Everyone seems to have an opinion about whether the mandated federal tests should be administered this spring. When the pandemic was first acknowledged last March, Betsy DeVos offered waivers to states that wanted to suspend the testing. Although Biden has publicly expressed disdain for standardized testing, there has been no hint of whether he will appoint a Secretary of Education with instructions to do as much as DeVos did in deferring the annual testing.
My view: Resumption of standardized testing is completely ridiculous in the midst of a pandemic. The validity of the tests has always been an issue; their validity in the midst of a national crisis will be zero. They will show, even more starkly, that students who are in economically secure families have higher test scores than those who do not. They will show that children in poverty and children with disabilities have suffered disproportionately due to lack of schooling. We already know that. Why put pressure on students and teachers to demonstrate what we already know? At this point, we don’t even know whether all students will have the advantage of in-person instruction by March.
If anything, we need a thorough review of the value, validity, and reliability of annual standardized testing, a practice that is unknown in any high-performing nation in the world. We are choking on the rotten fumes of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Here is a letter sent by several organizations in support of high-stakes standardized tests.
Politico wrote yesterday:
TESTING TIME — A major test awaits President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for Education secretary. The question is whether to waive federal standardized testing requirements this spring for K-12 schools for a second year or to carry on, despite the pandemic. There’s no easy answer.
— A host of education and civil rights groups say statewide testing will be important to gauge how much students have fallen behind during the pandemic, particularly for the most vulnerable kids. Even before the coronavirus, “The Nation’s Report Card” revealed children across the country have fallen behind in reading, with the largest drops among lower-performing students.
— Statewide testing will “give us a snapshot, if an incomplete snapshot, of what happened this year. How close did students get to the standards?” said Brennan McMahon Parton, director of policy and advocacy for the Data Quality Campaign.
— Teachers unions and standardized test opponents, however, say this isn’t the time. “Battle lines are being drawn,” said Bob Schaeffer of FairTest, a group that opposes what it calls the misuse of standardized tests. “The vast majority of parents and teachers think it’s ridiculous to believe that you can get meaningful results from a standardized test in the middle of a pandemic.”
Andrew Ujifusa writes in Education Week about the battle over whether to resume standardized testing as mandated in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
Pressure is growing for schools to get some kind of relief from traditional standardized tests as coronavirus cases reach new highs, and education officials in at least a few states are responding.
In Washington, President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will have to decide whether to grant states waivers from federally mandated tests soon after he takes office Jan. 20. But the validity and usefulness of tests during the pandemic has been a concern for months. And at this point, states are clearly not content to wait for input or leeway from any new U.S. Department of Education leadership about the issue in general.
- On Thursday, the Georgia state board of education voted to virtually eliminate the role state standardized tests play in students’ course grades this school year. Board members voted 10-3 to make several end-of-course exams count for just .01 percent of those grades, down from the normal 20 percent, the Associated Press reported. State Superintendent Richard Woods backed the moved. Woods sharply criticized U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ announcement in September that states should not expect testing waivers for the 2020-21 school year, a position that could change after Biden’s inauguration of course.
- South Carolina announced a similar move late last month regarding end-of-course exams; districts will be allowed to decide how much those tests count for students’ grades, instead of the typical 20 percent. The Post and Courier reported that district leaders welcomed the decision.
- On Nov. 19, the Virginia education department announced that students can take “local assessments” instead of the state Standards of Learning exams in history, social science, and English writing. “The waivers and emergency guidance will simplify the logistics of SOL testing this year and ensure that [the] COVID-19 pandemic does not unduly prevent any student from earning a diploma,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane. However, the state did not adopt those changes for the science, reading, and mathematics tests required by federal law; Lane told state school board members that it’s “unlikely” the feds will waive those tests.
- Earlier this month, California announced it would replace traditional Smarter Balanced exams with shorter versions of the test, EdSource reported.
- A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers say they want state superintendent Mike Morath to either cancel state STAAR exams this school year, or at least not use them to rate schools and districts. “The last thing they all need right now is the extra and added stress of STAAR,” state Rep. Diego Bernal, a Democrat, told the Texas Tribune, referring to educators, parents, and students. Morath gave a noncommital response to the idea, although last summer he said he wanted the exams to be administered as usual. Like all states, Texas got a federal waiver last spring not to give exams that are typically required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. (“STAAR” stands for “State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.”)
This kind of momentum isn’t universal. Utah recently announced that it plans to forge ahead with its regular standardized exams. “We believe there’s actually an increased need for us to be able to attain data that can inform and enlighten us about the impacts of this pandemic on student learning,” state Assistant Superindendent Darin Nielsen said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Last summer the Council of Chief State School Officers stressed that while state leaders must be “nimble and innovative” in what tests are used and what they’re used for during the pandemic, “Assessment tools must continue to play a key role in our education system.” On Friday, a coalition of groups including the National Urban League, UnidosUS, and the Education Trust called on the federal government not to grant waivers from exams because “our families and communities cannot afford to go two years without knowing how well our students are doing in school.” The groups also hailed recent federal guidance on assessments and accountability released in October.…
“At the end of the day, there’s going to be an asterisk around any 2020-21 [test] results if they’re given,” Stephen Pruitt of the Southern Regional Education Board told our colleague Sarah D. Sparks in July.
Even more than an asterisk, the pandemic should underscore that the traditional standardized tests mandated by federal law simply haven’t worked as desiged, and push the Biden administration and others to rethink the entire system, said Joshua Starr, the CEO of PDK International, a professional association of educators.
“This is the time to actually challenge the assumption that the state testing regimes will give us what we want,” said Starr. “I have no confidence that state standardized tests this year will do that. I don’t know that they’ve ever done that, and they certainly won’t do it this year.”
While Starr said that formative assessments, for example, could be useful to students and educators. But he said that in general, given the pandemic’s clear and disproportionate impact on underserved students and communities, education leaders should move straight into directing more resources and support to students and families in need, without depending on tests to do so.
The ability of tests to discern trend lines in a typical fashion has also been disrupted beyond the point of being useful, including for accountability, said Daniel Koretz, a research professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who focuses on assessments. And more broadly, he said, potential disruptions for students at home and other factors unique to the pandemic present an environment that tests simply can’t control for.
“Even for diagnostic testing, there is a pretty high risk I think that we would not be able to trust comparative data,” Koretz said, adding, “I wouldn’t want to see what little instruction we’re able to give kids now consumed by test prep.”
The test’s the POE* wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the Joe
*Point of Essence
“Statewide testing will “give us a snapshot, if an incomplete snapshot, of what happened this year. How close did students get to the standards?” said Brennan McMahon Parton, director of policy and advocacy for the Data Quality Campaign.”
That statement gave us a snapshot — and a complete snapshot — of what is happening in Brennan McMahon Parton’s brain: NOTHING.
I have heard the snapshot excuse for standardized testing before. I have never had a standardized test surprise or inform me as a teacher. I was able to predict within five points plus or minus how students would perform. Nobody needs a “snapshot” that will be used for high stakes purposes, ie, retaining students in 3rd grade or closing schools. That is not a harmless snapshot. It is the same old test and punish syndrome.
Passing Score
Betsy waived the tests
What will Biden do?
If Betsy is the best
I’d say we all are screwed
LOL! “I’d say we are all screwed” is the understatement of the year.
It took the longest time for Secretary DeVos to grant waivers last year, and they certainly would not have been granted this year had Trump been reelected. I expect there to be a ton of Establishment pressure on the Biden Administration to maintain the testing this year. The Georgia 0.01% model still allows for disruption by test, because “head we win, tails you lose” Reformers always use the data to undermine (community) public schools.
Diane, I agree that now is the perfect time for a new conversation. Hopefully, the new Secretary of Education will understand the destructiveness of high-stakes testing.
I have no problem with the tests being given. Grades have become essentially meaningless in my school district since the pandemic. As a parent, I’d like to see another measure of how my son is doing.
I’m sure your son would do just as well as he did the last time he took the ridiculous tests. They ONLY measure the socio-economics of the child’s family. On line learning stinks!!!….but I think parents need to realize that what the kids are getting on line is the same Common Core drivel that they have been getting while in school rooms. The online curriculum (test prep) directly aligns to the test.
I’m sorry you don’t know how your son is doing.
FLERP!,
Don’t mean to sound snarky, but if you want another measure of how your son is doing, and you believe taking a standardized test would tell you, why don’t you just download one of the hundreds of old standardized tests from the internet and have your son take it? You could have immediate gratification today.
NYCPSP,
Great point.
Ha, I don’t think I could convince him to take a math standardized test and an ELA standardized test in his spare time, of which he has almost none.
Flerp: Then how do you think anyone has time for these useless exercises?
Traditionally the tests are administered during school days, Roy. Also, I am definitely in the minority here but I don’t think the tests are useless.
Flerp: Testing students has replaced instruction during the past 20 years. Let us scrub the tub before taking another bath.
My kid isn’t getting much instruction. He gets homework (and a ton of it). It’s basically self-teaching.
FLERP!,
I don’t think standardized tests are “useless” — they certainly reflect how good of a standardized test-taker your child is. And it is possible that with a lot of prep, they reflect how much test prep your child did to be able to perform better than he might normally do had he taken that same standardized test without that prep.
Some kids are naturally good standardized test takers and can sit down and take a standardized test without any prep and do very well. Some kids who might not do well can be turned into good standardized test takers with just a little test prep. Some kids who might not do as well can be turned into good standardized test takers with a lot of test prep. Some kids will never get good scores on standardized tests. Sometimes that means they aren’t academically strong and are deficient in math or reading skills, and sometimes that means that they just aren’t good standardized test takers, but are hard workers who still excel academically.
I haven’t seen much correlation between my kids’ teachers and how they scored on a standardized test, except perhaps in the instances when teachers made an enormous test prep effort which could have might a slight difference (although even that is arguable).
I have seen quite a bit of correlation between how much a kid engages with his/her classes, does homework, looks carefully at the review sheets that teachers pass out about what will be on the test and specifically studies the topics on the review sheet, and how well that student does academically. (And yes, it is frustrating if you have a kid who “forgets” to study the material that the teacher tells the class will be on the test – perhaps even studies totally different material! – because he or she “forgot’ there was a review sheet.)
A standardized test won’t measure much about what your child is learning. To be fair, I suppose a standardized math test might tell you whether your child has grasped certain math concepts, but you could easily have your kid take 45 minutes to take a standardized math test if you don’t trust the classroom tests (which I think are a better measure).
I am surprised that your kid is so busy. If it is because your kid works or volunteers, that is impressive! And any teen with a job or family obligations that leave him little time is probably learning a lot more skills that will serve him in life than what the most intense test prep would provide.
FLERP! says: “My kid isn’t getting much instruction. He gets homework (and a ton of it). It’s basically self-teaching.”
FLERP!, that is unacceptable, and I sympathize with you. That is absolutely wrong and it’s not fair for your kid. It needs to be addressed and I have found that too often the worst teachers give the most homework.
(Although one caveat — sometimes it seems like kids have a lot of homework because they are very distracted and what takes another efficient student 45 minutes takes 3 or 4 hours for that kid. Really not exaggerating!)
Anyway, I don’t think mandatory standardized testing solves that problem at all. But I absolutely sympathize with you because that isn’t right.
The old standardized tests like the IOWAs, CATs or Terra Novas were norm referenced tests. A parent would need a copy of the technical manual in order to figure out the percentile or the grade equivalent. If a parent wanted to know how a student would do on the test, she would need both the test and a copy of the technical manual.
FLERP!
“He gets homework (and a ton of it). It’s basically self-teaching.”
Shhhhhh, you’re going to let the cat out of the bag. All learning is self-teaching in one fashion or another. The individual has to decide what is important for her/himself and learn it. The teacher, books, schools, internet are just curriculum delivery systems.
Once one understands that basic fact about the teaching and learning process, one can take responsibility for one’s own (or one’s children’s learning) into one’s own hands.
I tried my best to instill in my students that concept.
Now can a good teacher make a difference? No doubt, but that difference is almost always related to non- or extra-curriculum factors that have to do with connecting with a student in such a way that the student wants to learn the subject matter. Those teachers who do so are the best teachers. An addendum to that thought; In order for a teacher to do so they must be very knowledgeable about the subject matter/grade level and how to make the delivery work for all the students.
The only test that comes close to telling you how your son is doing is a test designed by the teachers who are teaching him. Just why would you think that a standardized test will give you much more information than your son’s test taking ability? Even when I used a battery of tests for diagnostic purposes in special education, we used multiple instruments as well as observations from teachers and parents to make any kind of assessment. No one instrument, especially a standardized one (meant to rank students) is going to tell you useful instructional information. At this time, if you are looking for those high test scores that people like to use to gauge a student’s “college readiness” forget it. Some lucky kids who have weathered the pandemic scourge well, will see little effect on their scores. The disruptions that so many have experienced will make the assessments useless. There are too many possible confounding factors that cannot be factored out of the results with statistical tricks. There were before; now there are even more.
Flerp, have you discussed your son’s progress with him and his teachers? 🤔
Flerp, maybe talking to your son and his teachers about his progress would be beneficial. 🤔🔔
A fun, educational activity would have both of you take standardized tests and compare results. 🙂🔔
In order for a test to be legitimately valid, it has to go through the laborious process of validation. To validate a test, it has to been widely administered to many students all over the country. A norm is created based on the performance of students around the country. State tests have no such procedure for determining validity. Cut scores in these tests can vary from year to year, and it many cases the cut scores are determined by political, not academic motives. The term “proficient” is a subjective determination, not a statistical designation.
Schools did a better job before standardized testing with high stakes became the common practice. Teachers and students were able to focus on rich content, civics, history, literature, the arts and science. Turning public schools into reading and math test prep centers is grave mistake, and doing it in the middle of a pandemic is absurd.
Exactly, Retired. The tests in ELA are invalid, and they can’t be made valid, given the vague “standards” they purport to test. The test makers don’t even pretend, anymore, to do traditional validity studies because given this situation, defensible studies would be impossible.
The standards themselves are onto-epistemologically invalid also. The whole process from the standards* themselves to the actual test and dissemination of results has so many invalidities that render any conclusions drawn to be “vain and illusory” (Wilson’s phrase), a chimera, or any other fleeting sense of reality one can imagine.
*I discuss how standards in the scientific and business world are established in Ch. 6 “Of Standards and Measurement” of my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”. Needless to say the way the CCSS was done does not conform to any “standards” of making standards.
Your concept of test validity is that of the test maker and not the test taker. Wilson has discussed how truncated test validity is as proposed by the test makers/psychometricians. I implore you to read the shorter of his two works that I mention below first to understand the inherent invalidities involved. And then to read “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” (link below) for a more in depth look at the standards and testing malpractice regime.
Tragically, there are a LOT of politicians, pundits, and journalists who pontificate about standardized testing but know nothing about it. They simply assume, erroneously, that the standardized tests are valid measurements, that they really tell us what is going on, and that the results of these are valuable and actionable. For the most part, NONE OF THAT IS TRUE. Here’s why: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/why-we-need-to-end-high-stakes-standardized-testing-now/
I wish that at least some of these people would take the time to read an informed critique of the tests of the kind that I make in this post.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Diane Ravitch, for fighting this nonsense.
and most frustrating truth: you could add the words “average citizen” right in there with politicians, pundits and journalists.
At the same time when I talk with those “average citizens”, even country rubes, they understand just how invalid the whole standards and testing malpractice regime is.
The naivete of many politicians, pundits, and journalists about our state standardized tests is tragic. “It’s a test. It must be right.” is idiocy on the level of “My astrologer read out my numbers. Numbers don’t lie!”
Our current standardized testing is numerology and pseudoscience. It’s an extraordinarily costly and dangerous scam, and journalists, if they are fit to call themselves that, have a responsibility to learn why.
Ouija boards don’t lie either.
ROFLMAO! The spirits are about to speak!
Fortune Tellers
Ouija board
And Magic Ball
Testing score —
They tell it all
Tell a student’s
Very fate
Test imprudence
Thing to hate
Ask Saint Unca Ronnie Raygun about those astrologers and their advice, eh!
LOL. Yes. Queue the Star Wars music.
This Politico article is a red flag warning to those of us who support public education, because of how this false narrative is presented.
On one side: “A host of education and civil rights groups”
On the other side: “Teachers unions and standardized test opponents”
Anyone else see a major problem when this false framing of the issue becomes the “reality”?
I looked closely at the “education and civil rights groups” — and it is a huge stretch to describe them as such.
But this narrative absolutely needs to be changed or the war is lost.
There needs to be “a host of education and civil rights groups” who become the spokespeople for public education, not the ed reformer agenda.
I know much of the problem is the media (as usual), but the right wing privatizers are very savvy in their ability to manipulate the narrative and have their side identified as “a host of education and civil rights groups” and their opponents as “teachers unions”.
I wish I knew how to change it, but until that changes, the anti-public school side wins. These complicit, gullible journalists need to be publicly called out, and they need to start covering the huge pro-public education movement as “education and civil rights groups” instead of “teachers unions”. I know this is PR, but that PR works. It’s how the ed reformers got power. Politicians read this article and think the ed reformer POV is what civil rights groups and education groups want, and the only opposition is “teachers unions”.
This false narrative needs to be turned against these so-called “host of education and civil rights groups”.
The narrative should change to “groups representing thousands of parents of children with disabilities attack the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools for endangering their children lives by demanding their kids be tested during pandemic”. “NAACP and Civil Rights groups and PTAs around the country” demand answers from the National Urban League as to why the Nation Urban League wants to risk their children’s lives by forcing them to take standardized tests during a pandemic.” “Thousands of parent groups around the country ask why they are invisible to Politico journalist Nicole Gaudian, and why she believes that anti-public school right wing billionaire- funded organizations represent them. They demand Politico fire her for her erroneous reporting that right wing organizations speak for parents and not for their funders, and they demand Politico issue a retraction”.
I didn’t have time to do the research—maybe Mercedes Schneider will—but I’m willing to bet that most if not all of those groups that favor standardized testing are Gates-funded. The usual drill is that EdTrust (which has received many millions from Gates) gathers other groups to fight for the mandated tests. John King, who never saw a test he didn’t like, heads EdTrust now.
Exactly — I couldn’t believe that those groups are being identified in the narrative as “A host of education and civil rights groups”, whose opposition is “the teachers’ union”.
Imagine the same article but with slight changes making it more accurate:
“A host of advocacy groups funded by Bill Gates demands standardized testing in the middle of the pandemic and groups representing parents, children with disabilities, educators and experts in education policy oppose the rush the testing by these Bill Gates-funded organizations.”
That completely changes the narrative.
Excellent rewrite!
Send it to Politico.
In Gates We Trust
In Gates We Trust
We trust in Bills
We simply must
Take EdTrust pills
What I noted is that the NAACP was not on the list along with many other groups that foster social justice.
They’re not civil rights organizations. They are corporations.
But Corporations are civil right$ organizations.
QED
Bill of Right$
Right to money
Civil right$
Milken Honey
Gates invites
That’s a great catch, NYC_PSP. This testing at one point was billed (no pun intended) as “the Civil Rights issue of our time.” The media are total suckers for Reform propaganda.
“The media are total suckers for Reform propaganda.” NOPE! The media aren’t suckers. They know exactly what goes on and they choose to play along to get along. The media knows who “butters the bread” in their industry. I’m not saying they manufacture “fake news”, but they certainly know HOW to effectively leave out parts of the equation to remain credible to the public yet loyal to their monied owner.
Point well taken, LisaM.
Bien dicho, NYCpsp!
Tests telling us that poor kids don’t do as well as rich kids are costly and as useful as scientists concluding that circles are round.
Neatly put!
Somehow, I don’t think poverty can be blamed for “everything”. ☹️
Ok. What percent of the variance in achievement test performance is attributable to socio-economic status?
I don’t know. ☹️
I do know “everything” doesn’t revolve around poverty. 😐
You’re correct about “everything doesn’t revolve around poverty. . .
The moon revolves around the earth which revolves around the sun. 😉
“Battle lines are being drawn,” – Bob Schaeffer of FairTest
“Nobody’s right, if Everybody’s wrong” – Buffalo Springfield
Like many topics here, passionate educators are on the extremes. It’s “either / or” with no in-between. I recall comments 8 years ago about not voting for President Obama because how he threw us a curve on all things public education. Huh?
When districts care only about standardized test scores, the tests dictate curriculum and instruction, impose monthly benchmark tests, require standards-based do-nows (aggh!) and standards-based exit tickets (aggh!), and waste DAYS of instruction for testing.
But we need some measures. Every critique of charter schools (including many over the years on this blog) includes “and they score no better than public schools on standardized tests…”
Our job is to teach so kids learn. Learn… based on what? How do we know?
As the saying goes, “Want to increase you kids’ test scores?” Move to Mississippi. Not an option, so…
Some version of a LOW-STAKES normed authentic assessment that does not dictate every unit an lesson and illustrates growth (without using it for a flawed VAM plan) has its place as a tool or means to monitor learning; not as THE ends.
“But we need some measures.”
Says who???
Really, I mean that question quite seriously!
“Learn… based on what? How do we know?”
On the curriculum and if the teacher doesn’t know, then they shouldn’t be teaching.
But beyond that, I don’t give a damn whether anyone knows whether or not what anyone else is learning. What I, as a teacher, want to know is “Does the student know/realize where he/she is in learning the subject matter at hand?” My job as a teacher, through many different kinds of assessment in the classroom, is to help the student know their status in learning. . . and it has nothing to do with “measuring anything” as learning is not linear, it comes and goes for each individual student, and it is a process not an outcome nor a deficiency that needs to be brought up to snuff.
“it is a process not an outcome nor a deficiency that needs to be brought up to snuff.”
Very well said, Duane.
The nation would be best served if there were an economic crisis created by throwing all the creators of standardized test makers out into the streets to wander about in search of someone to con in a more traditional manner. Given that much of our economy is made up of entertainment in large groups (hence the current covid-induced recession), making test makers unemployed at this point in the economy might threaten to undo economic growth, but perhaps they can go to making something useful.
Who are the supporters of standardized tests with NO waivers?
Here you go.
The Data Quality Campaign will muster action to keep test scores in the mix. See the report here with an emphasis on “growth measures” which are nothing more than reported year to year increases in scores on standardized state tests, including those recommended by SAS the marketer of the “value added” scam known as EVAAS™ (Education Value-Added Assessment System).
A brief from SAS titled “SAS_COVID_Student Growth During the Suspension of Statewide Testing Policy Brief.pdf” argues that states should:
–Calculate growth measures for the 2019-20 school year using available data from assessments administered at or near the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.
–Simulate student growth models using available prior year data to support business rules and modeling decisions for reporting based on the 2020-21 school year.
—Calculate two-year growth measures if only the assessment data from the 2018-19 and 2020-21 school years is available. There are similar recommendations from the Data Quality Campaign https://dataqualitycampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Measuring-Growth-in-2021_What-State-Leaders-Need-to-Know.pdf
The Data Quality Campaign is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (about $9 million in operating support since 2011), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Wallace Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation.
The Data Quality Campaign website lists these
MANAGING PARTNERS. Achieve, Inc., Alliance for Excellent Education, Council of Chief State School Officers, Education Commission of the States, The Education Trust, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Center for Educational Accountability, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Schools Interoperability Framework Association, Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services, State Education Technology Directors Association, State Higher Education Executive Officers
OTHER PARTNERS. The website lists 86 additional “partners” who have “committing to working independently and collaboratively to advance the effective use of high-quality education data to improve student achievement.”
The 990 IRS form for the Data Quality Campaign shows that the Education Trust is a “related”non-profit. Among the 86 partners–pushers of tests are the The Education Trust, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council on Teacher Quality, National Alliance for PublicCharter Schools, KnowledgeWorks, Great Schools–all enjoying multiyear funding from the “philanthropies” noted above including the College Board, ETS, and ACT, all in the buisness of testing.
Now for some specifics. Like many others testing companies, SAS uses the misleading term “assessment” when it really means a score on a standardized test. Test makes also truncate the educational meaning of growth, as in human growth and development. In testing, a “growth measure” is nothing more than a hoped for year-to-year increase in a student’s scores on standardized state tests (often limited to math and reading).
A brief from SAS titled “SAS_COVID_Student Growth During the Suspension of Statewide Testing Policy Brief.pdf” argues that states should:
–“Calculate growth measures for the 2019-20 school year using available data from assessments administered at or near the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.” Notice that we are well past the beginning of the school year and testing was not, should never have been the first demand of teachers and students.
–“SIMULATE student growth models using available prior year data to support business rules and modeling decisions for reporting based on the 2020-21 school year.” Notice the demand for invented data to serve a business model and decision making this year. The whole idea of learning is smothered in a quest for data relevant to business decisions.
—“Calculate two-year growth measures if only the assessment data from the 2018-19 and 2020-21 school years is available.” Assume that data for 2019-2020 would not influence these year’s calculations. Missing data on a grand scale is no problem?
And no big surprise, recommendations from SAS are similar to those from the Data Quality Campaign https://dataqualitycampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Measuring-Growth-in-2021_What-State-Leaders-Need-to-Know.pdf
In other words, the false narratives about the reliability, validity, and necessity for standardized tests and tracking even fictional data is not likely to be killed without an overwhelming number of parents and teachers and policymakers demanding an end to this charade. A major disruption in our long obsession with testing hinges on killing federal policies that require the tests, beginning with ESSA.
Will the Biden administration do anything to kill the vast, lucrative, and misleading practice of requiring standardized tests?
Thank you for your comprehensive research, Laura. The testing advocates are the usual suspects that want public education to bite the dust….billionaires, big data and some politicians.
I was a principal in Alabama for 8 years. In that time there were 4 different state tests administered with little in common. Meanwhile, our district gave 3 different tests that they used to judge the schools. The preponderance of standardized testing over the last 3 decades has done nothing to improve the public schools. While the education establishment uses above grade level instruments to incorrectly measure student performance at grade level we continue to serve the needs of the testing industrial complex over the developmental needs of students. In too many cases, states aspire to “rigorous” standards for students while setting no real standards for assessment quality. Floundering test results have been used as an excuse to defund education rather than a justification to garner more resources for the classroom. Yes, the pandemic is a good reason to delay testing. The failure of the Standards Movement is a good reason to end punitive state tests altogether.
Well said. Thank you for your input.
From the letter in support:
“Particularly now, during this time of national crisis, states and school districts have a duty to serve our most vulnerable children by doing all they can to assess the impact of the pandemic and to provide additional resources and supports to the students that need them the most. We cannot improve what we do not measure, and if we do not measure the opportunity gaps being exacerbated during COVID19, we risk losing a generation of young people.”
How does one improve when the supposed measuring device (and it’s not a true measuring device at all) is inaccurate, not a valid tool? Hint: You can’t improve because you are focusing on the wrong thing–invalid data. It’s a complete waste of time, energies and resources. Or that what one is trying to measure (sic) is the unseen, the unmeasurable? Hint: You can’t improve.
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.
Those supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
C’mon test supporters, have at the analysis, poke holes in it, tell me where I’m wrong! I’m expecting that I’ll still be hearing the crickets and cicadas of my tinnitus instead of reading any rebuttal or refutation.
Most of the big data proponents do not care about validity or the impact of testing on students. They care about having quasi-legitimate reason to transfer public money into private pockets despite the fact there is no concrete evidence that most charter schools or vouchers even do a well as the public schools. let alone perform miracles.
Sadly so, very sad indeed!
Where in this country do schools get more funding if they have struggling students? Where in this country do students get more support if they have low test scores? Nowhere, that’s where.
The tests are used to close schools. They are used to hold students back. They are in no way used to support schools or students. The tests cause only injury to millions of people.
There needs to be an examination, and perhaps an investigation, of these so-called civil rights groups that support the systemic oppression caused by high stakes accountability systems. They are attempting to cause great harm to the groups of students whose rights they falsely purport to uphold. Follow the money.
Title I funds, when they are used for direct instruction, do help to provide extra funds for districts with poor students. Biden has vowed to increase Title I. Testing misused as a tool close public schools and send students to a separate and unequal private school does nothing to help civil rights. Separate is never equal.
The NCLB was a veiled way to take Title I funding away from schools with low test scores. Testing is the rightwing way to overturn civil rights protections in the original ESEA. That’s all it is. They’re taking money away from the students who need it most. That’s it. That’s all.
If Biden increases Title I but continues to allow the ESSA to close the schools that most need the Title I funding, Betsy DeVos wins.
Generally, students who are retained in the same grade another year are those who rarely attended and/or completed assignments. 😐
Schools can be closed for various reasons too, including no heat ?, loose, falling bricks from aging buildings and too few students attending. 😐
I cannot argue with you about that. I once taught at a school that had to close for a day because of a science lab gone awry. Jerry Lewis wasn’t even there. There was a post here recently about a charter school that had to close because all the money got embezzled. Go figure. I suppose a school could be closed for many reasons: charter fraud, charter theft, earthquake, Covid-19, hurricane, flood,
Rahm Emanuel,
fire, asbestos, frogs, boils, hail, locust,
grizzlies,
potential grizzlies…
Potential Rahm Emanuels
Rahm Emanuel
Greater threat
Than any animal
You can bet
Did I mention I am writing a book
It’s titled
Potential Rahm Emanuels
Making Rahmsense Bearable
Any discussion about whether to test or not to test would be incomplete without Noel Wilson has proven in his never refuted nor rebutted treatise, arguably THE most important piece of education writing in the last 50 years. “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Another bit of Wilson’s work on the standards and testing malpractice regime, albeit in a shorter fashion is his: A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
Like Diane has done with using “community public schools” instead of just “public schools” as it gives the sense of local control and local importance, I wish everyone here would start using “standards and testing malpractice regime” to describe what is actually happening in that regime.
Please, all, please consider consistently using “standards and testing malpractice regime” as the moniker for the insanity that is standardized testing.
Mr. Swacker
Your responses are strong and clear.
You wrote: What I, as a teacher, want to know is “Does the student know/realize where he/she is in learning the subject matter at hand?”
Absolutely.
Can we assume that the Teacher wants to or should know, too: 1) if the student knows/realizes where s/he is learning and 2) if the student is learning (two very different points and both important)?
Does it stop there? Just that teacher? How about “the teachers?” The school leadership? The content folks across the district? The superintendent? Board? Taxpayers?
I see this as one of those “baby and bathwater” issues.
It’s tough to recommend local tax increases or increased state funding without some measures (there’s that darn word) of success. It’s tough to defend new programs or not buying the latest fad without some measure to indicate the former works and the latter doesn’t.
How many charter schools criticisms include “and the average scores on the state test are no better or worse than the public schools?” And, how many years have we been screaming when charter schools did not have to take tests or report their data?
Standardized testing is out of control. It’s a corporate takeover of education that has bled into privatization of schools.
For decades educators have been confusing standardized testing with just that, a standardized test with learning standards.
When standards were guided by professional organizations (NCTE, NCTM, NCSS, NSTA…), they provided guidance for curriculum. And, what’s wrong with declaring in a standard that kids should know the three branches of government, system of checks and balances, states’ rights, how judges get appointed, the 25th Amendment?
Do I wish we could see if they know their learning and if they learned it with simulations, mock Congress, analyzing current news articles, shooting holes in politicians maniacal comments, writing essays… Yes. But we go with a state standardized test. Ideal? Far from it. Flawed? Definitely. Used as high stakes for bad purposes? Yes. But – if not a test of any variety- then nothing?
Reading through these comments, there are many references to the correlation between poverty and standardized test scores. Research study after research study cites the effects of equity, funding, poverty, health, and other factors on learning.
Cities everywhere contend with issues of school inequities on the “north or south side” or the “east and west ‘divide” – Or the city schools and county schools and rural schools.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had some way to determine all that without “measures” or standardized tests? Yes. But “project based authentic assessments” and definitely not grades provide the comparisons. So it that’s the evidence it takes, then we need it or the argument does not hold water – and the fight to keep the high-stakesness out of it should continue.
Standardized tests?
“Worst form of assessment there is but best one we’ve got?”
Yep, maybe it’s like democracy. “Worst form of government there is but it’s the best one we’ve got.” And, there’s a boatload of knowledge and skill and thinking necessary to do what we can to make Democracy work because millions of people who don’t have a clue about it just voted to destroy it – and I bet they didn’t do so well on those state tests.
As I matriculated all the way through graduate school, the most difficult, and most meaningful tests I took were those that asked me to justify my answers. Standardized tests do not require thinking in this way. The problem with the cold passages required of students in reading tests is that they are not related to experience or the practice of inquiry. In struggling to improve the public schools local, state, and federal mandates have all chosen to reward memorization or middle class experience over actual learning. Getting back to authentic test practices will require us to double down on paying, preparing, and supporting teachers in a way that will make it worthwhile for the best to stay in the profession. Then we would be able to trust them to to teach to standards established through professional collaboration versus institutional edict. That’s what the best schools do in America now. The most important thing we should learn from subjects and tests is not whether we can regurgitate what was taught, but whether we can apply what was taught to circumstances that require meaningful answers. The Standards Movement has failed because we have narrowed responses based on random exclusion or inclusion of facts. In other words, the one way we get out of this mess is to reinvigorate academic freedom for teachers. Lock step fealty to limited reality will not get us there.
“Can we assume that the Teacher wants to or should know, too: 1) if the student knows/realizes where s/he is learning and 2) if the student is learning (two very different points and both important)?”
I would hope that we can assume that. I’ve never seen a teacher not do so.
“Does it stop there?” No, but it should stop at the parents.
The rest? “Just that teacher? How about “the teachers?” The school leadership? The content folks across the district? The superintendent? Board? Taxpayers?”
Yes they may have an interest but that interest cannot extend to the individual student and where he/she is in the learning process. There have been many safeguards in place in almost all districts to insure that the teachers are doing what they should be doing. I know I’ve seen enough teachers let go because they couldn’t properly do the job. But that doesn’t mean those others you mention have any legitimate reasons for sticking their noses into an individual student’s learning.
“I see this as one . . . without some measure to indicate the former works and the latter doesn’t.
By using measure here I assume you mean assessment, evaluation, judgement? Am I correct? There are many ways to do those things without the invalid standards and testing malpractices involved.
“For decades educators have been confusing standardized testing with just that, a standardized test with learning standards.”
I don’t understand what you are trying to say with that thought. Please explain. Thanks!
“And, what’s wrong with declaring in a CURRICULUM OBJECTIVE/GOAL that kids should know the three branches of government, system of checks and balances, states’ rights, how judges get appointed, the 25th Amendment?
The difference between a curriculum goal/objective and a standard is that the goal/objective can be assessed in a variety of ways. Now a standard is supposedly met as shown by a correct answer on a multiple guess standardized test. Many complications with that process the render such a concept to be invalid. (Read Wilson’s work to understand-or my book)
“But – if not a test of any variety- then nothing?”
I have never said nor hinted that nothing should be done in helping students to assess their own learning. Not sure where you got that from.
“Standardized tests? “Worst form of assessment there is but best one we’ve got?””
Um no! There are many forms of assessment that are far better, accurate and valid than a standardized test. Do you need me to outline them?
Crap in and crap out is what a standardized test is. And it appears that you support doing the wrong thing righter by insisting that the standards and testing malpractice regime is the “best one we’ve got.”
“Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.” [not sure of the provenance of this quote.]
No one that wants to give these tests is going to be honest about the real reason. Giving those tests has nothing to do with the kids. It’s all about the money some testing corporation wants. If they could, they give tests to the dead, too.
Dolly Parton, not idiot Brennan McMahon Parton, should be the Director of Policy & Advocacy for the “Data Quality Campaign.” (An example of “Not Thinking at All, Running on Empty” Tank.)
The first thing she’d do would be to abolish it.
The man is beyond idiotic, & the organization worse. Wonder how much money is being wasted, there, that could be spent on real education?
And…WHY are we STILL having this discussion (esp. w/the pandemic)?!
It’s been 11 years since Todd Farley wrote his book.
And it’s been 23 years since Wilson blasted the standards and testing malpractices to smithereens! Totally destroyed them!