Chalkbeat reports that New York City will require the MAP test for 76 low-performing schools three times a year, in addition to the mandated state tests and interim assessments. This is the beginning of the city’s new plan to add a new barrage of tests. A spokesman for the department said the new test is not a test, it’s actually instruction.
This reminds me of the historic Garfield High School boycott of 2013, when the entire school staff refused to give the MAP, a computer-based test, because it was not aligned with their curriculum and they considered it a waste of time. The teachers won.
This decision suggests that the New York City Department of Education has no new ideas, and the Mayor and Chancellor Carranza are adding new tests because they can’t think of anything else to do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
utter cluelessness
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I don’t think so. Not at this late date. Someone is getting a kickback
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Hmmm. Yes, that is more likely.
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Obviously.
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I’m guessing MAP stands for Make Astronomical Profits …
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Or Make Astrological Predictions
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Make America Puke?
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Your replies are priceless!
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Poor students benefit from greater investment including smaller classes and professional teachers that understand what students need. Standardized tests generally do not provide a lot of useful information. Any astute teacher can gather diagnostic information from classwork and informal assessments. Students do not need another layer of expensive tests that provide a “deep dive into data.” Students perform better on pencil and paper tests than on computer based tests. If we care about accurate information, we should provide students with the best way to get more accurate information. More data collection will most likely fail to improve outcomes for students, and it will waste instructional time.
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Exactly
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These external monitoring assessment do nothing to improve learning. There’s a better way to for teachers and students to use assessment of day-to-day student work to move learning forward. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/27/1799189/-Assessments-Nutrients-or-Killers-in-the-Bloodstream-of-American-Education
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Thanks for the article. I agree that feedback is a key element in instruction. Informal assessments provide immediate feedback unlike standardized tests. I also agree that all the testing is designed to impede, not improve, daily instruction in public schools They are another “reform” Trojan Horse.
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and “struggling schools” is simply camouflage language for: we have forced massive testing onto these students and now have the data needed to convince the district that we must very lucratively invade, reform, divide, label and continue to test heavily
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I assume this is related to the plan to use a “COMPSTAT”-like approach to test data. “Test scores were low last week at this middle school, quick, send in the SWAT team.”
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Are you saying that they consider AR15s an effective way to eliminate poor test takers?
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LOL.
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Yes, thisis the launch of Carranza’s COMPSTAT or EDSTAT or whatever it’s called.
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Per the Chalkbeat article:
So the DOE will centrally track curriculum materials. Then it will centrally mandate those materials. Carranza has already signaled that interest in connection with G&T programs, which he’s slammed because there is no single “G&T curriculum.” Same with “Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education,” part of which involves monitoring the ethnic/racial/gender/sexuality breakdown of authors and characters in fiction.
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Carranza seems to be in waters far over his head
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Ha! A couple of colleagues of mine at the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan said the same thing–in almost exactly the same words–about Carranza.
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FLERP!,
My kid has been taking these periodic assessments for years. It is no big deal and many good public schools do it. Would not surprise me if yours did, too. And you don’t even pay attention because these tests are completely low-stakes for kids and teachers except as a teaching tool. Just like Carranza said.
And it seems ridiculous to claim you need a special curriculum to be able to take a standardized test! I hope that is not the teachers’ union position!
But the fact that you equate a curriculum that is based on prepping for an evaluative test and a curriculum that takes into account the ethnic (and other) diversity of the families in DOE schools is astonishing.
Anyone else agree that Carranza should be roundly criticized for thinking that having an INCLUSIVE curriculum instead of one that consists of mainly white authors is a bad idea?
Do we need to replace Carranza with someone who knows that there is no need to care whether students are exposed to African-American authors or Latinx authors or Asian-American authors because everyone knows that whatever authors white people have decided is important is obviously what is important? How dare Carranza challenge that? If a white person says she is culturally aware, that is all that should be necessary to exempt her from needing to change. She says she isn’t racist, and the matter should always end there and Carranza is absolutely wrong to think that more is needed.
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“these tests are completely low-stakes for kids and teachers except as a teaching tool” — these tests are useless as a teaching tool because the teachers don’t know the questions, don’t know the answers, and the results come half a year late. The only reasons for having externally-proctored tests is to get paid from a government contract and maybe to rank the schools and students, but for this we already have CC tests. In my local school they have both CAASP and MAP, talk about madness. Or greed.
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Both of my kids USED to take MAP…before I opted them out of everything. Another useless test that took time away from real learning. My kids quickly learned how to game the test and then when they were done wasting time, they would purposely answer 3 in a row wrong so that the test would end. Twice exceptional children will sit ALL day long taking this test because they just can’t stop themselves. Now, MAP has a new component (SEL) that is tracking the time it takes for a child to answer each question. This test gives no information to teachers.
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NYC PSP…please read this from a teacher who administers the MAP test
https://emilytalmage.com/2017/09/16/and-you-thought-standardized-tests-were-bad/
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Odd, no one addressed whether Carranza was also inept and should be replaced for wanting “Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education, part of which involves monitoring the ethnic/racial/gender/sexuality breakdown of authors and characters in fiction.”
BA, the point of this is that the results don’t come “half a year late”.
LisaM, I defer to your more personal knowledge that MAP is a terrible test. I only know that whatever low-stakes tests have been given to kids in many good schools for years has not been a big deal, and most parents are barely aware it is happening. And they are extremely aware of the state tests.
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“BA, the point of this is that the results don’t come “half a year late”.” — Ok, three months late. Still, there is no way they can help fixing anything because it is just a number. You don’t get the questions, the correct answers, the student’s answers — you have no idea where this number comes from and whether you should pay extra attention to linear functions or to distributive property or even to multiplication of fractions. As I said, the test is pointless. It is good only for general ranking, that is, for outsiders, not for the students nor for the teachers.
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“And it seems ridiculous to claim you need a special curriculum to be able to take a standardized test!”
Good g-d. Where have you been the past decade? Have you not heard about the Common Bore, er, I mean, the Common Core? Have you not heard that the tests are all Common Core aligned and therefore the curriculum is too? You’ve been reading this blog for how long and you can pretend you don’t understand how standardized tests drive curriculum?
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dienne77,
I’m giving you my experience as a parent. And as a child in the 1970s who took standardized tests every single year that did not “drive instruction”.
Standardized tests don’t have to “drive instruction”. The tests this post are about are not used to compare schools. These are tests that are looked at internally not to assess teachers but to assess students and direct extra resources towards the kids who need it.
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Just because test are not high stakes does not mean they are instructionally useful.
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NYC PSP….if MAP tests aren’t used to compare schools, how come I used to receive a data sheet during the summer comparing my children’s school against the other schools in the county using MAP scores? How come that data sheet also had agility, body fat analysis and obesity information added for “physical fitness” testing that was done county wide? If a test is used to “compare” or “rank and sort” children then it is a high stakes test that does nothing to improve learning outcomes….it’s purpose is to drive competition among wealthy parents….PERIOD! MAP is crap…same as PARCC, AP, SAT, ACT. These are not the old Iowa tests of yore, which really did give teachers and schools an idea of where improvement was needed.
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“Just because test are not high stakes does not mean they are instructionally useful.”
I agree. But that also doesn’t mean they are always worthless. To me, they are simply another tool that can be useful but may not be.
And not a big deal if they are low-stakes for students and teachers, and used properly and not as methods to drive curriculum or to replace a teacher’s own evaluation.
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LisaM,
I absolutely agree with you that sounds absurd.
I just coincidentally sorted through years of my kid’s old papers and I found annual (or maybe semi-annual) physical fitness tests. Going back years and years. Parents have been receiving those for as long as I can remember and they either toss them or not.
Kids aren’t “ranked” but they do show what percentage their results put them in when compared to other students their age (I assumed it was some national norm).
Are you in NY State with the MAP tests? Because in NY State, there is the annual state tests, but then there are these low-stakes tests that kids take without prep that are just snapshots of where they are for the teachers to use.
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NYC PSP…..I am in MD (our county is ranked 3rd best school system by US News and World Report….SMH). We have MAP 4-6 times per year, KRA, PARCC (now not PARCC but still PARCC), Graduation PARCC tests ELA 10, ALG I (min grade to be moved up to 4), Gov test, Science test. AP for all HS students whether they are able to handle it or not because it’s ALL test prep for the AP test…..no real learning! Everything is College Board aligned from K-12. It’s a horrible school system and the wealthy parents don’t realize that they spend enormous amounts of money in taxes to keep their elite status while their children are test prepped, data mined, and used as human capital (I hate that phrase but it’s the only way to describe this mess) to keep the real estate market and developers in business.
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Wow, I’m sorry that it’s so bad.
In NY, our kids only take state tests from 3-8. In high school, there are NY State Regents’ exams, which have been around for maybe 100 years?!
There are no other standardized exams in high school except for those that are voluntary. Those include college entrance exams and AP exams.
AP Exam results don’t count for anything since the results are not seen until the summer. And while some teachers may teach to the exam, the AP classes my kid took have been far more interesting and engaging than the non-AP classes. YMMV.
By the way, some kids are known to simply skip their AP exam for the AP class or simply write their name and sleep through the exam. It absolutely has no effect on their grade in class, nor do colleges see the results.
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Enrichment for the rich, tests for the poor.
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If you will allow me to slightly reword your most astute observation
Enrichment for the rich, entestment for the poor
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Who knew that the New Testament was actually a call for testing of the poor?
Blessed are the poor, for the Kingdom of testing is theirs”
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Sorry, should be
Blessed are the poor, for the The John Kingdom of testing is theirs
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Yes, the John Kingdom of testing is theirs.
Let them eat scantron.
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Give a man a test and he will bubble for a day,.Teach a man to give tests and he will live like King David Coleman for the rest of his life.
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Ted,
Affluent public schools already give these low-stakes tests to students periodically.
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Then why did they specify 76 schools? Anyway, it’s a waste of resources for the affluent as well, if you ask me.
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Ted,
I suspect affluent schools do it because they actually use the information to see where students are. I haven’t heard teachers complaining that such evaluations – which take almost no class time – are worthless.
If anything, my biggest reservation would be that I suspect that the schools will not be given the resources to address the needs of those students who might show some red flags in their learning that is evident from those tests.
What I do think could come out of it — but probably won’t — is that after taking the tests, it would be clear that a handful of students in those struggling schools — or maybe more than a handful – are actually quite advanced. Maybe they would not have to sit through lessons for students who are struggling, but would be engaged with more challenging material. And the students who really seemed to be far below grade level would be given a very close look to see if there are undiagnosed learning issues or even a kid who needs eye glasses and isn’t getting them!
That is how these kinds of low-stakes tests should be used.
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Not the MAP tests. Waste of time and money, like all standardized online tests
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See my reply to this & your above post under general comments.
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“1,200 of the city’s roughly 1,700 district schools already offer periodic assessments to gauge student learning during the year”
Most parents probably don’t even pay attention, but periodically since elementary school, my kid has brought home results of some standardized test taken in school, at one point it was something called MOSL but I think other years may have been called something else.
There was no “test prep” for these, nor did it impact kids’ lives. Parents could look at the results or ignore it — and I would bet a box of donuts that most parents didn’t even bother to read the results. That is what low-stakes testing is supposed to be — giving schools additional information that is one of many snapshots.
Teachers are not all perfect and as a parent, I would rather know that there is more than one low-stakes evaluation method than have to be that annoying and unwelcome parent who is challenging the teacher’s evaluation of a student.
That’s why, despite this happening in over 1,000 schools already, there hasn’t been an outcry. Because the tests are low-stakes. No one at the DOE treats them all powerful, but they CAN show whether a student might have an undiagnosed learning disability or that a student might be able to read beyond a low level book that the classroom teacher is certain is all that they can handle.
Maybe this new test is particularly awful. But it certainly does not seem designed to show schools as failures. It seems designed to help understand where a particular student might need more help or more challenges.
Parents haven’t been outraged when their kids are given these low-stakes periodic assessments at good public schools. Maybe they should have been. But I did not hear union teachers at my kid’s schools saying how awful these tests were and claiming that they were now unable to teach anything worthwhile. This seems as if it is trying to make a controversy out of something that has not been controversial despite having been in existence for a while.
And frankly, given the poor quality of the state exams, I think it is imperative that there are other ways of assessing students that are low-stakes. Something that supplements the teacher’s own personal opinion but does not supplant it.
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“they CAN show whether a student might have an undiagnosed learning disability or that a student might be able to read beyond a low level book that the classroom teacher is certain is all that they can handle” — how do you assert this? There’s no research backing this up.
My 3 kids all needed extra help [2 IEP’s, the other alt hisch], & their teachers figured it out rather quickly: above-average intelligence was expressed verbally via 1-on-1 or in class participation or in written work, but was not reflected in teacher-designed tests/quizzes or speed of hw output. NYC cannot hope to substitute sporadic 45-min stdzd tests for appropriate class size that allows teachers’ acumen to work, & appropriate SpEd funding for referrals/ remedies.
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I agree with you that the test should not substitute for appropriate class size or anything else.
I am just used to my kid taking mosles or whatever tests they have been giving for years. And I have seriously never once heard a parent complain about it. I bet most of them don’t even register their kid is taking that test in school.
I acknowledge that this new test might be different than whatever test my kid took for years where no one seemed to feel any outrage or even know it was happening.
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I saw these tests when I was working in Springfield, Massachusetts last year. They appeared to be garbage disguised as corporate welfare for their makers–or maybe it was the other way around.
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It would be better if New York City took the time to evaluate the children for past and current lead exposure and ACEs to determine underlying factors for educational achievement
Elyse Pivnick, MCP
Senior Director Environmental Health, Isles Inc.
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Amen to that!!!
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I suppose doing something to evaluate student progress is a good idea. The problem is that really good testing that gets at the student’s progress is time intensive. The other day I spent about forty minutes with a student. When I got done, I understood where he was. Cannot do that with all of my130.
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Roy, you may be interested in this article even though it is focused on elementary science. http://www.arthurcamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Methods_ReflectiveAssessmentTechnique.pdf
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Great article, thanks for this link
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There are a lot of incompetent people in decision-making positions in education who want to appear to be doing something substantive. These are like George Bush, Jr., who once said, “I solved the education problem on my second day in office” (because he had signed the NCLB testing mandate into law).
And then there are the ones who are really gullible–those who, if they hadn’t discovered data [sic]-driven education reform [sic], might, instead, belong to some cult like Buddhafield or Heaven’s Gate or Marconics.
And then there are the ones who are just cynically riding the gravy train–who attend the conferences sponsored by the testing company or the ed reform astroturf groups and move from position to position within the parasitic ed deform industry, working now as a state administrator or school CEO or charter school management company official, next as a “consultant” to a testing company, then as an astroturf organization “thought leader” or as EduPundit generating “research” and “white papers” consisting of a little numerology and a lot of sonorous platitudes about “rigor” and “grit” and “higher standards.”
There you go, a brief taxonomy of the mid-level Ed Deform types. So, idiocy like the new MAP testing has several possible explanations.
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A couple years ago I met a “Reading Coordinator” who functioned in this position for a number of middle-schools and high-schools. She had suggested that we add to our offerings a course in “Classical Literature.” Great, I wrote back, and sent her an outline for a course on Greek and Roman lit. No, she said, she meant important books by famous writers. She didn’t know what the term “classical literature” means. She thought it meant, “Wow. Great book. That’s a classic!”
Then, one of our 9th-grade teachers emailed her saying that it didn’t make sense to her to teach all of the Odyssey in 9th grade, that it made more sense to teach selections from it (I entirely agree; most 9th-graders would be completely bored to tears by the first four books of the Odyssey, the Telemachy–all that background about Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, and his struggle back home. Odysseus himself doesn’t appear until Book 5, and the Odyssey is episodic, making it easy to select fascinating, self-contained stories–Odysseus and the Sirens, Odysseus and the Cyclops, and so on). The “Reading Coordinator” wrote back to everyone in the department to say that we were required to have students read ALL of each novel, like The Odyssey, that we teach. She freaking thought that The Odyssey was a novel.
So, she was a “Reading Coordinator,” so when she came into my class to observe and then called a meeting with me to discuss her “evaluation of my teaching methods,” I asked her what SHE liked to read. Her answer: “Oh, I don’t get a chance to read much. I am far, far too busy.”
There are far, far too many of these people in “education” these days–ones who are not, themselves, highly educated, who are completely ignorant even of the fields they are supposed to specialize in. Yes, one would expect a “Reading Coordinator” to be widely versed in YA lit, and he or she certainly doesn’t have to be a classics scholar. But you would think that such a person would at least know what classical literature is and that the Odyssey is not a novel. And you would expect him or her to, uh, read.
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If it had been up to me, there would have been a “Classical Literature” elective, but it would have covered a couple classical literatures–Greek and Sanskrit, giving the Western kids we taught a chance to get a taste of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata (the Hindu equivalent of the Iliad), and the Ramayana (the Hindu equivalent of Odyssey), the last two in the wonderful translations/retellings by William Buck.
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“There are far, far too many of these people in “education” these days” — these days, as before, as it has always been.
I haven’t read The Odyssey, I’ve read about it. I bought the book half a year ago, it was cheap because no copyright is attached to it, I read the first three pages and that was it… The book is stuck in my car door pocket. Frankly, kinda boring. Maybe I need to skip forward like you suggest. I am sure that unleashing this whole collection onto high schoolers will bring more tears than a six-hour high stake test.
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Too bad you have not read The Odyssey. It is a wonderful book.
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Do try that. Skimp forward. It’s really quite interesting.
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I’m not talking about teachers, BA, though I do think that many teacher prep programs could be considerably improved. I’m talking about administrators. And there, it’s all over the map. There are many who are extraordinarily well educated and conscientious. And then there are those others–a lot of them, these days, deformy types.
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And don’t forget, BA, that for a long time, there weren’t a lot of jobs open to women, and a lot of extraordinarily smart women went into teaching because of that. Some still do.
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We have many fine teachers. And the whole Ed Deform narrative about the failure of our schools is false. If you correct for socio-economic status of the population taking the international tests, even by that measure, our students are among the best in the world. But many of the finest teachers are dropping out. They just can’t stand the moronic data walls and data chats and the ridiculous extra-classroom demands and the low pay and the micromanagement. As for the younger ones–well, you get what you pay for. The year I left teaching, when I was a young man, I almost tripled my salary. I was only able, financially, to go back and do it again when I no longer needed to earn enough to support a family.
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Here, BA, my suggestions for what should be taught in an English teacher preparation program. https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/what-should-be-taught-in-an-english-teacher-preparation-program/
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How ironic she thought you should read “all” the Odyssey — must not have had Coleman’s ‘close-reading snippets’ method drilled into her yet!
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She was just enforcing a directive that had come down from above her. Not her idea or decision.
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The reason behind Coleman’s obsession with close reading:
He needs 👓
The Odyssey and the Idiocy
The Odyssey is long
And Idiocy is too
The David Coleman song
Enough to make us blue
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How I wish all these advocates of Lord Coleman’s “New Criticism Lite” had done a little “close reading” of his puerile, regressive, unscientific, backward, mediocre, vague, nearly content free “standards.” It would be amusing to see what Cleanth Brooks or William Empson would have made of them, after, that is, they stopped laughing.
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Which raises a question: where the heck were the nation’s English professors when this fraud (the CC$$) was first perpetrated?
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As a general rule, it is necessary to check the Gates Foundation site to see which organizations received millions of dollars as a payoff to endorse Common Core. EG the National PTA, which even scheduled a showing of Waiting for Superman, to show its members how dreadful their schools are. I think Gates gave the National PTA $10 million.
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Quid pro quo.
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Well said, Diane. Precisely.
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“I solved the education problem on my second day in office”
Dumbya had a lot of “Mission Accomplished” moments, didn’t he?
No wonder why George Bush sr thought he was such an idiot.
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Trump had a Mission Accomplished moment when he abandoned the Kurds.
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Trump was not the first to play and then abandon the Kurds.
“[In 1975] the Kurdish leader, Gen. Mustafa Barzani, sent a plea to Mr. Kissinger: “Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone.” But on Henry Kissinger’s advice, President Ford maintained that silence. Two‐hundred thousand Kurdish refugees fled to Iran, and 40.000 of the most vulnerable were forced back to Iraq.”
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BA: Whataboutism. Does it make it better, that Ford on Kissinger’s advice did the same?
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The guy looks like von Neumann compared to Trumpty Dumpty, the Great Trumpkin, Agent Orange, IQ45.
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Kissinger was/is totally amoral and proud of it. It’s sickening when this architect of death is trotted out, as he often is, as an expert. He should be spending his golden years in an international prison for war criminals. Let’s talk about his abandonment of the Montagnards.
None of this excuses Trump. Why did he pull out against the wishes of his own defense and intelligence people, against the advice of his own staff, against the interests of the United States, leaving our allies to be slaughtered? Because Vlad’s Asset Orange is playing for the other team. If there is anyone left in our intelligence services who doubts that, at this point, given the overwhelming evidence, then we really shouldn’t use the word “intelligence” when speaking of him or her.
Trump is not only a typical New York/New Jersey real estate mobster and reality show/fake university con man. He is a traitor. A traitor. With blood on his tiny, slimy pseudopods.
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In reply to NYSPSP first couple of comments above:
“these tests are completely low-stakes for kids and teachers except as a teaching tool ”
“those students who might show some red flags in their learning that is evident from those tests ”
“ after taking the tests, it would be clear that a handful of students in those struggling schools — or maybe more than a handful – are actually quite advanced”
You place a lot of credence in the ability of standardized tests to be a tool for classroom teachers, much less identify struggling/ advanced students. Arthur Camins’ link nutshells what standardized tests can & can’t do, & there’s plenty of research & results backing him up.
Stdzd tests were never intended to provide feedback at the granular classroom level. They were designed to provide rough, thumbnail comparisons of public schools from one region to another. Over the decades, only one thing has changed in that regard: the nation has experimented to see if assessments aligned w/a widely-used stdzd curriculum [CCSS & its state-tweaked versions] might deliver results closer attuned to individual school or even classroom level. The consensus is, that’s a fail. Could be due to poorly-defined stds, or to assessments that claim to be ‘aligned’ but aren’t– or… because stdzd tests simply can’t do that.
That states/ districts buy into ed-industry-peddling illustrates nothing but corporate clout over DofEds. Of course local DofEd justifies the expense/ loss of learning time to the public by casting stdzd tests as some sort of computer-wizard teaching tool. Public is easily convinced by tools based on the assumption that education is as measurable as widgits, cuz everything would be so much easier if we believe our kids don’t have to depend on the variable skills of individual professionals – & so much cheaper if we think we can just winnow out the ‘bad ones’ via scientific tools, & usher in the ‘good ones’ from the supposedly endless supply of wannabe teachers. Much cheaper to imagine they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to some innate quality that does not require ample funds to train & pay.
I do not buy your acceptance of these 3x/yr 45-min tests as ‘nothing’, & furthermore ‘good schools’ use them & furthermore ‘I don’t hear any teachers complaining.’
“nothing”: That’s 2hrs15mins more good classtime after bad poured down the hole that’s already eaten up several weeks of disrupted schedules/staffing due to CCSS testing alone. Who knows how much more classtime is eaten up by periodic pre-testing for those tests, let alone the pre-post testing associated w/SGO’s?
“‘good schools’ have been doing for yrs”: and shame on them. & as a consumer of one of those schools, have you ever gotten any feedback from them that benefited your kid(s)?
“no teachers complaining” – if I’m not mistaken they can be fired for doing so.
“it seems ridiculous to claim you need a special curriculum to be able to take a standardized test” – Maybe, but that’s exactly what happened nationally as we moved from NCLB to RTTT, hence: CCSS. It’s the ed-industry MO. Carranza seems bent on going down the same rabbit hole.
The only way this is ‘ridiculous’ is if you are intent on ‘proving’ that ‘Father [natl & state DofEds] knows best’, & can define precisely what every US kid needs to know [based on premise that ed = a set of defined skills &/or facts] — & that each individual kid’s acquisition of said skills/facts can be determined via annual stdzd testing aligned to those skills/facts—corollary, his/her progress toward that goal can be assessed by frequent interim testing– which is so accurate that, if provided scores immediately, teachers can tweak his/her individual instruction toward [stdzd test-score] success.
But… “these tests are completely low-stakes for kids and teachers except as a teaching tool ” –
“those students who might show some red flags in their learning that is evident from those tests ”
“ after taking the tests, it would be clear that a handful of students in those struggling schools — or maybe more than a handful – are actually quite advanced”
You place a lot of credence in the ability of standardized tests to be a tool for classroom teachers, much less identify struggling/ advanced students. Arthur Camins’ link nutshells what standardized tests can & can’t do, & there’s plenty of research & results backing him up.
Stdzd tests were never intended to provide feedback at the granular classroom level. They were designed to provide rough, thumbnail comparisons of public schools from one region to another. Over the decades, only one thing has changed in that regard: the nation has experimented to see if assessments aligned w/a widely-used stdzd curriculum [CCSS & its state-tweaked versions] might deliver results closer attuned to individual school or even classroom level. The consensus is, that’s a fail. Could be due to poorly-defined stds, or to assessments that claim to be ‘aligned’ but aren’t– or… because stdzd tests simply can’t do that.
That states/ districts buy into ed-industry-peddling illustrates nothing but corporate clout over DofEds. Of course local DofEd justifies the expense/ loss of learning time to the public by casting stdzd tests as some sort of computer-wizard teaching tool. Public is easily convinced by tools based on the assumption that education is as measurable as widgits, cuz everything would be so much easier if we believe our kids don’t have to to depend on the variable skills of individual professionals – & so much cheaper if we think we can just winnow out the ‘bad ones’ via scientific tools, & usher in the ‘good ones’ from the supposedly endless supply of wannabe teachers. Much cheaper to imagine they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’ according to some innate quality that does not require ample funds to train & pay.
I do not buy your acceptance of these 3x/yr 45-min tests as ‘nothing’, & furthermore ‘good schools’ use them & furthermore ‘I don’t hear any teachers complaining.’
‘nothing’: That’s 2hrs15mins more good classtime after bad poured down the hole that’s already eaten up several weeks of disrupted schedules/staffing due to CCSS testing alone. Who knows how much more classtime is eaten up by periodic pre-testing for those tests, let alone the pre-post testing associated w/SGO’s?
‘good schools’ have been doing for yrs: and shame on them. & as a consumer of one of those schools, have you ever gotten any feedback from them that benefited your kid(s)?
‘no teachers complaining’ – if I’m not mistaken they can be fired for doing so.
“it seems ridiculous to claim you need a special curriculum to be able to take a standardized test” – Maybe, but that’s exactly what happened nationally as we moved from NCLB to RTTT, hence: CCSS. It’s the ed-industry MO. Carranza seems bent on going down the same rabbit hole.
The only way this is ‘ridiculous’ is if you are intent on ‘proving’ that ‘Father [natl & state DofEds] knows best’, & can define precisely what every US kid needs to know [based on premise that ed = a set of defined skills &/or facts] — & that each individual kid’s acquisition of said skills/facts can be determined via annual stdzd testing—corollary, his/her progress toward that goal can be assessed by frequent interim testing– which is so accurate that, if provided scores immediately, teachers can tweak his/her individual instruction toward [stdzd test-score] success.
But… there has not yet been nor ever will be created a specified set of skills/facts that defines “education”… which is why… there is no stdzd test that can measure an individual student’s progress toward acquisition of “education.” Which is why stdzd tests– even the little 45-min ones whose results are available in 24hrs– can never be ‘teacher tools’ identifying who’s struggling, who’s advanced– which is why we depend upon professional teachers delivering on-the-ground formative assessments in the classroom to determine who needs what to progress.
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Oh SORRY! for my poor editing – there’s a FIVE-PARAGRAPH DUPLICATE in there! Hope you found my concluding para… 😉
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I thought you were going a little crazy for a minute! But here, read this from a teacher who has to administer these stupid MAP tests.
https://emilytalmage.com/2017/09/16/and-you-thought-standardized-tests-were-bad/
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Wow, LisaM. That’s a REALLY great piece. Thanks for sharing it.
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bethree,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. (And no problem with the accidental duplication of some paragraphs).
You make many good points. I agree with you on most points, but I don’t understand this one:
“Stdzd tests were never intended to provide feedback at the granular classroom level. They were designed to provide rough, thumbnail comparisons of public schools from one region to another.”
Is that really why I was given Iowa tests and CAT tests in elementary school nearly 50 years ago? Because it certainly seemed that they were to help look at the student, not the school. Not the teacher. It was simply information for parents about their kid that they could ignore.
I think you misunderstand me. I am not putting a lot of weight on standardized tests. But I absolutely do not accept that a classroom teacher with a fairly large group of 8 or 9 year old students is going to perfectly evaluate each one and therefore using anything else beyond that classroom teacher’s opinion of each child is wrong.
What is the big deal? Kids take a test. Maybe there are some red flags because a kid does very poorly. That would cause a classroom teacher to look closer and see if it was just a bored kid who didn’t feel like answering questions, or maybe a serious issue — even the need for glasses — that needs to be looked at. Maybe the kid who the teacher has always perceived as below average gets a perfect score. Maybe that causes the teacher to look at his or her biases and look more closely at that student.
I am a great defender of teachers, but any parent can tell you that every teacher is not right for every child. Some parents love teachers who other parents think are terrible because their child is miserable. You must know that, too.
To me, having another test that takes so little time that most parents don’t even realize their kids have already been taking them for years is simply another tool in the tool kit. The standardized test can easily be wrong. No one has to take the results as gospel. But results that are different than what the teacher believes is true should – if a teacher is good – warrant a close look. And good teachers do that. They use it that way. Isn’t that exactly how low-stakes testing is supposed to work anyway?
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No one has to take the results as gospel. It is precisely in order to “take the results as gospel” that administrators insist on giving the tests.
Teachers are evaluated based on their scores. Kids are placed in remedial or gifted tracks based on their scores. Curricula are changed based on the scores. The tests have stakes, even if these aren’t the highest stakes, and so, if the tests are invalid, they lead people to make bad decisions.
I urge you to read the link that LisaM posted, above. Here it is, again: https://emilytalmage.com/2017/09/16/and-you-thought-standardized-tests-were-bad/
And read up on the Garfield High boycott that Diane mentions in her post, above.
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“Teachers are evaluated based on their scores. Kids are placed in remedial or gifted tracks based on their scores”
And what if that is not the purpose of these tests? What if the tests are used the way the should be used, as simply another factor to evaluate where a student is? I think you are wrong that all good classroom teachers reject these kinds of tests. In fact, the very best classroom teacher my kid ever had worked very long hours trying to consider how each of the many students in her elementary school class could best be helped. But if a kid took a MOSL test she’d look at that, too. it didn’t supplant what she saw, but if there was a disconnect between what she saw and the MOSL test, she certainly took the time to look very closely to see if she was missing something.
Bob, do you teach kids in elementary school? Because I can tell you that some teachers are not particularly good at evaluating where students are. I have seen teachers who believe that “writing on demand” or “how articulately can a child speak to me about what he read” is how they assess reading ability. They believe that a child’s ability to properly write down a complete explanation of how they came up with a math solution is a good assessment of their math ability. Having these low-stakes standardized assessments is not the perfect solution, but in my opinion just saying “whatever the classroom teacher thinks is gospel” is just as wrong. And that is why many good teachers actually don’t mind these low-stakes standardized tests– because they have the confidence to know that they may miss something due to a child’s unique personality.
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NYC PSP…what you saw with the “writing on demand” to articulate ELA and math answers was TEST PREPPING during the NCLB era. Every child was required to explain their answer using a BCR (brief constructed response). My children had hours of this every week starting in 3rd grade (when the tests started). Third grade in our school system was proudly called “BCR University” and our children were awarded AA. BA, MA and PhD awards for their BCR writing skills. All so that they could take the mandated test and come out on top. Sorry, but no learning was going on. My kids couldn’t write a complete and coherent essay or short story, but they sure as heck could construct a few simple sentences to explain “What time does the clock represent and how can you explain the answer”.
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So many excellent points, Bethree. Thank you!
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@NYC public school parent, if you don’t know parents (and teachers) who have been bothered by off-the-shelf “periodic assessments” (MAP, iReady, etc) then you don’t hang out with the people I hang out with. I know plenty of people whom they piss off. But the people I am talking about are mostly education advocates, and I think you’d probably hear of even more pissed-off parents (who are not education advocates per se) if they realized that their children’s class time was being squandered with these “assessments” rather than actual teaching and learning. Just today, in fact, I received an email from a parent who was incensed to learn that her school had engaged in a “sneak attack” of serving these up to the second graders.
You are absolutely correct that not all teachers are perfect or great assessors of children’s work and talents. But I’d argue that most are and that their continual interaction with students allows them insight. Moreover, if you didn’t have that competent assessor in Year B, you probably did in Year A or will in Year C. And if that is not happening, I’d rather see this addressed by reducing class size so that the teacher has more points of contact ALL year long, rather than simply firing up some commercial product to be used 4x/year.
What you also haven’t addressed is that the MAP is given on a computer. We have warnings from pediatricians about excessive screen use by children. We have studies that humans learn better and retain more when reading in print rather than on screens and yet DOE wants to give our kids computer-based tests? How will that fly for the tiny-handed 3rd graders (or younger?) who haven’t really learned to keyboard yet (or shouldn’t have if we are going along with best practices of favoring print)? Either they won’t be able to type out their answers so well or the test will account for this by being mostly multiple choice so that once again children aren’t generating answers but merely choosing from a menu. Yuck! And no thank you!
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