If you want to know why parents in New York have opted out in record numbers for the past few years, read testing expert Fred Smith’s account of the chaos and tumult inflicted on the children of the state by the State Education Department.
Disruption! Change! Instability!
Smith, who worked for many years as a testing expert at the New York City Board of Education, writes:
Latch onto this, folks:
Let’s look at the fundamental uselessness of the testing program–a plague visited annually on 1.2 million students, teachers and schools. Several transformative changes occurred over the course of the Common Core era that render efforts to understand the results from year to year a nullity:
· Revision of the testing framework between 2011 and 2012 as part of the “education reform agenda” leading to the imposition of “rigorous” testing;
· A transition period (2012) allowing the new publisher Pearson one year to familiarize itself with the scope of New York State testing prior to full-fledged introduction of the Common Core Learning Standards;
· Initiation of core-aligned tests in 2013 and establishment of a baseline against which to measure student progress in meeting the standards;
· A shift in the statewide testing population in 2014 and 2015, with 20 percent of the students opting out of the exams;
· Removal of time limits from the tests in 2016 taking away uniformity in their administration and making comparisons with previous years of (timed) tests invalid;
· Switch to a new publisher in 2017 (Questar) after a handoff from Pearson, which is an unaccounted for source of variation in the construction of the exams and the results they yield;
· Reducing the number of testing days from three to two and altering the scoring scale in 2018, defying attempts to make sense of results or draw conclusions about progress.
So, in virtually every year from 2012 through 2018 there have been differences in the publishers, the test population and the test parameters. And we’re not even talking about the mysterious derivation of the cut off scores that define student performance level on the exams. Such discontinuity is antithetical to the establishment of a coherent testing system. SED’s admonition about the inability to draw comparisons between 2017 and 2018 actually holds true throughout the unstable Common Core span.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Such discontinuity is antithetical to the establishment of a coherent testing system.
In ELA, even if none of these problems had occurred, we still wouldn’t have “a coherent testing system” because given what is testing (the Common [sic] Core [sic] Learning [sic] Standards [sic], NO SUCH SYSTEM is possible: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/how-to-prevent-another-parcc-mugging-a-public-service-announcement/
Testing is like one of those Russian dolls.
Whenever you try to disassemble it to find out what’s inside, all you find is a smaller doll that looks just like what you started with.
Of course, this is all by design.
Another analogy is the image from a camera pointed at a computer monitor displaying the image.
No matter how much you zoom in, you always see the same thing.
Again, this is by design. They don’t want you seeing that there is really nothing at the core.
“Test Integrity”
“Integrity of Standard Test”
Is oxymoron at its best
To test a standard that is junk
Is nothing more than purest bunk
Word, SomeDAM!
But the implementation!
This has been such a racket from day one. They’ll use this instability as an excuse for ten more years to give it “a real shot.” Have we reached your ten-year evaluation mark, yet, Mr. Gates?
Absolutely. Always more “new and improved” more of the same!
The ten year mark is coming up in a year.
Of course, when Gates said
It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”
He never even defined “worked” or “education stuff”, so it’s impossible to say what he even meant.
But the critical thing is that even he does not know what he meant.
For someone who claims to be science and data driven, Gates has absolutely no clue what science is about. Science is ALL about formulating a very specific hypothesis and specifying a very specific procedure to be carried out on a population and then comparing the specific outcome to that of a control group on which no such procedure was carried out.
Gates gibberish language is all that one needs to look at to know the fellow is clueless about science.
He should have stayed at Harvard and taken Sone real science courses (biology, chem, physics, geology, etc — something besides computer “science,” which is a fake science.
In 2012, Melinda Gates said in an interview on PBS, “We know how to produce great teachers,” she did not define what any of her words meant. Who is “we?”
When will Bill and Melinda be held accountable for messing up the whole national education system, based on their whims and hunches?
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” — from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Bill Gates is to be master, that’s all.
I have worked with a lot of computer “science” types like Gates and quite frankly, they scare the hell out of me precisely because they take such an unscientific approach.
Their idea of science is to make changes to systems (including human systems like the education system) willy nilly without understanding how they work or thinking about the possible negative ramifications.
They simply throw something out there and see what effect it has. It should go without saying that this is a particularly foolish approach when it involves experimenting on millions of school children or when it involves potentially dangerous technology (eg, autonomous killing machines, which computer “scientists” are undoubtedly developing and testing at this very moment)
Exactly, Ohio teacher! There are always excuses, but now even some of the Ed Deformers are starting to realize that the gig is up with high-stakes standardized testing–that it’s totally bogus and has not delivered on any of its claims.
The state seems not to care about accuracy or fairness. The goal is to collect data, even if the data is meaningless. The powers that be will ascribe meaning to the “mishigas.” The testing is rigged.
“The goal is to collect data.” Yes, data is an end in itself. It’s OK if it’s bad data or if no one knows how to interpret it.
In some districts the NYSED data is so useless and delivered so late that they resort to benchmark testing at mid-year. Some question the validity of this benchmark testing as well.
When it comes to the instinctive, qualitative data that teachers cllect on a daily basis, I have yet to find anyone in the field who finds any palpable improvement in student reading, writing, or math.
Every teacher I talk to detects overall decline in student ability –even in only two areas we put almost all our effort into: reading and math! (Please speak up if you’re a teacher who sees gains under this Common Core regime; I’m genuinely interested in hearing another perspective.) I suspect the chaos in the testing regime may be calculated to mask this embarrassing fact. If you can’t compare scores, you can’t see the decline.
Why am I almost sure we’re making kids dumber? Isn’t Common Core supposed to be more rigorous and productive of critical thinking than what preceded it? That’s certainly the PR that rolls of the tongue of almost every educator and education bureaucrat in our benighted country, but why in the world does everyone buy it? Just because you claim Product X does Y does not mean that Product X does Y. Product X is not doing Y, people!
Could it be that the constant turmoil and disruption at the top is undermining education?
Disruption is what our bribed politicians have inflicted on our young people, a constant barrage of bad ideas and failed experiments with no evidence to support any of it. Shameful!
In my new book (to be published in January) I change the name of Reformers to Disrupters.
The fundamental flaw of Common Core is that it’s based on the idea school is a mental gym where, if kids do enough analyzing and problem solving, their general intelligence will rise. Acquiring knowledge of the world is not a primary focus. I’d say 98% of teachers and most of the public agree with this general premise. But what if this premise is wrong? There exists a dissent faction in the education world, including Richard Clark at USC, cognitive scientist Dan Willingham at UVA, and E.D. Hirsch , that firmly believe that the premise is wrong. What’s their alternative conception of school? Something more like the best traditional schools the world has produced, where hungry minds are fed rich knowledge about the world in a lucid, sequential, interesting and interactive way, and then given opportunities to make that knowledge their own, to digest and internalize it, through writing, debates and other activities. The activities are important, but not the “main event”. The “main event” is learning about the world and stocking the long term memory. This concept is risible in the eyes of orthodox educators today but it shouldn’t be. Cognitive science is proving, more and more, that all of the vaunted skills they (falsely) claim their methods produce are actually produced by endowing the long-term memory. For example, reading comprehension is 95% recognition. You only re-cognize what you’ve “cognized” (learned) earlier. Thus to build reading comprehension you expose kids to a wide range of knowledge about the world so that they’re recognize it when they see it on the page. Today’s conventional approach to teaching reading, on the other hand, is not to build background knowledge, but to have kids grapple with tough texts in the vain hope that this will build a muscle in their brain that comprehends texts. This is simply incorrect. Reading comprehension ability does not grow that way. It’s the same with other skills, like problem solving. Knowledge, not work-outs, is their essential foundation. Thus in their quest to build skills by directly “teaching” skills ( having kids do brain training exercises), teachers are actually stunting kids’ mental growth. There is zero proof their approach works (lay people reading this are probably thinking: that’s impossible. They wouldn’t have launched Common Core on the whole country if they hadn’t tested it! Um…they hadn’t tested it). The indirect approach –endowing the mind with broad world knowledge through lucid presentation and practice –the approach taken from ancient Greece to China to West Africa to the top prep schools and colleges in America–is the proven approach. Common Core will never work because it’s based on a false premise.
The vague and highly subjective skill sets of Common Core along with promises of deep understanding and 21st century problem solving skills was a fool’s errand that not only has failed miserably, creating a generation of young people who not only can’t solve problems or explain the deep understanding of topics, but who also lack even a shallow foundation of world knowledge. The testing regime that came along with the standards has also numbed the Common Core generation into an mindset devoid of curiosity, the very driver of learning.
I teach 3rd grade and I do see a major difference in depth and critical thinking skills in common core vs when I taught 3rd grade my first year teaching in the 1990’s. While it is not perfect, common core imo has made a positive impact on students when teachers truly embrace it and are supported in its teaching . I do not agree with the SBAC , which is what I’m forced to give. What has changed over the years that has made learning more difficult is the increase in poverty and social emotional issues. Also, the fear based decisions stemming from NCLB impacted the amount of time given in the classroom to teach social studies and science which has continued on. Content knowledge is important but I am quite literally handed my daily schedule to follow with social studies and science nowhere on it. This is not a common core issue as we have strong content standards that fit very well with it. The shift from daily content teaching at the elementary level came when heavy testing came with fears of school take overs (fire and replace etc). Btw… my 3rd graders continue to blow me away with their mathematical thinking. The more I become stronger at teaching to the common core, the deeper thinking I see. It far surpasses what I saw with more traditional standards in the 1990’s. I just wish we could tackle the real reasons students are struggling (societal issues, behavior, emotional struggles, flexibility with time to teach content better, less time on copious amounts of testing that really do not help me teach better, class size….).
Glad to hear that CC is working somewhere. Could you provide some specific examples of those higher order thinking and problem solving skills you are seeing in your 3rd grade students?
I sure hope these 3rd graders use their “higher order thinking” to start solving the world’s problems. They’re going to need it!
Some of the changes noted were demands of the anti-testing groups: fewer days, don’t use test for evaluation (at least temporarily, dump pearson 9and parcc.
Testing is not going away
Try FALL testing!
Yes – to the fall.
Let’s see what the kids know so we have a year to target needs and enhace srtrengths.
Stakes would be lower because learning would have to be true learning – from previous years
No testing fixation and day after day pressure.
No test prep and high stakes formative assessments pressure on teachers
Results back in the same school year to debrief with kids and all adults
,
And, mostly, it would totally mess up the system.
Thank God for Diane and the other “regulars” on here for offering a ray of hope during those dark days when the common core and APPR and that stupid ass of a governor Andrew Cuomo were on the rise. (May those days never return.)
If the Democrats have any sense they’ll make sure their next presidential candidate has the solid support of educators.
The Dems need to change their platform which includes CBE, a ridiculous amount of useless testing, and support for charter schools.
Understanding the convoluted score reports:
Click to access ela-2018-scale-score-performance-level-conversion-charts.pdf
Click to access elascorereport-18eng.pdf
Rage’s explication posted above at 6:21 nails it for me.
Rage on. Big thumbs up!
So tomorrow my 8-9 school goes into testing mode, because 8th graders are the most important students in our school. Eleven weeks before my students take their Regents exam I am going to have two periods of the day shortened to a half hour from the usual 85 minutes, and see one block expanded to over 2.5 hours.
This will happen again on Wednesday, and twice again in a few weeks for the math exams. Oh yes, and once more in June for the science exam.
What a disservice to my students! Why aren’t their parents complaining about the loss of class time? This annual testing nonsense hurts students, at least those who are cheated of adaquate class time to prepare for their own final exam.
You have my sympathy. I am so glad those brutal days are behind me. I taught for a long time, and by the end of my career students were losing 28 mornings on standardized tests. It is insanely wasteful.