One of the first and most important decisions that Secretary-designate Miguel Cardona will make is whether to grant waivers to the states that want to suspend the annual federal testing mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act. Some states–like New York–intend to request waivers, in light of the turmoil and unequal access to education caused by the pandemic. Others–like Texas and Arkansas–plan to proceed with their regular testing program regardless of the harm inflicted on students, teachers, and families by the past year.
Education Trust, headed by former Secretary of Education John King, has organized several groups to demand that Secretary Cardona refuse any requests by states for waivers. It makes no sense for a group of corporate reformers to insist that the Secretary of Education reject the requests of states that sincerely believe their students will be harmed if the federal government refuses to grant waivers at their request. Shouldn’t states have the authority to decide what is in the best interests of their students?
As I explained in my article in the Washington Post, the standardized tests have no diagnostic value. The tests are given in the spring, and the results are returned in the fall, six months later. Teachers never learn what their individual students do or do not know. The tests do not help the students or their teachers. They do not reduce inequity. They do not narrow or close achievement gaps. Because of the tests, schools have sacrificed the arts, civics, history, science, even recess. They have harmed the quality of education.
It is time to turn the corner on two decades of failed test-and-punish strategies. The last NAEP showed that the kids at the very bottom actually lost ground in recent years, despite (or because of) the heavy emphasis on testing. If we really cared about equity, we would reduce class sizes in the high-needs schools and make sure that they were staffed with experienced teachers. There are many positive ways to improve the schools, and more standardized testing is not one of them.
What can parents do? Opt out. It is wrong to test students this spring when access to education was disrupted by the pandemic. Do not allow your child to take the tests. They are pointless and meaningless, this year more than usual.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
twenty years of federally mandated 3-12 standardized testing in math and reading
billions and billions and billions spent that might have gone to important things like textbooks and science labs and math manipulatives and tutors and school nurses and eye exams for poor kids
billions and billions and billions on the tests themselves, on test preppy curricular materials, on test-related teacher training, on practice tests, on computers to take the tests on, on proctoring, on reporting systems, on data walls and data chats
and what have people gotten for that breathtaking amount of money? well:
no statistically significant increase in test scores in either of the tested areas (math and reading)–none
no decrease in racial gaps in the test scores
enormous devolution of curricula and pedagogy to make it test preppy
lots and lots of stressed-out teachers and kids
lots of rich testing executives, despite their perpetuation of a scam, of numerology
This is what an utterly failed policy looks like, folks!
To those perpetuating the state standardized testing numerology, I have a song for you:
“When will they ever learn?
When will they eeeeeeever learn?”
Bob They learned. But their criteria for “learning” is directly related to their checkbooks. CBK
The ELA teachers I know don’t find the test result data useful for informing their teaching. Is there any place where the test results are actually proving useful?
Some state tests are pretty long. Some are fairly short. They range from about 50 to about 150 questions. They purportedly tests mastery of state standards, and most of those state standards are simply the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic} Standards [sic] (CC$$) with different names. At Grade 8, there are 118 Common [sic] Core [sic] Standards. So, in most cases, there aren’t even enough questions on the test to have ONE question per standard.
The moronic EduPundits who write about how important the testing is are breathtakingly naive. It’s pretty clear that they have never actually read one of these tests or thought, at all, about whether the test actually validly measures attainment of the “standard.”
The CC$$ themselves tend to be very vague and broad statements about skills. So, for example, at Grades 11-12, there is a standard that reads, “Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain” and another standard that reads, “Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.”
So, here’s a little assignment for you: Write one or two multiple-choice questions that will validly determine whether a student can make any kind of inference from any kind of text. Then write one or two that can validly determine whether a student has knowledge of knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature.” Obviously, you can’t.
So, the tests do not validly test for mastery of any particular standard. They can’t. The standards are too broad, and there aren’t enough questions.
The Ed Deforms, and a lot of politicians and journalists, naively assume that the tests measure attainment of the standards, as though the standards described specific knowledge or skills (the student knows the sum of 2 and 2), and the exams test for those (“What is the sum of 2 and 2?”).
But that’s not the case.
It’s breathtaking to me that this isn’t obvious. The tests are a scam. They don’t measure what they purport to measure.
The pundits and politicians also assume that one can look at a student’s score and see what he or she needs to work on. Oh, this student doesn’t know what a metaphor is. So, I need to teach her that.
Wrong again. The scores are reported not by standard (that would be completely invalid, for the tests don’t validly test for attainment of any standard), but as rankings from 1 to 4 or 1 to 5. What the teacher learns is that little Johnny scored a 2, and little Yolanda scored a 4. And this they find out just before the school recesses for the summer. Of what pedagogical value is this?
None. None whatsoever.
Ponderosa,
The tests are antithetical to your string belief in knowledge.
Thats why ED Hirsch turned against Common Core
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Totally agree with Mr. Shepherd. Those testing have not prove anything valuable. There are other efaecyives ways to know what students need to improve in English or Math. The pandemic has been brutal in our families. Students don’t need more pressure than they are already confronting. Besides they have not been able to get real effective access to education since March 2020. Stop punishing them. Concentrate in helping them to overcome the fear that the pandemic brought them.
Well said! Data is a commodity. Students have no privacy rights when data is sold and shared. Parents should protect students from such exploitation and opt out.
and collectively sue districts for exploiting children
PHYSICIAN: Apply the leeches!
REFORMER: But the leeches draw off blood, essential for life, and weaken the patient, and they transmit these things people are calling “germs.” Applying leeches is pseudoscience.
PHYSICIAN: Apply more leeches then. See the report of the Society for Necromancy and Magic Elixirs. Oh, and about my fee. . . .
The standardized tests are leeches on the body of US K-12 education.
The testing is pseudoscience and numerology. And the Deformers have ruined perfectly good words like “data” and “rigor” by egregious misuse of them. Enough.
First–I’m proud that Michigan, home of Betsy DeVos, is one of the first two states to request waivers. It’s amazing what leadership will do.
Second–it’s pretty obvious why John King would want the Secretary to deny waivers. Without nationwide, comparative testing data, EdTrust’s entire mission founders. Well-educated white people making 6-figure salaries might lose their jobs. Quelle unfair!
Third–I think Cardona’s only avenue here is to let states do what they choose, vis-a-vis statewide testing. A federal crackdown would make him enemy #1. And honestly? While I don’t believe kids should take state wide tests for all the reasons Bob Shepherd lists, above, I think this is an issue that states must decide for themselves.
My friend Renee Moore has taught me that relying on states to do the right thing for their kids is dangerous–she lives in Mississippi–and I appreciate the federal role in ensuring (or trying to ensure) equity. But what has made school policy such a mess in the past twenty years is the encroachment of uniform federal policy into VERY different school systems.
Cardona approached the question of f2f vs. remote school, by encouraging f2f plans but allowing each district to make its own plan, depending on access to tech, facility characteristics, infection rates. A federal policy head might have to make tough decisions down the line, but once he starts waving a wand and saying no testing, a huge pack of non-profits and party functionaries will jam his other, equally important goals. Cardona should point out that the tests yield nothing valuable (except for testing companies and EdTrust-type orgs) and cost money, then grant waivers to all states who ask for them and let the others deal with massaging their own invalid data.
Renee Moore is right. States don’t always act in the best interests of their students. That is why we have federal civil rights laws.
But it is a big jump to go from protecting the rights of students to a good education to insisting that the federal government force states to give every child a test of no value or validity in the midst of a pandemic.
Kind of crazy that their letter links to an article by McKinsey who just yesterday got nailed by the courts for their role in the opoid epidemic! What is it? A $573 million dollar settlement? And Cardona should take their advice on testing kids? I don’t think so!
Kevin,
How appropriate that this group turns to McKinsey for advice about education.
In my experience with McKinsey, they have education “experts” who have never been teachers and know very little if anything about education.
Some with their business consultants. They do the equivalent of TFA. They take some pimply kids just out of business school, give them a “training,” and send them out with their clipboards to gather “data” to support a predetermined course of action, usually one that will totally screw workers and consumers.
cx: Same, not Some
You got that right Diane! What Cardona does here will most likely determine how education policy will go in the Biden administration. I truly hope Cardona puts the needs of children above these snake-oil reformers.
A Republican Senator was selling McKinsey to Mr Cardona at the hearing yesterday. Republicans and McKinsey: thick as thieves. Or thick and thieves.
Six Ways High-Stakes Testing Has Failed Students and What to Do Now https://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/MCAS-Wrong-Answer-1.pdf
They don’t have anything else to offer students in public schools OTHER than testing, so that’s all we get from ed reformers- demands that our children take tests.
Ed reformers are frantically pushing vouchers all over the country. Are they all demanding publicly funded private schools test too, or does “accountability!” only apply to students in the unfashionable public schools?
There are thousands of these people and they work full time lobbying for “ed reform”. Could one of them possibly come up with something positive and productive to offer families who attend the much-maligned “public school sector”? Why do we only get tests?
So the ed reform agenda for public school students and families is 1. bashing their schools, 2. cutting funding to their schools, and 3. testing public school students. Yippee! Sign me up!
When do we get to the part of ed reform that actually benefits students who attend public schools? It’s been 20 years. They want another 20 to come up with something?
This perfectly illustrates ed reform’s approach to public school students:
“PROVIDENCE, RI – A partnership between the Rhode Island Department of Education and Schoolhouse.world, will pair students with tutors around the globe.
Schoolhouse.world was launched in early 2020 by Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy online learning website, to help students who are falling behind due to COVID-19. ”
The program they’re all backing as a response to the pandemic is free tutoring by volunteers where the only requirement is the tutor has to be older than 13 years.
This is what we get. A program that relies completely on unqualified and unpaid tutors offered as some kind of miraculous gift to students, when it’s really a cut rate, cheap replacement for tutoring.
It’s not just that- they already TRIED this. They already went the “cheap tutoring wirh unpaid labor” route in NCLB and it flopped. They just repackage and resell the same stuff over and over.
https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/education/2021/01/14/ri-department-of-education-offers-free-online-tutoring-through-with-khan-academy-schoolhouse-world/4164022001/
Stop selling junk to public schools. Our kids deserve qualified tutors who are paid fairly for their work.
Infante-Green, the State Commissioner in RI, is a Reformer through and through. She thinks she can fix public schools by creating more charter schools for a few kids; she is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. Gina Raimondo, neoliberal, appointed her.
Democrats need to stop taking the advice of the other side. The test scores are not used to target support; they are used to target austerity, privatization, and redlining.
Kevin and ! looked behind the curtain of this attempt by he Education Trust and several other charter-loving groups to “demand” Secretary Cardona refuse state waivers on standardized tests.
I looked a the footnotes to discern what “authorities” this hastily assembled group relied on is issuing their demand. Their call included some footnotes as if to prove the wisdom and validity of the tests.
Here is an excerpt from one source: McKinsey& Company.
“We estimate that if the black and Hispanic student-achievement gap had been closed in 2009, today’s US GDP would have been $426 billion to $705 billion higher.3 If the income-achievement gap had been closed, we estimate that US GDP would have been $332 billion to $550 billion higher (Exhibit 1).”
This absurdity is from a report, dated June1, 2020, offering several scenarios of possible outcomes for students who would receive instruction online, or in person, or in hybrid arrangements. The report is so out of date that it should be an embarrassment to EdTrust and others pushing these hypotheticals. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-student-learning-in-the-united-states-the-hurt-could-last-a-lifetime
The second footnote comes from the charter-loving Bellwether Education Partners. It refers to their October 21, 2020 titled “Missing in the Margins: Estimating the Scale of the COVID-19 Attendance Crisis.” This report estimates that three million of the most marginalized students are missing formal education in school–virtual or in-person. The estimate of three million comes from mostly federal estimates of the number of students in higher-risk groups in every state and nationally: Students in foster care, Students experiencing homelessness, English learners, Students with disabilities (ages 6-21) and Students eligible for the Migrant Education Program.
This report, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, offers a series of recommendations already in the works for addressing the effects of the pandemic on K-12 education. Most of these recommendations have less to do with formal education than with tapping every possible community and state resource (except money) to provide food, shelter, and other necessities to survive unemployment and dodge the virus.
This Bellwether report also chases data from news reports from several large districts, the State of Florida and a study done in 2008.
This whole effort relies on out of date “estimates” of this and that, and offers recommendations of little use in the addressing the systemic and the immediate needs of students, teachers, their families and caregivers.
The last thing we and they need is to have anyone telling the Secretary of Education to keep the meaningless standardized tests.
Opt out and do so proudly.
It’s up at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/EdTrust-and-Other-Groups-A-in-General_News-Education_Education-For-All_Education-Funding_Education-Testing-210204-486.html#comment784599
Should we be surprised that an organization that normalizes charters dumping all students who don’t test well and celebrates the results of such charters without caring if half the students who won lottery seats are missing at testing time would be demanding “testing”? Is there any chance whatsoever that their charters that specialize in either dumping or flunking kids who don’t test well will all have a good result?
It’s like McKinsey doing a study of opioids to prove how wonderful they are by having all patients taking their favorite opioids be in a special study run by McKinsey’s favorite doctors in which all the addicts are drummed out of the study, while the great minds at McKinsey insist that attrition rates are not just irrelevant, but are so irrelevant that they must be kept top secret and never revealed. And anyway, McKinsey says that they are certain that all the patients who left the study did so because they preferred to live a life full of pain.
EdTrust doesn’t believe in tests. They believe in using false claims of success to undermine and take money from public schools and give it to their favorite charters.
The major problem is billionaires who self-appoint to write public policy and who fund spin tanks and noxious politicians like Trump. Forbes lists Trump’s top 20 billionaire funders.
Beyond the usual slime like Peter Thiel, Paulson and casino owners, there’s consumer products’ owners, Ashley Furniture, Revlon, Clinique and Estee Lauder.
Nice piece in The Washington Post, Diane. Had to bookmark it.
In terms of John King…..I’m not going to waste my breath (or exert too many calories to click, click, click on this keyboard.)
His record speaks for itself.
He failed as state Commissijber of education in New York before he was chosen to succeed Arne Duncan.
Before NY, he ran a no-excuses charter school with the highest suspension rate in Massachusetts.