This is a wonderful article that appeared in Education Week, written by Margaret Pastor, a veteran educator in Maryland.
When I started reading, I recoiled at the thought of giving standardized tests to babies in kindergarten. Disgusting. But keep reading, as I did (if you are a subscriber).
Many of us in education have deep misgivings about the role standardized tests play in our schools. As a principal, I’ve had a front-row seat to incidents that illustrate why we should be seriously concerned. Let me tell you about one of them.
A few years ago, an assistant superintendent approached me about the performance of my kindergarten teachers. He had looked at the school’s scores from a commonly used standardized test and had identified an underperforming kindergarten teacher.
He pointed out that in one of my four kindergarten classes, the student scores were noticeably lower, while in another, the students were outperforming the other three classes. He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students.
Seems reasonable, right? But here was the problem: The “underperforming” kindergarten teacher and the “high-performing” teacher were one and the same person.
I had just two kindergarten teachers. They each taught one morning and one afternoon class.
The idea that I should have the “high performing” teacher coach her lower-performing colleague was suddenly very concerning to me, not to mention impossible. It was clear to me that I couldn’t use standardized tests to distinguish high-performing from low-performing teachers. And this incident fed the doubts that I already harbored about using those same tests-which are meant to be “scientific”-to measure student learning.
I am married to a scientist. He runs tests on plant pathology, analyzes the results, draws conclusions, and uses the results to develop solutions to the problems he studies. I am in awe of the tidiness of the whole process.
I, on the other hand, am an educator. At best, every child is an experiment of one. We test the children’s learning with admittedly limited instruments-standardized tests-that were never designed to be used as a standalone analysis. A lot of classroom time is dedicated to preparing for these tests and giving them. Results are affected by dozens of variables that we can’t control: illness, hunger, sleep deprivation, unfamiliar forms of a test, limited command of English.
It gets better and better but I have quoted as much as I can.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
High-stakes standardized testing is a cancer that robs the surrounding healthy tissue of nutrients essential to life. We have the tools to eliminate it completely. It’s time.
cx: High-stakes standardized testing is a cancer that replaces and crowds out healthy tissue and robs it of nutrients essential to life. We have the tools to eliminate it completely. It’s time.
Amen. What a story from Diane–same teacher teaching both classes, one scores high, other not. Probably does not surprise many folks on this list. For yrs, I’ve classes performing differently. Teaching and learning are situated outcomes conditioned by multiple social inputs(and by the absence of certain inputs). The academic outputs of wealthier kids are declared the standard of “excellence” which all the others must chase without the inputs underlying “excellence.”
So very well said, Ira!!!
And no, that story won’t surprise any working teacher.
Why not let the afternoon kindergarten teacher help the morning kindergarten teacher improve and pay that afternoon teacher a stipend for doing the job? A few thousand extra dollars.
Does it matter that the morning and afternoon teachers are the same person?
If the assistant superintendent (AS) was so out of touch and stupid that he/she did not know that they were talking about the same teacher, then the AS would never know what was going on to squeeze a bit more money out of the district.
That way, the same teacher would earn more money while teaching herself or himself how to improve in the morning. Maybe there would be enough money in that stipend to provide a nutritious breakfast for all of those morning kindergarten children and then their performance on the stupid test would improve.
In addition, it might help to start that morning class a half hour or an hour later or start with a half hour nap after eating the nutritious breakfast paid for by the stipend the stupid AS approved.
The key would be to never tell the AS that there were not two teachers but only one teacher. The improvement to the morning class would be the food and nap or later start time.
This post shows us that trying to evaluate teachers by student performance on standardized tests is a fool’s errand. So many states have been infected with the same false assumption.
“So many states have been infected with the same false assumption.”
NO! They have not “been infected”. All the state depts of ed, all the supe adminimals*, all the building adminimals and the vast majority of the teachers have willingly implemented these malpractices. It didn’t happen to them. They could have refused to implement those malpractices but chose to be GAGA Good German “educators” (sic).
*see post below for definition.
I am making a guess that the morning class did better than the afternoon. It is based on seeing the difference in kindergartens that also had a morning and afternoon session over many years. We noticed a similar pattern in our district. The morning class was often the children of parents that had their “stuff” together. The afternoon classes often were the children of parents that couldn’t or wouldn’t get up early in the morning for a variety of reasons, not always, but it is a trend we noticed.
So is your theory that the organized parents teach their children more and therefore they do better on the tests? I teach preschool and kindergarten and when I teach a full day program they all have a rest/nap. When I’ve had morning and afternoon sessions, I’ve found that many of the afternoon children are tired because they are missing a much-needed nap. I’m wondering if you considered that factor in your comparison. When I enrolled my daughter in public preschool, I requested the morning session. Most families request the morning session so they do a lottery. We got the afternoon session – 1:00-3:00. She was fine at school, but the ride home was a nightmare as she had missed her nap and was exhausted. I often wondered how fatigue was affecting her learning at school.
Not at all. The point is generally the students that come from higher socioeconomic and better functioning homes will do better on standardized tests. We’ve known this reality for years. The tests are not helpful.
retired teacher, we too live in an area that still has half-day K. I think you’re idea that pm-K parents didn’t have their “stuff together” may have some merit in certain cases, but that’s a minor factor, the main one being, the schedule of the K student is subservient to that of older & younger siblings. Another being that some kids are very slow-starting in am, so parents select the pm option.
“He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students.
Seems reasonable, right?”
On what planet does that seem reasonable? Even if those two teachers were two different people, what breathing human being gives a rat’s patoot about getting higher test scores from kindergarten students? Why on earth would you want to waste any teachers’ time trying to do that? If anything, I’d be inclined to have the “lower performing” teacher coach the “higher performing” one – her kids just might be having more fun.
Indeed. I keep waiting for the Bill and Belinda Gates foundation to announce its initiative for high-stakes standardized testing of fetuses.
Children are on differing developmental schedules. And guess what? That’s OK.
And kids need time to be kids, to play, to learn socialization, to practice helping and sharing, and for learning that life and learning are fun.
Melinda, ofc
I think she used that question–“Seems reasonable, right?”–entirely rhetorically and didn’t mean to imply that she thought, before looking into the matter, that this was reasonable. If she was giving standardized tests to kindergartners, this was doubtless because her district or state was requiring her to do this. Insane, yes. But often administrators have no choice.
Thanks for the reality-check, Dienne. Any kind of stdzd assessment at K-level is problematic. Just to implement it– short of hiring aides– you’ve got to rig something where you can work 1-on-1 w/ind students, while the rest are doing- unsupervised what? Even when you have a 2nd teacher [I’ve seen this done in believe-it-or-not, KPrep classes where the kids are still 4.5-5yo], you create a stressful situation in the classroom. One kid is over there w/the teacher, hesitating, maybe crying, while teacher exhorts him/her, while other kids w/in earshot are doing something else w/other teacher, dreading their turn. It’s child abuse
What a farce. To echo Lloyd’s point above, the fact that an administrator could not identify the teacher as being the same person speaks to the futility of any upper level administrator having anything to do with teacher evaluation, whether by test or by observation.
A quick summary of understood facts:
Tests do not measure
The observer affects the experiment, whatever the experiment
Testing benefits only the testmaker’s bottom line
Stacking children against each other has benefited the few at the expense of the many
Looking at the system of education from the top with a critical eye has not given us any help.
So I think it is time to tell the technocrats to shut up. Let the academics teach.
Why?
Duh!! Where’s Homer when you need him?
Because they are completely invalid, that’s why.
It ain’t rocket science, folks.
“He recommended that I have the teacher whose class had scored much lower work directly with the teacher who seemed to know how to get higher scores from her students.
Seems reasonable, right?”
Hell no, it doesn’t seem reasonable, except perhaps to an adminimal*. Why would one base educational decisions on educational malpractices? Because that is what adminimals do!
*Adminimal: A spineless creature formerly known as an administrator and/or principal. Adminimals are known by/for their brown-nosing behavior in kissing the arses of those above them in the testucation hierarchy. These sycophantic toadies (not to be confused with cane toads, adminimals are far worse to the environment) are infamous for demanding that those below them in that hierarchy kiss the adminimal’s arse on a daily basis, having the teachers simultaneously telling said adminimals that their arse and its byproducts don’t stink. Adminimals are experts at Eichmanizing their staff through using techniques of fear and compliance inducing mind control. Beware, any interaction with an adminimal will sully one’s soul forever unless one has been properly intellectually vaccinated.
AMAZING! You’ve had the same principals and superintendents that I’ve had. Either that or the same foul smell is incorporated as one moves up the educational ladder.
I’ve had a few who were great but the majority were classic adminimals.
Can’t say I had any that were great. Some were decent but most less than satisfactory.
BTW, your headline is too long. Only the first five are necessary.
Quite correct, Dienne, quite correct! 🙂
“I, on the other hand, am an educator.
At least she doesn’t claim to be a teacher. (Yeah, I’m that hard on adminimals, and yes, she is one as obviously she enforced the implementation of educational malpractices that are standards and standardized testing-and yes, I’m a pr!#k like that)
In 2011 I wrote this article at OENL Learning not Teacher evaluation should be the emphasis of media https://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
I post the best articles from Diane and others in my various series at OEN.
See my series War On Teachers: https://www.opednews.com/Series/War-on-teachers-and-the-pr-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150217-827.html
See my series: The truth about Testing: inventing failure so as to “fix” what was never broken. : https://www.opednews.com/Series/The-truth-about-Testing-i-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150212-950.html
See my series Teacher professionals: ALL about LEARNING
https://www.opednews.com/Series/TEACHER-PROFESSIONALS-All-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-852.html