John Merrow writes here about the stagnant scores reported on NAEP, PISA, and every other measure. They are an indictment of the test-centric policies of Bush, Obama, and Trump, he says.
He writes:
Given the PISA results and the harsh truth that NAEP scores have been disappointing for many years, it’s time to rename NAEP. Let’s call it the National Assessment of Educational Paralysis, because paralysis accurately describes what has been going on for more than two decades of “School Reform” under the test-centric policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Unless and until we renounce these misguided “School Reform” policies developed under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, educational paralysis will continue, and millions of children will continue to be mis-educated and under-educated.
Right now, too many school districts over-test, which means their teachers under-teach. Too often their leaders impose curricula that restrict teachers’ ability to innovate. At the same time, these narrow curricula have curtailed or eliminated art, music, physical education, recess, drama, and even science. Today many districts judge teachers largely by student test scores, leading teachers to devote more and more class time to test-prep, not teaching and exploration of idea. This is what I and others label the ‘test-and-punish’ approach to education, instead of a far more desirable ‘assess to improve’ philosophy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We do need to stop, but the fact of Singapore having 55% of its students who can answer his question is more a result of a different sorting process than the one he sees in American public education. Indeed we will not have any improvement until we stop sorting and start teaching. When some people say “standards,” what they really mean is for schools to work people hard enough to weed out the dummies. They always think they can tell who the dummies are.
It’s kind of a shame because I attended public schools and my kids attended them and public schools really DO do some innovative things. My son’s high school is much more fluid than mine was- they pick and choose courses outside their grade much more than I did and even more than this same school did ten years ago. It’s an improvement, and they did it without the Waltons or Arne Duncan or Betsy DeVos. In fact, they did it IN SPITE of being denigrated by professional ed reformers at every turn. Public schools just kind of soldier on despite the opposition of all these politicians. Sometimes they do good things.
But no one looks at any of it, because we all must chant in unison how public schools are archaic and a “factory” and should all be demolished. It’s not even remotely true but it IS useful for promoting charters and vouchers, so that’s all we get.
Unfortunately, Merrow does not understand how attribution works.
NAEP scores correlate strongly with poverty and unless Merrow has accounted for or at least explained that (and other factors that potentially impact NAEP scores) — which he has not– he is not justified in attributing flat or in some cases declined NAEP scores over the past two decades to school deformers’ test centric policies.
As enticing as the “flat or even declining NAEP scores prove the bankruptcy of Deformer policies” is, that’s not a scientifically justified position to take.
Merrow is mixing up two issues that should be considered on their own merits (or lack thereof).
Its a disservice to mix them up and not just because it is not good science. If NAEP scores rise on the next administration, Merrows line of argumentation will come back to bite us all.
Except, test-deformer policies are most heavily enforced on poorest kids, no? Take a look at the % state stdzd test-scores affect school ‘grades,’ how many ‘failing grades’ cause pubsch closings & teacher evaluations from one state to another.
Sí, Señor SDP.
I also blame public school leaders to a certain extent. They have to follow applicable state and federal law, but they don’t have to hire consultants who come out of the echo chamber and they don’t have to jump on every gimmicky bandwagon these people come up with. You’re permitted to decline. There’s no rule that says you have to offer your students up as experimental subjects for whatever is the ed reform fashion of the moment.
Be the experts. If you know darn well from 20 years experience that accepting an ed reform “grant” of 10,000 comes with a price tag of 100,000 in mandates, don’t take the 10,000. You don’t get gold stars for being a rubber stamp.
The late great Judy Johnson, former NYS Regent, said when she worked in my district, “Any new adoption must be evidence based and supported by research.” We never wasted money jumping on and off of bandwagons. If administrators showed her restraint and wisdom, we would stop buying nonsense.
I had been reading for years on this blog about what you all have been suffering in other states, with over-testing and the loss of professional discretion, but I had been hoping that this trend would be shown faulty before it arrived in Montana.
Well, it certainly has been shown to hurt students and teachers in other states–yet my local district administrators have fully jumped on board anyway, just like Chiara writes above: Consultants, grants, testing, micromanaging, scripted lessons, forced standardization, group “collaboration,” loss of creativity, people quitting, culture of fear! Now I am living what I had only been reading about. I fear it will get worse before it gets better.I keep telling our community leaders and even parents, but they only stare blankly back at me.
What you have written in the second paragraph is what adminimals* do. They don’t know any better.
*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 the testucation 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.
I really don’t get the use of words like “stagnant” and “disappointing” regarding NAEP and PISA scores that remain in the same ballpark for two decades. What significant changes in US edsys are there that would cause rises or dips in the national average? We have been following the same paradigm for 20 yrs…
And I’m not so sure we should expect natl aves to rise regardless as regards PISA rankings. We are still among those countries who educate & randomly sample ALL students incl LD & ESL, which means we’ll always be outranked by those who select higher SES [China], only the college-bound [Germany?], etc.
Unchanged “middling” [“stagnant”] ave NAEP scores might be not very revealing. We know we have a spiraling rich-poor gap, but that would probably still result in “middling” average, regardless. What would be informative to study is not the natl averages, but the variations– regions, SES, ethnic minorities– in NAEP scores.
“What would be informative to study is not the natl averages, but the variations– regions, SES, ethnic minorities– in NAEP scores.”
Ummmm, NO! Crap in crap out is the guiding aphorism here. Completely invalid test scores cannot be the solid foundation for any study unless it is for a BS in Mental Masturbation.
This Merrow post is entirely correct in that we are handcuffed and gagged by annual testing. All we have to do is stop annual testing. George W. Bush said we need the annual tests to “shine a light on the problem.” Okay, the light is shining, and the “problem” is clearly visible; it is the test itself.
I propose annual capitalism testing. Until the day when grades 3-8 no longer have to have their educations wasted by tests, all publicly traded companies on the stock market have to test all their executives on business administration. Any company that doesn’t score proficient or advanced has to be shut down or handed over to a public utility. Let them taste their own medicine.
HA!
the National Assessment of Educational Paralysis has made a few crooks very wealthy and the money is still flowing like the unstoppable Mississippi River when it floods after the winter snow melts.
Do not expect those crooks to help get rid of the National Assessment of Educational Paralysis. They do not care. If the United States collapsed and became a war zone, the criminal rich would fly away in their private jets (or sail away in their #100 million dollar yachts) to homes and bank accounts somewhere else in the world.
Aside from Duane’s generic issues with stdzd testing, I would like to hear more detail on why NAEP is getting dumped into the same barrel as other tests. PISA is obviously useless, as there’s no equivalence among nations in who takes it (or even who gets educated & how). But, comparing to natl annual state stdzd tests, is NAEP too, a $-making machine for somebody[ies]? Is it an equally bone-headed collection of computer-graded mult-choice/ short-answer Q’s? Clearly, it’s superior in terms of minimal interference w/curriculum/ learning time, but perhaps samples are manipulated toward obtaining certain results? Are the scores used to justify harmful ed policies [or any policies & if so what are/ were they?]
I think the best way to judge the NAEP is to read the 2013 Report out of Stanford about the PISA and how leaders in the U.S. allegedly managed to control the results of that test so the results would look much worse than they actually were.
If you read that Stanford report, you will learn that someone (?) in the U.S. responsible for selecting students to take that test deliberately focused on testing more students that lived in poverty so the ratio was off.
I think that whoever is in charge at the top is always in a position to game the system and that includes the NAEP. Who is in charge of administering the NAEP and who do they answer to?
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
I follow your reasoning, Lloyd. Haven’t looked at your cite yet, but just browsing here https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2015/pisa2015highlights_8a.asp it looks like there’s two places for manipulation, the international contractors who implement the sampling design, & the sampled “education systems” [“countries and subnational regions”]. There’s probably excruciating detail somewhere on the sampling design, but I have no reason to trust it, since it obviously doesn’t apply to China (& perhaps others). The NAEP has a generic explanation of sampling here https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/assessment_process/samplesfaq.aspx . Better detail on what they’re trying to do & how, but no info here on who does it/ transparency/ accountability. Has it been corrupted?
Have to admit my trust in NAEP is based entirely on my lens: over the 40 yrs, results mirror exactly what I would expect in terms of harmful effects of Nation at Risk-incited accountability measures & their implementations on classroom learning, added to stagnation of teacher salaries, et al public-ed budget cuts, & charterization/ vouchers. The supposed dismal results over last 20 yrs are actually small & incremental – and so were the ever-improving results for all subgroups until ‘90’s [then lower rate of increase, then flattening, finally a few teeny dips lately]. But that’s just my lens. It’s possible all that could be explained by economic changes including increasing rich-poor gap—but that too makes sense. The weeping & gnashing of teeth over “dismal” NAEP scores seems an exaggeratd response by the usual suspects. So far NAEP still seems to operate as a salubrious cold shower on LA/ Tenn/ Texas/ Wash DC et al “miracles,” which is a good thing.
But I see since 2017 they’ve been switching from paper-pencil to computers. which concerns me…
Not just tests like the NAEP.
Switching “everything” to computers concerns me all the time. Like going paperless with bills.
Our computers and devices and the internet are not invincible. I’ve read that a number of things can go wrong, bringing the whole thing crashing down and throw the entire world back several centuries.
It’s grown tiresome and no longer amusing to watch the states get sick of their standardized test providers and switch to new ones, given that NAEP and PISA tests and the standardized tests used in the states, from all the providers, are based on the same flawed premises and fail in precisely the same ways to have any validity, especially in ELA. After NCLB, we had a period of slight increases in scores and millions of teachers started doing test prep. This prep didn’t teach kids anything, but it familiarized them with the online test formats, so scores improved slightly. Then, because the test prep doesn’t actually teach anything and consumes the air breathed by actual instruction, scores went flat. Oh, the opportunity cost!
Time to end the pseudo-scientific standardized testing! And time to stop the great hand-wringing about these dumb tests. They are a miasma, a curse upon our lands. It needs to be lifted, finally.
The only way to hopefully stop the testing mania is to elect someone like Sanders, Warren, or AOC, if she manages to stay in Congress.
As much as I love all three, and I do, I doubt that any of our politicians understand enough about the tests and the testing to want to try to end them (or our participation in them). The only way the federal mandate will end is if the teachers’ unions finally grow some and call their members into the streets. Not holding my breath there, ALAS!!!!
Earlier this year (or was that back in 2018), didn’t the teachers in several states organize to walkout and protest without the approval and support of their state and local unions?
“Time to end the pseudo-scientific standardized testing! And time to stop the great hand-wringing about these dumb tests. They are a miasma, a curse upon our lands. It needs to be lifted, finally.”
You say it in such a nicer, more copacetic fashion than I do, Robert!