have means of “assessing” individual kids, including “tests” that allowed for flexibility in demonstrating learning or mastery.
I am acutely aware of this being an artifact of the private school advantage and that life is not that simple. But my whole interest, both before and after retirement, is to advocate for every child to have the same loving, individual attention that only a few enjoy under this inequitable system.
Thank you advocating for that loving, individual attention for all students!
In my perfect world, the fact that a standardized test has many plausible answers should be used, too! Remember, they are only used internally as another teaching tool!
In my perfect world, a teacher might sit with a child and ask her why she chose that answer. Is it because she struggled to read the text of the question? Or did she easily read it and think about the different answers and what was she thinking about when she chose it? Knowing why informs their teaching.
Same thing for math. Maybe the student seems to be struggling with the progressive way of learning math. But suddenly that student aces a CTP-4 standardized test and the teacher who thought that student was struggling in math takes a second look and realizes that the student is actually quite gifted in math.
I’ve seen that happen in real life. And let’s face it — when a parent says to a teacher “my kid is really good at math and does it on his own at home” there is often a bit of eye-rolling — here’s another one of those pushy parents who think their children are gifted. Except sometimes the kid really is gifted! With some students that comes out in the progressive classroom and with some kids that comes out in a test because kids aren’t widgets!
And the at-risk kids whose strengths may not show up in that particular teacher’s classroom don’t have pushy parents insisting that they actually are advanced at math even if the teacher isn’t catching it. And maybe that test will. And maybe it won’t. It’s just one more tool.
Well stated Steven!
I’m not quite sure how we got to the point that teaching is seen as an offshoot of the medical profession in the sense of diagnosing students instead of the teacher being a guide of/for the students’ self-exploration not only of themselves but of the world around them.
I think it came from special education. No one used to pay attention to kids who struggled for various reasons. They either didn’t educate them at all or just considered them slow or difficult. Now, we are required by law to provide a free and appropriate education, which involves doing a case study to determine how we can best help them learn. It is a long and sometimes tedious process that is more or less effective in at least focusing attention on a segment of the population that has special needs and was previously ignored. Naturally you then get the crowd who then immediately thinks these kids are getting something that everyone else should have whether they need it or not. So now everyone needs a case study!? Since there is no way we could stand the expense of full case studies on each and every child, let’s test them all to death and pretend that a bunch of one size fits all tests are as good as a formal case study that goes far beyond testing.
Don’t buy into that argument! They actually are using the idea that every student should have a full psychological, physiological, intellectual abilities, learning disabilities, etc assessment as a why to destroy our excellent nationwide special education program. True we could still do much better for these kids, but I don’t know of any other nation that makes as great an effort to allow these students to advance educationally, intellectually, and socially as much as the American Public Schools do.
[Notice these are the same people who want to destroy the American Public Schools and replace them with Profit Making Private State Funded Schools — Charter Schools].
They are subjecting our children to high stress useless high stakes tests to aid them in attaining this goal.
It is time we called them out.
It is time we take over our state governments, who decide the rules for our schools.
It is time that we convince the taxpayers that when they agree to allow for State Funded Private Profit Making Schools to experiment on our children is stealing from their kids and grandkids the money that should be only used to provide them the best education possible.
We should use the fact that now that most of these “Charter” schools are also having to take these useless tests, and that additional research is showing that in most cases they are doing a poorer job of educating the children attending them. The data that they thought would prove that Profit Making Schools would use competition to do a better job of preparing the next generation is showing they are failing to deliver on this promise. Now is the time to use this data to attack the big investors backing these schools. To revoke their charters. To encourage the parents of the children who failed to receive the superior education they were promised to bring class action lawsuits against these charter companies and the leaders of this movement.
We need to call for changes in the legal system to allow damage lawsuits against the wealthy “reformers” for the damage they have done to the education of innocent children. The children of Michigan whose education was damaged should be able to sue Betsy DeVos and her extended family who own these companies for what they have done.
Interesting speduktr, but I don’t think that is at the bottom of this standards and testing malpractice. Special Education has always been the red-headed step child and never the athletic strong good looking smart oldest outgoing child that everyone looks to.
There is something else wherein, it seems to me, that the teaching profession has tried to raise its “social status and standing” by emulating the medical profession, thus supposedly being more “professional” and thus deserving more respect (and pay) instead of just being glorified babysitters. I do believe it has to do with teaching being a historically dominated by women profession, the same with nursing, as we all know those are “lesser” woman’s jobs.
The supposed “objective” tests are supposed to give a scientific sheen to an otherwise supposedly subjective and affective profession.
I’m finding it interesting that the attacks over the past 30 years on the teaching profession by the right-wing, especially the GOP seem to have been motivated by two ideas. First because the NEA went from being a “Professional Association” to being a “Teacher’s Union” and thus perceived by the GOP as being pro-Democrat and anti-Reactionary Republican. Secondly, we are believed to have too much time off with pay [in Michigan for the entire 37 years of my career our contracts made us “Per-diem” employees, without any pay during the time the children were not in school “Vacations”] and we were paid too much which in turn drove up property taxes.
They have always been anti-feminists, believing that the only work outside the home a woman should be allowed to do was to be a secretary, often in the typing pool [dates me], a nurse, or a teacher. Only doing those jobs until they found “a man willing to marry them” [they are sexist pigs] and after that any thing they earned would be a “second income” and thus they’d work for less so why should they get professional salaries.
Well first this drove young women out of nursing and we now find that ambitious women and men have entered the profession as EMTs and PAs. The old “Practical Nurses” are now low paid “Nursing Assistants”
However, between branding teaching as women’s work, constantly attacking teachers as lazy, as being the place where those who can do no better go to work and constant harping that teaching professionals are overpaid when teaching salaries are public knowledge thus proving the lie that this is has been successful in one “unexpected” [by these Republicans anyway] result.
It has driven qualified students away from the profession. Teachers training programs have raised the standards for those who wish to enter the profession, including subject matter knowledge. Now all schools are discovering that there are not enough qualified and certified professionals available to fill our classrooms.
Guess what solution these Radical Reactionary Republicans are proposing? Why just lower the standards or, although they are campaigning against making our immigration laws sane, just let teachers from the Philippines, Eastern Europe, Asia, or even Africa come in on H2B visas!
The real solution: Stop this insane yearly high stakes testing. Pay teachers a professional wage so they don’t need second and third jobs to get above the poverty line and so they no longer qualify for food stamps. Guarantee that after 3 or more years a teacher must be given their due process rights when threatened with severance. Finally treat teachers with the respect that they deserve for being the professionals that they truly are.
Yes, this is true, Ken. But the greater dynamic is that ed reformers don’t believe in teaching at all. Because of Gates et al, education is seen as a technological manifestation of the industrial model of the early 20th century. At the privileged level it’s “blended and flipped” nonsense. For poor kids it’s automation and screen time. The humans in this delivery model don’t have to be trained teachers. They can be Teach for America recruits who learn to read the script and dispense tough discipline to the unruly, uncivilized kids of color.
These idiots actually believe that you can “deliver” instruction through technology with great efficiency, measure all the data points, tweak the software, and make a profit too!
What a great world they envision!
It is just we old-fashioned Luddites with our stubborn unions who resist this clear path to a bright new world.
Yesterday I spoke to my grandson in third grade about his standardized testing. ( He is truly gifted- he was reading before K.) ) He looked at me in a surprised way, “It was a very difficult test!” Everything comes easily to him but this test surprised him; it was difficult! One boy was crying. My heart ached for that dear child. I asked my grandson why he thinks he had to take that test. He responded, “Teachers want to know how smart I am. It also tells us who are the good teachers. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!
A third grader in another school opted out but was made to go to the cafeteria and sit with a book for two hours.. He could not talk to any one or get out of his seat. Oh so
punitive!!!!!
Another third grader from Dr. Hynes’ district was oblivious that some children were subjected to the asinine tests. (At least 75% -possibly more- of the students in the district opted out.) The joy of learning continued on as usual.
There are two types of parents who do not opt their child out: [1] Non educators who trust what their child is instructed to do in school is good. The State requires the test therefore it must be good. [2]The second set of parents are from the old school. Life is full of knocks; might as well get use to dealing with knocks early in life.
I ended my teaching career as a Reading specialist. When I was still teaching, I spoke out against Standardized testing for the primary grades but soon learned it was a futile fight. The only result of the fight was a paper trail on me. The scores were suppose to inform me which students needed extra help – their prior teachers could tell me that. Anyone who fell into the lower quartile received extra help. However, scores did not tell me the readability levels: independent, instructional, and frustration level of the students. Scores did not give me the students’ problems that interfered with comprehension. I had to assess each student individually. It was the results of the assessment that guided my reading sessions. When I compared my assessments to the standardize test scores they did not correlate. The standardized tests did not give me a reading level for each student. Standardized tests can’t give that information because there is more to assessing than to test the memory/ recall and guessing ability. Furthermore, there are elements that invalidate a testing score: fear, great apprehension to the point of crying, vomiting, wetting one’s pants. Great fear clouds a student’s thinking and immediately invalidates the test.
The teachers are given results long after pertinent decisions have been made. Teachers need to know the degree students are using skills and strategies. Teachers need to observe the student to see what area they need extra support; plus who has developed a love of reading; whose caregivers support them at home; do students need to be supplied with recreational reading at home … All of that background information teachers have from the previous teachers. Information from the Standardized tests are useless. Teachers assess not test.
Furthermore, one class isn’t automatically assigned to the next grade amass. The new teachers have to waste time searching through all the rosters for their students’ scores. Classes are divided for the next level in many ways. The At-Risk children usually are divided among the classes. Way back in James Colman’s day, his research revealed that if the majority of the class is below the entire class will be dragged down. If the majority of the students are achievers, they will bring the slower ones along the ladder of achievement.
Many bloggers reiterated why the Standardized tests were punitive and a waste of time. Let me add yet another reason, the aligned CC Standardized test does not and can not test the most important higher order thinking skill: the imagination.
The tests should not be age-based for all students, they should be based on functional ability so we don’t have so many kids stressed, humiliated and labeled failures.
If a kid gets zero answers right, they should take an easier test the next year. The data would be more useful if we untether age to the tests taken, got results in a timely manner, and were able to see the graded tests in their entirety.
No compromise. There should NOT be any high stakes tests, or tests of any kind, designed to rank schools, teachers and children and then punish them depending on that rank.
There is only one answer to that statement – AMEN!
Since when are these test given to give the children’s teachers the necessary data about their students so they could do a better job. I was a teaching professional and a state level union officer when this stupid idea came out of the far right wing [headed by the sons of the founder of the John Birch Society – the Kochs!] to find a way to hold teachers “accountable”. By that they meant being able to fire us without “due process” [which is what Tenure demands], hire the cheapest possible replacements for those teachers fired, and in the process destroy the teacher/support staff unions. Finally they wanted to show that the American Public Schools, which were the envy of the world, were a failure and had to be replaced with private schools supported by state taxes. That way these Republicans and their wealthy friends could make a profit running these private schools.
No these tests have nothing to do with improving our public schools or American education. The best thing we can do is to work hard this year and vote all the “pro-standardized testing” people out of office. Everytime there is a public debate or a campaign rally were the candidates take questions a parent should stand up and ask “Where do you stand on the current mandate that all students in grade 3 and above have to spend at least a week of the school year taking standardized tests?” If they support this as a good idea then someone else should ask “Most teachers are spending between 10 and 20% of the school year preparing their students to take these mandated state standardized tests. Do you feel this is good use of our tax dollars and why?” It’s time we made them look like the testing companies’ stooges that they are. It’s time to point out that they are in favor of wasting our school tax dollars to give a profit to these companies and to use their tests that have been proven to be useless.