Today, the NAACP released a statement (“issue guidance”) opposing the use of a single standardized test score to determine students’ promotion or graduation.
Instead, issue guidance calls for multiple measures.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, who attended the national convention of the NAACP as a delegate from California, released the issue brief on his blog, “Cloaking Inequity.”
I encourage the NAACP to delve further into the misuse of standardized testing, which is scored on a normal curve and should never be used to make high-stakes decisions about promotion or high school graduation, not even as part of multiple measures.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This already happens. Schools use multiple standardized tests throughout the year.
Nwea….
This isn’t the answer as multiple measures doesn’t address the over testing already happening.
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Amen! tutucker. TRUE!
Certainly don’t need more testing. The teachers know.
The yahoos want to de-professionalize teaching to make sure those online everything can control learning plus and those few oligarchs have an endless stream of $$$$$$ for themselves, forever.
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what I said was that standardized testing should not be a part of the multiple measures
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The multiple measures are just as bad.
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If they don’t include standardized testing, why is that a problem?
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What is the purpose of the multiple assessments? To measure a standard, right? It’s about holding schools accountable. In order to hold them accountable you have to have a standard that a child has to meet, correct?
MAPS considers itself to be a normative/adaptive assessment. Other computerized assessments are stating this as well, they adapt to what the child knows so they are not standardized. But they are. The questions get more or less complex depending on how they were answered. But the questions are all standard and can only answer skill based learning. I know one district that changed to the STAR assessment that could test a child every day.
Even if better assessments are used like DRA, the problem is that children have to meet certain standards so instead of using the information from these tests to inform instruction, teachers set goals for the child. (A child started at a reading level of 6. My goal is that they will read at a level 20 by the end of the year.) Notice it has nothing to do with the child but what the teacher will do.
So multiple measurements are standardized or become standardized. Assessments should provide us with information. If a child doesn’t reach that goal the teacher set, their are issues.
Learning is not standard or linear. An example is reading level. Today we focus on increasing a reading level. So you increase vocabulary, accuracy and fluency. Who cares if they understand what they’re reading or if that reading is deeper than superficial multiple choice answers.
We are focusing on vertical learning instead of horizontal. I student may know how to simplify fractions but do they understand the actual concept of fractions?
Another analogy. . . the building blocks we’re giving kids only allows them to build a single pillar building. One block on top of another and while it may reach very high, once weight or deeper understanding are applied it will fall down.
Our accountability system does not allow for children to create a building with a broad enough foundation to support the understanding this world deeply needs.
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I oppose standardized tests. I oppose computer adaptive tests. Next question.
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For an answer to your question see Laura’s response right below. As usual she’s spot on!
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Multiple measures end up being rubric-like ratings with these summed and averaged, even if the domains of study and/or achievemnt are not comparable (e.g. mathematics and social-emotional learning). You end up with ranking and a process of setting cut scores that has nothing to recommend it other than feeding the illusion there are “objective” measures of educational outcomes.
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I am sure Vasquez Heilig was instrumental in crafting this position statement. No matter what flaws “multiple measures” may have, it is an improvement over having a single test score determining in many cases the fate of schools, students or teachers. The NAACP rightly understands that performance on standardized tests has been used to send schools into receivership and various privatization schemes which have disproportionately impacted the lives of students of color. This statement is an attempt to mitigate the harmful, disruptive takeover practice common in so many urban school districts.
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It is not a vast improvement. We test kids to death.
We know this is a move to online continuous testing.
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I didn’t mean for this to be about your stance.
I’m addressing the issue around multiple measures and the purpose of them.
Use them to provide information but not to determine if a child is meeting a standard.
My issue is with naacp’s issue around multiple assessments.
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Instead, let’s get rid of the multiple accountability measures and just have the one test that parents opt into.
The problem is the accountability system and multiple measures do not fix this.
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The accountability monster has spread throughout society and the only way to feed the beast is with numbers. It doesn’t matter if those numbers are meaningless, invalid and ultimately useless for any purpose-accountability of, by and for numbers must be achieved.
We’ve seen this accountability monster and it’s devastating results before. It was the Soviet system of social order management of top down numbers with five year plans to supposedly implement reforms and get the number results desired. It failed the USSR, usually due to “gaming the numbers” and those education reforms based on Soviet style numbers/quantification of realms that can’t be quantified not only continue to fail as an assessment heuristic but those malpractices cause untold HARM TO ALL STUDENTS.
But there is a whole other aspect that has crept into the teaching and learning process, into public education. And that is the medical model of normal/abnormal parameters and diagnosing the abnormal and then attempting interventions to “cure” said abnormality or at least mediate it. This medical approach (which has itself been bastardized by the accountability regime) to assessment and evaluation is such that assessment is supposed to be for the benefit of the teacher in diagnosing “abnormalities in the student and not for the benefit of the learner in using the assessment as a learning tool, device, heuristic and helping the student learn how to learn-which is the ultimate goal of all education-the learners learning what she/he needs to do better in learning whatever they are focusing on at a given time.
This shift in the fundamental purpose of assessment of the teaching and learning processes has resulted in a false regime of standards and standardized testing that has literally destroyed the teaching and learning process harming all students.
And the beat goes on. . . . .
. . . unfortunately to the horrors for the students
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This… big time. And the “interventions,” or prescribed treatments are the vender created, canned, scripted remediation programs to be used with fidelity.
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YEP!
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Uh… I thought Diane meant something like student-initiated, staff/community-supported portfolio-type projects… ones where the student pretty much determines what the end result should be… among other measures. I didn’t think she meant more kinds of tests.
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I meant NOT standardized tests.
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Would you do away with New York’s Regents exams? Students in NYS must pass 5 standardized state tests in order to graduate high school; multiple re-takes are allowed. Students must also earn 22 credits: ELA(4), SS(4), Math(3), Science(3), Phys-Ed(2),
Foreign Lang(1), Arts(1), Electives(3.5), Health(0.5). This seems to be a fair graduation requirement for general education students. The tests are fair and give kids something concrete to focus on. As far as IEP students, Richard Mills all Regents decree in 1995 has been a disservice to many of them.
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I would restore the Regents to what they were in the past. An optional exam for students who chose to graduate with a Regents diploma. Making them a graduation requirement was unrealistic and led to dumbing down. A single bar for all will be a low bar.
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Agreed. Dumbing down is an understatement. Algebra I has a true pass score of 34%. Living Environment is just a shell of Regents Biology. Global History is still a two year course but now they only test students on the second year material. ELA is a joke. That’s what happens when you force everyone to jump over the same bar – even kids in wheelchairs. Mills may have meant well but it has been disastrous at both extreme ends of the academic spectrum. The root of the problem lies in the politically incorrect truth: ALL kids cannot learn (the same material at the same pace).
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RATT,
The problem is that pass scores get lower but the Regents’ exam gets more difficult. The Common Core Algebra 1 is not easy and the above average students are supposed to take it in 8th grade. The students taking it in 9th grade are those who are not the better math students and it includes material that would have been part of Algebra 2 and above when I was in high school. Expecting all 9th graders to pass this or feel like failures is a ridiculous by-product of the nonsense that passes for “high standards” and “education reform”.
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I remember when teachers set the standards and gave the grades. There are many ways a teacher can make adjustments to instruction and grading that permit students who would otherwise be held back (in so many ways) to have a chance, to learn and grow instead of being whipped for their circumstances. Any attempts at standardized failure induction, whether test-based or test-tainted with “multiple measures”, are oppressive and harmful to students in need of support. That said, however, the NAACP is moving in the right direction (again). This is a very good thing. Exit and entrance exams are racist, plain and simple. Three cheers for the NAACP!
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Absolutely correct. Teachers were the arbiters of what a student had to do to get credit. They argued with each other, but either way they were the source of authority. Some made big mistakes one way or the other. Some exaggerated the worth of the ACT score or the another test that compared responses with other parts of the educational universe. But it was their decision.
Then the administrations at multiple levels stepped in. With each attempt a top down reform, fewer and fewer good teachers stayed in the game. Independent evaluation of whether all this is working on a global level began to come in from the very purveyors of their use. The news? From their own “data” we are getting a poorer result.
The reason is simple. No teacher is paid enough to,do what it takes to succeed. Teachers like to,teach because the experience gives them an intellectual independence that allows them to think and engage children who,want to discover how they can think. So imaginative, brilliant people eschew teaching (see dropping levels of entry into education programs in universities). The machines do not do a good job, and the kids go begging.
The solution? Let me set my own expectations. When I say that a student is out of compliance, fund the administration well enough so that the student may get help where he is and progress, even if that means moving out of my class. Discuss proper expectations together so that teachers do not game the system to teach only one type of kid. Argue with each other. In other words, restore the Prarie fire that burns through education and nurtures the fertility of the soil. The Lorax will return.
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“Discuss proper expectations together. . .”
Roy, not sure who you mean the together would include. It appears to be between the teacher and administrator since you continued with “so that teachers do not game. . . ” I might add to include the “out of compliance” student in that discussion.
There is a lot that can be taken from your last paragraph. I do like the prairie fire analogy. Unfortunately, that can’t/won’t happen in the current administrative environment of top down demanding teachers implement the administration’s malpractices.
Why are administrators so keen on control? I believe it is because the vast majority are in way over their heads in relation to what they know about the teaching and learning process that occurs on a daily basis in the various subject areas and/or grade levels. And a lack of desire to learn what is actually going on.
For the last 8-9 years of my teaching, whenever we would get a new administrator for our building I would make an appointment during the summer to go introduce myself and attempt to show the newbie exactly what, why, when and how I handled my class. Now it takes more than a couple of minutes to do so but every single one’s eyes would glaze over after a couple of minutes. They couldn’t listen for more than 5-10 minutes without being lost-deer in the headlights.
Look, if you’re going to be evaluating me you damn well better know those what, why, how and when’s of my teaching. To not be able to give a teacher an hour of his/her own time in the summer to learn more about him/her whom you will be evaluating. . .
. . .well let’s just say there is a reason I call the vast majority of administrators adminimals! (and yes, I was certified to be one)
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Duane: what I was talking about was the dual practice teachers have of asking too much or too little so that they get the students they like. Some teachers ask that students do exhorbitant amounts of work so that most students avoid their class. They feel everybody ought to,do this, and criticize those who do not require it. Others think at we should be asking very little of students, virtually allowing students to never read or write anything at all. Discussion between the various attitudes seems to me to be the correct way to resolve these differences. Top down reform in the form of statements written by the state on a web site and called “standards” are a failure as is demonstrated by the current situation. So I say let’s talk, agreeing to disagree on some level.
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It helps to have a supportive rather than bossy school administration. In my experience, administrators become bossy because they seek approval of and support from school board members elected with millions of dollars from Big Tech and Big Charter Chain. Teachers do best when they’re not pressured to influence data, in other words to raise grades and graduation rates or to impossibly raise test scores with “rigor”.
We shouldn’t always be strict; we shouldn’t always be permissive. We shouldn’t always teach at an accelerated pace or always slow down for more depth or review. We should be adaptive and flexible, able to to wear different hats at different times and with different classes. Teachers need to be freed from testing and other data misuses just as much as do students.
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