Alyson Klein reports in Education Week that the anti-testing movement has slowed to a crawl. With testing requirements locked into federal law (the so-called “Every Student Succeeds Act”), activists are discouraged or waiting for another chance to attack the testing regime that has obsessed federal policymakers since the passage of No Child Left Behind, and even earlier, going back to Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000, which encouraged every state to develop their own standards and tests with an infusion of federal dollars. You can trace the testing movement even earlier, but it was not until Goals 2000 that there was real federal money offered to states to get the testing going.
She writes:
Just a few short years ago, there were real questions about whether Congress would ditch annual, standardized assessments as part of a makeover of the nation’s main K-12 education law. At the same time, parents were increasingly choosing to opt their children out of standardized tests.
But the Every Student Succeeds Act ultimately kept the tests in place. And since then, at least some of the steam has gone out of the opt-out movement in states such as New Jersey and New York, considered hotbeds of anti-testing fervor.
Some of the biggest skeptics of annual, standardized testing have taken a break from what was a big push to reduce the number of federally required tests. And they don’t expect there will be another opportunity to roll back federal testing mandates for quite awhile.
“Nobody is fighting on it now,” said Monty Neill, the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, who has spent decades engaged in the national fight to pare back assessments and has recently announced his retirement. “It’s too early for the next round. On the consequences of the tests, the lengths of the tests, the nature of the tests, [the debate’s] continuing. It’s not on any state table now because there’s nothing they can do about it.”
Neill is grateful that some states took opportunities in ESSA to broaden accountability beyond test scores and shift teacher evaluation away from test results, although most state ESSA plans don’t go as far as he’d like.
On the other side of the coin, organizations that see annual standardized testing as a key equity principle are also taking note of a break in the anti-test action.
“I think it is much quieter, whether that’s because ESSA plans [are mostly approved] and [the] federal law is not going to be opened up for awhile,” said Patricia Levesque, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a think tank started by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But, she said, she doesn’t expect that the debate is dead forever. “A lot of things are cyclical. That’s just the way that policy is.”
ESSA, like its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act, requires states to test students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. But the new law says states must use other factors—such as chronic absenteeism—in identifying schools for extra support. And it gives states wide latitude to figure out how to intervene in struggling schools and evaluate teachers.
NCLB required states to test all their students. Schools that assessed fewer than 95 percent of their students were considered automatic failures.
Under ESSA, states must somehow account for low test participation, but just how to do that is up to them. And states can continue to have laws affirming parents’ right to opt their students out of tests, as Oregon does. ESSA also requires states to mark non-test-takers as not proficient.
There are a few things to say about the testing movement.
First, there were some gains initially on NAEP as a result of the introduction of test prep, the biggest gains occurring in the late 1990s.
Second, NCLB has been a major disappointment, with billions spent on testing and meager gains since 2003, when the high-stakes testing began. Even some of its biggest supporters acknowledgement that the gains since 2007 have been meager to non-existent. Apparently, the low-hanging fruit has been picked with test prep. For most states, NAEP scores have been flat since 2007, yet the testing continues.
Third, the U.S. stands alone in its demand for annual testing. Among the high-performing nations of the world, not one of them tests every student every year. Most have a single test at transition points, from elementary school to middle school, from middle school to high school. Finland has no standardized tests at all until the end of secondary school.
Fourth, the NAACP broke ranks with other civil rights groups recently and released an issue brief opposing high-stakes standardized testing.
Last, standardized tests are NOT a way of advancing civil rights; they are normed on a bell curve, and the neediest kids always end up in the bottom half of the bell curve. Being told year after year that you have failed does not encourage students to try harder.
Testing corporations are in D.C. and important state capitols, lobbying to keep the testing regime in place. The Gates Foundation funded numerous organizations to demand the continuation of high-stakes annual testing, a practice unknown in private schools like the one where the Gates children are students.
The billions spent on testing should have been spent to reduce class sizes, raise teachers’ salaries, and affect real change.
Annual standardized testing is a hustle and a fraud.
It is the Golden Calf of education. Our policymakers and members of Congress worship the Golden Calf. The gold, however, is available only to the test corporations, not students.
I’m not resting!
Btw, I’m a teacher, but I was astounded to learn from my fifth-grade son that after he took a standardized test last year, his score (not the percentile, but the raw score) pops up on the screen. While he doesn’t know what the score means, he does know his score from year to year on this particular test. Growing up, like all of us, I took annual standardized tests (far fewer than the kids do now), but I never knew any of my scores. Everything was sent to my parents. Anyone know when students started getting scores for themselves?
That happens in Utah too. It started about 5 or 6 years ago here. The kids get their “scores” almost instantly, including the writing portion. Go figure.
label, punish, divide, segregate: today’s kids are taught to know that this is now the national climate in so many ways
Any standardized test that is taken to stack children and sift them into piles is criminal at best. A long time opponent of capital punishment, I would nonetheless give it my OK for the purveyors of these atrocities wreaked upon the millions of unsuspecting children who have to sit through these depredations.
As I literally just wrote to Ed Week:
Assessment reform movement is alive, strong — and winning – at the state and local level. When it comes to public education, it has always been state capitals and local governments where key decisions are made, not Washington, DC. With ESSA the law of the land, the fight to make real progress in reducing standardized exam misuse and overuse will take place in state legislatures, boards of education and school committees.
And we’re making that progress; not “slowing to a crawl.” The number of states that require an exit exam to graduate has dropped from more than two dozen to 12–with Indiana eliminating their test just this summer. We’re seeing interest in reducing state testing from the new Governor of New Jersey, and from gubernatorial candidates in states like Georgia. Several states, such as New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are piloting alternative assessments that may prove to be national models. Organizations like the NAACP are speaking out more strongly about the need to replace flawed tests.
Make no mistake, when a future President and Congress take up ESEA again in several years, testing reformers will be there. And we’ll be joined by allies from school districts, states and community groups where better assessment policies have already been adopted and implemented.
Andre Green
Executive Director, FairTest
(in fairness I won’t be ED till next week, but I will be when that letter is hopefully published)
Andre,
As part of your ongoing education, may I suggest you read Noel Wilson’s critique of the standards and standardized testing regime “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 to more fully understand the COMPLETE INVALIDITIES involved in that malpractice regime.
Or read his review of the testing bible: A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
Governor Cuomo’s moratorium on the use of Common Core (“Next-Gen” is the re-brand)
tests has rendered them moot. Students who are veterans of Pearson’s academic death traps seem immune to them now. We have a generation of students that only know testing. The opt-out movement peaked in 2016 at 21% but has declined slightly to 19# in 2018. What really helped in NY was the use of shared or distributed Regents test scores to evaluate virtually all K to 12 teachers. This removed the pressure that was placed on individual teachers regarding the 50% test score component of the APPR. However the proposed legislation that would de-couple test scores from teacher evaluations was shunned by the NY legislators this spring, so the existing law remains in place. The four year moratorium on the use of CC test scores ends after this school year.
OptOut still has high participation rates. I’d like to see if pro-testing lobbying expenditures are as large as they one were. Bills to reduce testing to grade span instead of annual frequency have been proposed. Privatization schemes have not raised scores, much to the chagrin of the greedy oligarchs, making testing unpopular even with some corporate reformy types. The ESSA is up for renewal next year.
The ESSA is up for renewal next year! Just because some of the most heinous punishments have been eliminated doesn’t mean people have begun to like the testing or get anything out of it. The astroturf groups masquerading as civil rights groups will be called out by true progressives slowly and methodically taking back the Democratic Party from tech and hedge fund billionaires. (See the hilarious article I linked below about tech and hedge fund billionaires.) The anti-testing movement is not over and not resting. Parents who care about their children and teachers who care about education do not rest. As long as annual testing is mandatory, testing advocates will lose votes. This fight ain’t over. Not by a long shot.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity
“Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon).”
Digital capitalism is the next big fight on the horizon. Gates and Silicon Valley are determined to force their products into public schools under the guise of cutting edge “education.” The lvy League capitalists and corporations plan to decouple schooling from its building with progress measured in digital badges. It is really deadly multiple choice testing all the time! It is unreal that these groups can dream this crap up without input from anyone other than other techno geeks. While it’s doomed, these “edupreneurs” are backed by billionaires so young people will be subjected to another round of test tube testing. I keep waiting for parents to scream, “Stop the madness.”
Well-said. Our district is hell-bent on one-to-one Chromebooks, and students learning “anytime, anywhere.”
I honestly think that if our admins could rid themselves of teachers (huge cost savings), they would do it in a nanosecond.
Except that Utah, which allows opting-out in state law, has been denied a waiver for ESSA by DeVos because the opt-out numbers are higher than 5%. I don’t know if the feds would truly withold money, but I guess Utah isn’t taking the chance (wish they would).
The Opt Out movement is alive and thriving on NY’s Long Island. Overall Long Island’s schools are the best in the nation. We are well aware the high stakes testing narrows the curriculum and poses a serious risk to our students. That is why we opt out.
I’m not sure of where to post this since guns and their resulting killings haven’t been mentioned much recently. I’m sure that red Indiana can now rest easily because most school districts have requested the hand held metal detectors. There will be NO political discussion of getting rid of guns. This state underfunds schools and boasts of its budget. Teacher salaries have gone down 15% in the last 15 years. This will not stop more killings from happening. It is a bandaid on a huge cancer.
…………………………….
Most Indiana public, charter and private schools request free hand-held metal detectors from state..[NWI Times]
INDIANAPOLIS — The state has ordered 3,228 hand-held metal detectors for delivery in August to the 369 school corporations, charter schools and private schools that requested the devices at no cost to the schools.
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb this month announced the state would cover the projected $550,000 expense of providing one metal detecting wand for every 250 students as part of a broad strategy to improve school safety following the May 25 nonfatal shooting of a student and a teacher at a suburban Indianapolis middle school.
Approximately 94 percent of public school corporations requested the devices by the July 19 deadline, according to the governor’s office.
Currently, officials in each school district will decide when, where and how to use the devices in their school buildings, since the Indiana Department of Education has yet to release statewide guidance for standardized deployment of the devices…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/most-indiana-public-charter-and-private-schools-request-free-hand/article_44ed8da5-4acd-59cf-a956-237f234b5faf.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share