Peter Greene has noticed that some of the leading reformers acknowledge disillusionment with the “Big Standardized Test.”
And yet we plod along, one foot in front of another, obeying a law that requires teachers to do what they know is wrong.
He cautions:
There is one critical lesson that ed reform testing apostates should keep in mind. The idea that the Big Standardized Test does not measure what it claims to measure, the idea that it actually does damage to schools, the idea that it simply isn’t what it claims to be– while these ideas are presented as new notions for ed reformers, classroom teachers have been raising these concerns for about 20 years.
Teachers have said, repeatedly, that the tests don’t measure what they claim to measure, and that the educational process in schools is being narrowed and weakened in order to focus on testing. Teachers have said, repeatedly, that the Big Standardized Tests are a waste of time and money and not helping students get an education. Teachers have been saying it over and over and over again. In return teachers have been told, “You are just afraid of accountability” and “These tests will finally keep you honest.”
After 20 years, folks are starting to figure out that teachers were actually correct. The Big Standardized Test is not helping, not working, and not measuring what it claims to measure. Teachers should probably not hold their collective breath waiting for an apology, though it is the generation of students subjected to test-centered schooling that deserve an apology. In the meantime, if ed reform thought leader policy wonk mavens learn one thing, let it be this– the next time you propose an Awesome idea for fixing schools and a whole bunch of professional educators tell you why your idea is not great, listen to them.
Reformers listen to teachers? What an idea! Don’t hold your breath.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No kidding, LISTEN to TEACHERS, esp. Public School Teachers. Teachers have the “real-time” information and know better than any test score can begin to reveal.
Think: SULLY landing that passenger plane on the Hudson. Sully had the knowledge, experience, and the real-time information.
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“The revenue stream generated by the tests, the pre-tests, the test prep materials, and the huge mountains of data being mined– those will be nearly impossible to walk away from.”
This is a big problem in this country. Instead of doing what is best for students, we opt to follow the money. This is why politicians will continue to push for fake accountability in the form of standardized tests. It is also why parents should continue to opt students out of standardized testing because they are a waste of time and money. They also stress out young students for whom this testing is inappropriate.
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https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Is-The-Big-Standardized-Te-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Reform_Standardized-Tests-181016-20.html#comment714179
my comment:
So, evaluating teachers as incompetent because of kids test scores and throwing out the door all those great teachers who really help children to master life-skills, has left us with schools where children learn nothing they can use to help them do the hard work the life requires.
So, how much do test scores really tell us, anyway? It turns out: A lot less than we’d like. Today, advocates will describe a teacher as “effective” when what they really mean is that the teacher’s students had big increases in reading and math scores. The teachers who produce improvements in student behavior and noncognitive skills are not particularly likely to be the same teachers who improve test scores.
The growing literature on early childhood education has found that short-term impacts on test scores are inconsistent predictors of later-life impacts . . It turns out that teacher impacts on test scores are almost entirely uncorrelated with teacher impacts on student classroom behavior, attendance, truancy, and grades . . .
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The standardized-test-based “Value-Added Method” (VAM) of evaluating teachers has been thoroughly trashed by the very people who know the most about it: The American Statistical Association (ASA), the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, and they know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA slammed the deceptively-labeled ‘Value-Added Method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers because VAM falsely claims to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. But the ASA lays bare the fact that THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS with reliability and validity. It’s pure political ideology to claim that VAM can do these things.
In an official statement, the ASA points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district-and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
A copy of the VAM-slamming ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers or principals — and teachers’ and principals’ unions should fight all evaluations based on student test scores with the ASA statement as a good foundation for their fight.
Fight back! Never, never, never give up!
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Moreover, what happens at home is what makes the difference, but blaming the teacher is so much easier. It seems that whether the child is in a public school or a charter school, what really counts is the FAMILY INCOME LEVEL.
As the BROOKINGS INSTITUTE STUDY explains, the big lie is familiar: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-myth-of-charter-school
“American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many BAD TEACHERS teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The ONLY HOPE e for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is ESCAPE from PUBLIC SCHOOLS, to CHARTER schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.”
“Today, charter schools are promoted not as ways to collaborate with public schools but as competitors that will force them to get better or go out of business. In fact, they have become the force for privatization that Shanker feared.”
Waiting for “Superman” and the other films appeal to a broad apprehension that the nation is falling behind in global competition. If the economy is a shambles, if poverty persists for significant segments of the population, if American kids are not as serious about their studies as their peers in other nations, the schools must be to blame.
BUT “there was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.”
Charter operators cynically use children as political pawns in their own campaign to promote their cause. Like the author of this article “I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the much-maligned American public education system, where no one has to win a lottery to gain admission.”
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There are many things but the thing that bothers me most now is the assault on truth. Post truth, alternative truths, never were in our lexicon until recently. Academia and journalism is denigrated, even vilified. Factcheck even is often not believed or is modified to suit that which people wish to believe.
THAT is absolutely basic. When truth itself is pushed aside, what is left?
The assault on education is one aspect of that.assault. Actually education in its purest sense is about the search for truth.
SO, it is nice that SOME people are recognizing that paper and pencil tests have little to do with true education but what difference will it make? Money is more important than people in so very many ways in our society now.
God help us.
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“Actually education in its purest sense is about the search for truth.”
To paraphrase what Scisne stated above (and many times before):
“A copy of That Sentence should be posted on the teacher’s bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher. . . .”
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And, while we are on the subject of WHAT DOES NOT WORK…. and where the real divide occurs there is this article in the NY Times “‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Students ” Times”https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/charlottesville-riots-black-students-schools.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage “Dr. Atkins acknowledged that some minority students may be discouraged from taking higher-level courses that could qualify them for better colleges and said that the district will remind parents to bring these rebuffs to her attention”.
“Mayor Walker, whose son is a sophomore at Charlottesville High, said some attitudes have not changed: “There have been a lot of people who just don’t believe in the potential of our kids.” No matter how high your scores are or how many hours you put into your work, you are still black,” Zyahna said. “There’s a whole system you’re up against. Every small victory just cuts a hole into that system reminding you how fragile it is. But it’s still there.”
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I think we all need to be paying more attention to Wrench in the Gears: https://wrenchinthegears.com/ Since about 2015 she has been gradually understanding and documenting that “Reform” as we all understand it – standardized tests, charter schools, deprofessionalizing of teaching, etc. – was only stage one. We are now on “Reform 2.0”, which no longer requires standardized testing, at least as we understand it, so the Reformers are quite happy to toss it aside.
Reform 2.0 is all about “personalized” [sic] learning, tracking and data mining. In fact, WitG’s current post explains the nuts and bolts of it. The point is that the elites see a future where few people will have stable employment. The rest of us will need to be highly adaptable meat widgets who can be re-skilled to interact as needed with the AI/algorithmic world rather than a human/humane world. They are instilling the expectation of digital interaction/immersion in younger and younger kids, first by making it “fun” and later by making it mandatory if you want to do anything. For those who missed it, the ultimate result of this is a “Social Credit” system like China is now moving toward. Don’t think that it’s just those crazy Chinese who will face this complete digital panopticon. We’re next.
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The original Wired story about Social Credit: https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/
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When I read Wrench in the Gears. it gave me an agita attack. It presents the technocratic cabal poised to crush human education as we know it. I found it deeply disturbing on many levels, mostly because there are so many wealthy oligarchs waiting to pounce on our schools and young people. We have to fight back so that our young people do not become the property of corporations that will control all information available to them, a very dangerous dystopia. We must not allow this to become our collective future.
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“When I read Wrench in the Gears. it gave me an agita attack.”
Yes, I have a hard time reading her work. My brain wants to shut down. I want to run away. I think maybe that’s why some people deny things like climate change – it just seems like such a dire, overwhelming, existential threat that our systems aren’t designed to handle it.
Unfortunately, that exact reaction is why it’s so important to force ourselves to look at things like that.
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her connections to GLOBAL goals are truly frightening
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Here is a basic problem. ESSA requires the tests. The testing regime from NCLB continues in ESSA because there were organized efforts to keep the tests by civil rights groups, joined by charter advocates who wanted tests for their own reasons.
Here is just one of the letters forwarded to support testing in ESSA. Note that the letter came from a group with 200 members, and relatively few (here 31) endorsed the statement. I tracked this lobbying effort for a while.
The same coalition has been active in looking at the ESSA plans in various states, especially those seeking waivers from some of the minutia in ESSA requirements for testing (e.g., number of students in a subgroup, stipulations about grade levels for tests).
The lobbying effort on behalf of tests will continue not only because testing is big business, but also because many of these groups actually want test-centric schools, including test-centric charter schools. In fact many of the groups that signed on to this lobbying effort have been funded by fans of billionaire foundation whose mission is privatizing education.
The cover story–that these tests are objective and make visible inequities–is also easy to pick up as “evidence” of less teacher effort and effectiveness, and more rarely the inequities in resources provided to teachers and students.
I regret that the NAACP (now opposed to the testing regime) did not intervene early enough and with allies to kill off the testing before it became hardwired into ESSA.
Look closely at the organizations joining in the “civil rights” pitch for tests in ESSA.
https://civilrights.org/statement-of-31-civil-and-human-rights-and-education-groups-on-draft-essa-accountability-regulations/
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Laura,
It would be interesting to know how many of these organizations are funded by Gates.
At the time, I heard that the statement was organized by Education Trust, a Gates Favorite.
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I’ve said for some time that there are two places – and only two places – where the “reformers” should have looked (and listened) before making changes:
1. Teachers’ own notes about their students
2. Teachers’ heads
These are the two places that, by all appearances, reformers never looked.
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How interested are you. More than you probably wanted to know is here.
In this link you can see a last-minute push from the Education Trust and The Foundation for Excellence in Education working the following groups to make sure that “frequent testing” was a big feature of ESSA. Joining in this January 2015 campaign were the following: Stand for Children, Thomas B Fordham Institute, Bellwether Education Partners, TNTP (The New Teachers Project) and EdTrust with a (dead) link to a list of 20 civil rights groups supporting “principles for ESSA.” http://pie-network.org/article/leading-advocates-agree-annual-testing-matters/
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights“ published several letters with “guiding principles” for the reauthorization of ESSA. This seems to the most recent letter, April 2016, complaining that the state plans are not compliant with ESSA. I notice that NAACP signed on to this one. https://1k9gl1yevnfp2lpq1dhrqe17-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Coalition-Letter-to-Acting-Secretary-John-B-King-Regarding-US-Department-of-Education-Using-Robust-Regulation-Oversight-in-Implementation-of-ESSA.pdf
My 2015 Jan-Feb blog notes reflect some earlier research on the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the umbrella for other groups that issued a press release filled with “principles” for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind. Some of the leaders of the major civil and human rights group basically wanted more of the same old NCLB requirements with some added pressure on every school if children who do not “perform at grade level” on annual tests. The press release WAS here http://www.edtrust.org/dc/press-room/news/nearly-20-civil-rights-groups-and-education-advocates-release-principles-for-esea
Unfortunately that press release is no longer available at the website or via the Wayback Machine. Even so, in 2015, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights had 200 members. Of these, only 20 signed that press release with a wish list for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I knew some had Gates funding. My notes from 2015 reflect “about total funding to date” for nine of the signers.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights over $4.9 million
The Children’s Defense Fund, $435,000 some for general operating expenses.
Easter Seals, $10, 676.
The Education Trust, $22.3 million, much for general operating expenses.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), about $2.5 million.
The National Council of La Raza about $34.4 million with over $24 million earmarked for charter schools.
The National Urban League, bout 5.3 million
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, about $1.8 million.
United Negro College Fund, over $1.5 billion. most for scholarship, but over $61 million for general operating expenses and “partnerships.”
The sum of Gates grants to these organizations was: $1,655,451,248.
Among the 180 organizations that did NOT sign the press release from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, four were conspicuous for withholding their endorsement while also benefiting from grants from Gates. American Federation of Teachers Foundation, 11.2 million; National Education Association Foundation, $3.9 million); Teach for America, $23 million: and National Parent Teacher Association, $2.9 million). This total was $33,948,639.
In 2011, the ACLU aligned itself with a slightly different group of organizations, all complaining that a (failed) senate bill for NCLB reauthorization was too flexible. The letter said in part: “Federal funding must be attached to firm, ambitious and unequivocal demands for higher achievement, high school graduation rates and gap closing. We know that states, school districts, and schools needed a more modern and focused law. However, we respectfully believe that the bill goes too far in providing flexibility by marginalizing the focus on the achievement of disadvantaged students.“
That 2011 letter was also signed by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and 20 other groups, but not all of them also signed later press releases. Who were the dropouts? Business Coalition for Student Achievement, Chiefs for Change, Democrats for Education Reform, National Down Syndrome Society, Partners for Each and Every Child, Poverty & Race Research Action Council, The New Teachers Project, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. See https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/civil_rights_coalition_letter_on_esea_accountability_for_senate_help_markup.pdf
In any case, the “now you can see them and now you can’tsee them” lobbyists are still having a field day and spending big bucks to keep state plans under ESSA invested in testing the nation’s students.
It is tragic to see the civil rights “cover story” used for an unrelenting campaign to numb minds, rid teaching and learning of any sign of joy, and pontificate about achievement gaps as if test scores are unimpeachable measures of achievement and raising those scores is what matters most.
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Laura,
One of your best!
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Thanks, Laura…you’re a hero of mine. I’ve used your invaluable info. on CAN in repeated conversations w/influential people.
Because of your diligence, they get it, & something can be done.
Stay tuned.
(You are the equivalent {impressive for 1 person!}of a whole organization, like the IL Campaign for Political Reform {which was also commonly called “IL Sunshine”}; they simplified it into “Reform for IL,” & one can look up all the info. RE: political contributions to candidates & follow the money.)
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Trying to stop high stakes testing and using student scores on tests that they know are meaningless for their future, have no affect on their grades or their changes of going to college, getting into the military, or getting a job is like trying to stop a fully loaded coal or oil train. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying. It is clear to me that what education needs is to require a passing score on tests of basic adult knowledge and sanity before one is allowed to run for office and the higher the office the harder the test. The current president couldn’t pass my middle school civics tests much less the tests I gave in my Political Science 101 classes at the community college! Test politicians not kids!
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“Test politicians not kids!”
This is the best idea ever.
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I have long believed and said that the politicians who pass laws mandating tests should take the eighth grade math tests and publish their scores. That would be the end of mandated testing.
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Wow, Dienne, you’re so right about “Wrench.” It’s the way I felt about reading Chris Hedges: strong medicine, but if one really wants to know what’s going on in order to do something about it, pinch your nose & swallow it down.
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