Shawgi Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.
In this post, Shawgi Tell describes the massive misuse of standardized tests created by mega-corporations.
He writes:
Charter school supporters and promoters have long been severely obsessed with comparing charter school and public school students’ scores on expensive curriculum-narrowing high-stakes standardized tests produced by big corporations. They fetishize test scores and believe such scores are useful and meaningful in some way, despite what extensive evidence has shown for decades.
One reason charter school supporters and promoters dogmatically fixate on pedagogically meaningless test scores is because they do not want to draw anyattention to the real underlying problem with charter schools, which is that they are privatized, marketized, corporatized, deregulated, deunionized, non-transparent, pro-competition, political-economic arrangements that siphon billions of public dollars from public schools every year and make rich people even richer while drowning in fraud, corruption, waste, arrests, scandal, and racketeering.
Nonprofit and for-profit charter schools are contract schools that operate outside the public sphere and benefit mainly major owners of capital, even though they are portrayed as a way to “empower parents.” Test scores do not change this. Whether students’ scores on unsound tests produced by for-profit companies are high or low, it does not make the looting of billions of dollars in public funds by charter schools from public schools acceptable. Test scores cannot cover up this large-scale theft and destruction. Scores on tests not produced by educators and lacking a human-centered perspective necessarily serve retrogression….
Charter school supporters’ obsession with test scores is a ruse. It is designed to fool the gullible. People should recognize that public schools, funds, facilities, resources, assets, and authority belong only to the public and that wealthy private interests behind charter schools have no legitimate claim to them no matter how well or poorly charter school students—usually chosen by the school, not the other way around—score on widely-rejected corporate tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a great post. It describes how standardized test scores are being used to rob the public of a key public asset, public education. Standardized test scores have long been a vehicle to impose privatization on mostly minority communities. This legalized theft is aided by a government that is creating laws friendly to corporate privatization. If we want to stop the dismantling of our public schools, we have to change the laws that legitimizes the theft of public assets and abandon our obsession with standardized test scores.
Beautifully said
He issue is actually both.
The testing companies are complicit in the theft which extends far beyond charters.
Rackets like College Board (a billion dollar business) have been stealing money from the public for a very long time.
Definitely, no doubt, undeniably that the issue encompasses both the testing realm and the theft of public school funds.
The worst part of both by far is the damage done to the teaching and learning process by the focus on the educational malpractices that are the standards and testing regime. Those harms to the very being of the students are well known. To whom do we owe the most ethical considerations? The innocent students in our charge. To not consider the multiple negative effects of that malpractice regime is unethical and immoral, plain and simple.
What compounds those harms is the fact that the malpractice regime is purported to be scientific, authentic, true, real, an unassailable method of assessing student work, abilities and knowledge. It is none of those things. The standards and testing malpractice regime has been repeatedly shown to be based on onto-epistemological (conceptual foundational) falsehoods that render any usage of the results for anything completely invalid. Relying on completely invalid results for anything is absurd, insane, outrageous, unethical and immoral. When will the madness stop?
I’d bet my life that the madness won’t stop until after I’m dead, if ever.
Duane
Unfortunately I think you are right.
The latest admissions scandal focussing on just 50 people is evidence of this.
By blaming a few individuals, the colleges and universities and testing companies can claim they were simply victims.
In fact, many have done just that.
But as you well know, the REAL scandal is that the admissions process has become irremediably broken.
But no one will address that because college has become very big business and everyone (testing companies, colleges, even the Federal government) ipstands to make billions off of students.
I’d have to say that it will go on until the whole stinking edifice collapses because most Americans can no longer afford college.
Very…what is the word I want here?…perspicacious. If taxpayers understood the extent to which they are subsidizing, by their support of public schools, the bottom lines of a giant multinational like Pearson, I ‘d like to think they would raise hell about it.
yes. what a waste of billions that could be, say, funding wrap-around services for poor kids
Here’s an interview with two ed reformers conducted by an ed reform platform where they congratulate each other on how brilliant and brave they are:
Haslam: That was our challenge as well. The year before I came in, the United States Chamber of Commerce gave Tennessee an F for truth in advertising. We were saying that 70 percent of our kids were proficient at grade level, but when those same kids got to community college, 70 percent of them needed remedial work. There’s no way both of those things were true.”
All of ed reform accepted the standardized tests that colleges use to determine if the students need remediation WITHOUT QUESTION.
The colleges say “our tests indicate 70% need remedial work” and that is just swallowed whole.
This isn’t critical thinking. They do no analysis at all. They blindly accept any number the college throws out there. It didn’t occur to any of them that pushing more and more students into remedial classes benefits colleges?
What if 70% of students do not, in fact, need remediation and instead colleges just stupidly relied on standardized tests that are garbage?
In my day a lot of those remedial classes would have been called “Introduction to X”. Not everyone was equally ready for the same level of class. they were part of the standard curriculum. You could test out of some such classes, but not testing out was not an indictment. Many if not most students took the introductory classes. It is true that today a lot more students go to college who would not have in the past. It would only be logical that more people would require some “remedial” work.
“IvankaTrump told reporters, “We need to modernize our higher education system to make it affordable, flexible, and outcomes-oriented. … We think these are absolutely critical reforms, and really the most comprehensive approach to higher ed reform in over a decade.”
It’s really insulting to working and middle class families that these completely unqualified people who achieved nothing besides being born into wealthy and powerful families are “given” education as make-work jobs.
Ivanka Trum doesn’t know the first thing about paying for a college education, competing for a position, or living on a budget.
She had absolutely nothing to teach my children and I sure hope she’s not burning through tax dollars with her ridiculous celebrity hobbies.
Here, let me correct that for you:
“IvankaTrump told her Singapore staff, “We need to modernize our clothing line to make it affordable, flexible, and outcomes-oriented. … We think these are absolutely critical pumps, and really the most comprehensive approach to higher heels in over a decade.”
She is repeating the same old, tired line that will serve as a way to justify “reforming” ie. trashing the existing system. “Modernize” and “flexible” are terms to clear a path for cheap cyber instruction. The exact type of faux education to which Ivanka was never subjected. It is all part of conditioning the working class to accept less and less.
The billionaires’ plan for higher ed oligarchy is evident in (1) a PPIC paper that proposes outside control of tuition, financial aid and state funding policy for Calf.’s entire system of public higher ed. PPIC is particularly disgusting because its PR gimmick is that it polls the public and those results then steer its policy proposals. But, its paper, “Coordinating Calf.’s Higher Ed. System”, fails to cite one research poll of citizens (reminiscent of Pew’s reputation for polling which masked its John Arnold pension agenda.) (2) Gates’ March job posting for an officer to accelerate digital learning and to prospect for investment opportunities in higher ed and (3) the Gates/Arnold-sponsored session at BiPartisan Policy Center, part of BPC’s new initiative targeting higher ed. K-12 privatizer, George Miller is in charge of the effort.
Theft of taxpayer dollars – and theft of educational opportunities. The 21st century, standards-based, test-and-punish reform policies robbed a generation of children of a well rounded, holistic, age appropriate public education. This corporate scheme was accomplished with the full support of our federal government in a conspiracy that should absolutely outrage parents. The victims were harmed in immeasurable ways while reformers pretended they could measure school success with lousy standards and even worse assessments.The damage inflicted is permanent and parents and taxpayers should seek financial reparations.
“And theft of educational opportunities” is the most disgusting, unethical and immoral result of the standards and testing regime.
MAGA:
Make the A****** Go Away.
Sometimes it’s hard to be civil.
Great article.
When entire state departments of education and ESSA plus the earlier NCLB are required to focus on testing, the issue of theft of public education cannot be linked exclusively to charter schools. RageAgainstTheTestocracy has it right.
Ohio is one example of a state still using scores on standardized tests and the dreaded and discredited value-added scores (VAM) to rate teachers and schools. The state has been a captive of the massive marketing of tests and statistical myths about the proper way to analyze the scores. The state has conjured bizzarre math-like operations to create the illusion of being perfectly objective even if the test scores and other invalid “measurables” make no sense. The result is evident in a complex data dashboard having no merit, not even as a graphic design.
Tennessee, the birthplace of value added measures–originally used for genetic studies in agrigulture and to monitor the productivity of seeds, sows, and cows–has just completed a “study” of ineffective teachers and the scores their students receive on state tests in two subjects.
All of the test scores are combined with a Tennessee teacher observation score, then reduced to a five point scheme to rate teachers, with the lowest two ratings classifying the teacher as “ineffective.” You can see the predictable findings and how they will be used here. I found no discussion or interest in linking any data to resources for schools, resources lost to charter schools, or the churn in school administrators.
https://www.wjhl.com/local/study-could-influence-tennessee-policy-on-student-classroom-placement/1861044907
New York State still uses test scores as part of our APPR evaluation. Test scores are 50% of the evaluation, however we are in the last year of a four year moratorium on use of the 3 to 8 mat and ELA tests.
Instead the majority of teachers are evaluated using shared or distributed scores from five high school Regents tests.
No VAM formulas however; instead we use SLOs with growth targets.
This system has lost all credibility with the exception of the few remaining Kool Aid drinkers.
Rage,
That’s crazy.
It is down the rabbit hole crazy. The cognitive dissonance this policy produces makes it impossible to believe. The use of shared Regents scores is has been flying under the radar ever since the CC moratorium, three years ago. No one gripes about it because districts set growth targets that ensure their teachers will receive “effective” ratings, avoiding the inconvenience of all teachers getting TIPed (Teacher Improvement Plan). A complete farce; Kabuki Theater at best. I’m not sure if NYC/UFT is using the shared score policy that the majority of upstate districts are using. I have been flabbergasted that this absurd use of Regents test scores has gone unnoticed for three years.
So, how do they evaluate art and music teachers?
With shared Regents scores?
Ha ha ha.
NY used to have a pretty good education system.
How far they have fallen under Cuomo, Jr.
“So, how do they evaluate art and music teachers?”
Many, if not the majority of upstate districts are using the combined or average of the five Regents tests required for graduation (Note: multiple re-takes are allowed and common):
Living Environment (9 or 10)
CC Algebra I (8 or 9)
Global History (10)
US History (11)
CC ELA (11)
Absurdity aside, this policy has had the overall benefit of relieving the pressures produced by the direct, “test-and-threaten-and shame” instituted under NY’s RTTT “win” ($700 million). Winning this USDOE contest has collectively cost school districts much more than the little they received once the 700 million dollar pie was sliced up.
This is goofy and reflects poorly on Tennessee education leaders. VAM has been thoroughly discredited. It belongs in the trash can of history as a Failed Experiment.
Laura: what you do not see in the things you talk about regarding Tennessee is that, for years, when the evaluation observation did not match the observable test scores, the state gave the evaluator hassle. Teachers were guilty until proven innocent.
Today we are not supposed to be considering the scores because the machines messed up. Still, bad scores make teachers wonder if the administors will not come in with a poor evaluation in order to keep the state woldf from the door.
The “misuse of standardized tests” implies that there is a proper use of standardized tests. That problem infects the whole article.
Exactly, Dienne77!
There can be no “proper use” of an educational malpractice that has been repeatedly shown to be completely invalid. Unethical and immoral are the terms that come to my mind when realizing that using those malpractices in harming the students’ very being.
Part of the problem is that researchers in different fields don’t critique one another or even talk to one another.
So those in biology, physics, chemistry, geology who regularly measure physical stuff don’t correct those in social sciences (psychology, economics, psychiatry, etc) when they misuse the term measurement to apply to mental stuff that is nebulous and subjective by its very nature.
As you point out Duane, measurement really should not be applied to thinking, other than at a purely physical level, eg, measurement of neurons and brain activity with MRI.
Duane and Dienne
I’d venture to say that no one who supports the use of standardized tests could tell you precisely what they are (supposedly) measuring.
Measurement is one of those words that lots of people use but very few actually understand.
It’s like the guy in Princess Bride who kept using the word inconceivable without knowing what it actually meant.
It is an inherently scientific term and can not be legitimately used in a nonscientific context, though lots of people do just that when they claim they are measuring learning.
So, what is learning? –Other, that is than what the tests supposedly measure (which, of course, gets us into a circularity)
Inconceivable!
I noticed that little ‘word reversal’ in your last paragraph, making me suspect you if having a little ‘misfire’ problem that can, in fact, be a great asset for a poet, or a scientist, or a musician, or and artist, or just about any human being other than a deductive logician. Such ‘mistakes’ are the language of evolution, the language of Nature. They are the very source of genuine creativity, which is the source of a vibrant society. AND, you would have been marked WRONG!!! on a standardized test.
SDP, I’ve shared this many times concerning “measuring” in the education realm. It needs to be repeated often:
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
And to repost one of your thoughts that I saved:
Whatever is measured counts
Whatever counts is measured
And counting whatever measures
Is measuring whatever counts
SomeDam Poet.
One more post that I believe that I wrote, not sure when but anyway here it is:
Using that pyritic coin of the realm known as standardized test scores can ONLY result in error-filled and false conclusions. It is a perfect example of the “Crap in, crap out” principle.
One cannot make a filet mignon with ground beef.
Now one can make a fine Foie gras with the livers from many dead ducks/geese.
The standardized testing proponents want you to believe that they’ve made a statistical foie gras from the brains of the students but not wanting you to know that they have killed many student minds in the process.
Yet we continue to use standardized test scores, students’ brain matter on our hands, as the coin of the realm,
Shawgi Tell crushes it! Not a minced word.
Agree – his last paragraph should be requried reading – it sums it all up handily.