Nancy Flanagan is a retired teacher with decades of experience. In this post, she remembers when she used to take standardized test scores seriously. Then she went to a state board meeting in Michigan, where the topic of discussion was setting cut scores. Cut scores are the lines that determine whether students scored “advanced,” “proficient,” “basic,” or “below basic.”
What she learned was that the cut scores are arbitrary. There is no science involved in setting the cut scores. It’s guesswork. The cut scores can be moved up or down to produce good news or bad news.
She writes:
Here’s the (incendiary) headline: Test Scores Show Dramatic Declines!
Here’s the truth: this set of test scores tells us nothing for certain. The data are apples-to-oranges-to bowling balls muddled. If anything, if you still believe test scores give us valuable information, the data might be mildly encouraging, considering what students have encountered over the past 18 months…
The problem is this: You can’t talk about good schools or good teachers or even “lost learning”any more, without a mountain of numbers. Which can be inscrutable to nearly everyone, including those making policies impacting millions of children. When it comes to standardized test score analysis, we are collectively illiterate. And this year’s data? It’s meaningless.
Bridge Magazine (headline: Test Scores Slump) provides up/down testing data for every school district in Michigan. The accompanying article includes plenty of expert opinion on how suspect and incomplete the numbers are, but starts out with sky-is-falling paragraphs: In English, the share of third-graders considered “proficient” or higher dropped from 45.1 percent to 42.8 percent; in sixth-grade math, from 35.1 percent to 28.6 percent; in eighth-grade social studies, from 28 percent to 25.9 percent.
These are, of course, aggregated statewide numbers. Down a few percent, pretty much across the board. Unsurprising, given the conditions under which most elementary and middle school students were learning. Down the most for students of color and those in poverty—again, unsurprising. Still, there’s also immense score variance, school to school, even grade to grade. The aggregate numbers don’t tell the whole story–or even the right story.
The media seemed to prefer a bad-news advertising campaign for the alarming idea that our kids are falling further behind. Behind whom, is what I want to know? Aren’t we all in this together? Is a two-point-something score drop while a virus rages reason to clutch your academic pearls?…
It’s time to end our national love affair with testing, to make all Americans understand that educational testing is a sham that’s harmed many children. Testing hasn’t ever worked to improve public education outcomes, and it’s especially wasteful and subject to misinterpretation right now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Furthermore: what does ‘proficient’ even mean? It’s a word which appears repeatedly, with absolutely no precise definition. Everybody (including media) seems to think they understand it, however.”
Proficiency = Pornography! The US supreme court justice, Potter Stewart, writing about pornography couldn’t define pornography, but “I know it when I see it.”
Proficiency = Pornography is why using the invalid standardized test scores for anything is just mental masturbation. It is “vain and illusory” as Wilson says. It may feel good for a very short time but it is a sad substitute for the real teaching and learning process.
“There’s probably a lot that can be learned from a close look at the 2020-21 data, but most of it isn’t about quantified student learning gains.”
No, there is nothing to be learned. Crap in crap out is what should be learned. Or as Russ Ackhoff puts it “Doing the wrong thing righter results in one being “wronger”. It’s the wrong thing to do and there is nothing to learn from invalid corrupt data. (hint, that’s a basic scientific concept, bad data = invalid conclusions that should be rejected outright)
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During my first run as Principal in North Carolina I called the state to find what was the break down in the algorithm that determined a years growth or high growth. Of course I was told that this formula was a secret. When someone from the district came to explain how a school reached high growth it was astonishing how the numbers were manipulated to provide a particular perspective. It was a game. When I was in Alabama, it was determined that the state test was not demanding enough, so they hired Pearson to develop the ACT Aspire that only acknowledged a student proficient if they scored “above grade level” based on the normed scores. The entire process is not only a scam but opaque. States and districts have lost all credibility when it comes to using data to guide instruction. Those of us whose jobs depend on results are forced to fly blind.
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The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece asserting that American public schools are failing because most students are not “proficient.” He didn’t mention the proficiency rates at charter schools and voucher schools, which undoubtedly are the same or worse unless they are selective. On the NAEP, “proficiency” is equivalent to an A.
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Throughout my tenure as a principal it was the blatant dishonesty of the education establishment that was hardest to take. Every time our results got better, someone would put roadblocks in the way seemingly unwilling to acknowledge success. Test manipulation was simply an excuse to harden the autocratic governance so prevalent in public school management culture acknowledged by AL Shanker 3 decades ago.
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great line and so endlessly true: “Every time our results got better, someone would put roadblocks in the way”
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That’s what happened in the Buffalo Public Schools. We worked so hard to bring up the standards and then the cut scores were raised. Can’t have those inner city kids succeed.
Unfortunately, it also affected the rest of the population. In third grade my grand daughter was proficient at a three, in fourth grade she was down to a two, then a one in fifth grade. Did she get stupider each year? By sixth grade I convinced my daughter to opt her out so I guess that’s a zero. She went to the highest rated school in the county. Lots of parents were mad that their darlings were not scoring as high as before.
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“Can’t have those inner city kids succeed.” Yup. Could also be translated as “Let’s push those kids into the publicly-funded private sector: maybe we can lower school taxes– or at least keep ed-industry/ libertarian campaign donors happy.” Poor kids [usually minorities] as political pawns: “all we have to do is convince them they’re getting something better.” If you’ve got another layer of publicly-funded privates for white-flighters, win-win.
What a despicable scam.
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“During my first run as Principal. . .”
My condolences!
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Then add to that fact the test questions and reading passages are not always age appropriate, or give an advantage to privileged white kids, and you realize how irrelevant they have become since they were instituted (if they ever had relevance).
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Any test with an arbitrary cut score is unfair. Standardized testing favors the middle and wealthy class. With high stakes attached to results, standardized tests are used to close local public schools, put school districts into receivership and privatize schools. Minority majority school districts are often targeted for takeovers with low test scores used to justify the takeover. It is all part of the hustle to privatize public education.
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There can’t be any non-arbitrary cutoff points.
Far too many people have been led to believe that the standards and testing malpractice regime is “objective”. It never has been and never will be. That “objectivity” is a LIE!
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I’m okay with the bell curve, it gives you a good approximation of where you stand compared to others in your age group (on that particular time and day). Cut scores which are arbitrary mean nothing.
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And I’m not okay with the normal curve being used in assessing students. What good does it do the student to tell them they are in 90 percentile, probably serves only as a temporary ego booster for some and for others it confirms their self analysis that they are better than almost everyone else. . . And for the student scoring in the 15th percentile? Makes them feel like a piece of shit and dampens their desire to learn.
Using the normal/Bell curve has nothing to do with the main function of the teaching and learning process, i.e., helping students learn the subject matter at hand.
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The majority of the students fall in the middle of that bell curve. Those at either end probably need either remediation or enrichment. It’s just a tool, although a competent teacher will know all those things without a standardized test. Cut scores, however, are arbitrary, used to achieve a preconceived result. Totally worthless.
As an aside – i took a battery of tests in seventh grade and scored high on most of them, but only scored a thirty percentile (or less) in mechanical ability. Don’t ask me to fix anything – I’m a mess with a tool. If I change a light bulb I’m proud of myself. You have to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses.
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Flo, your ‘aside’ is paertinent. Those weren’t annual state-stds-aligned assessments for academic content in Math & English [& maybe Science], were they? They sound like aptitude tests with no stakes attached. They can be helpful— or at least give you another source to confirm what you thought seemed true. Sometimes they can even show you career areas worth exploration.
Bell-curve is one thing, and it has its applications. IMHO it helps only with teacher-designed assessments based on actual curriculum taught, and you’re not “grading on a curve,” you’re just observing the scores on a plot. That can show you who needs remedial/ enrichment, as you say– but you would have already known that just from class participation, homework, projects; it’s a confirmation. More likely the plot is going to show you what you may need to be doing differently.
State-stds-aligned assessments are a product, less face it, of the state standards. If—as in most states, where they’re using some tweaked version of Common Core, which has hundreds (per subject, per grade) of anywhere from picayune to vague and generalized “stds”– they cannot be authentically “assessed.” Kids are not ‘standard’; teachers will have to pick & choose which stds they can ‘cover;’ results will be an incomparable mish-mash— easy for politicos to jump in with cut scores geared to agenda.
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Duane, as usual, you make a good point.
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i took a battery of tests in seventh grade and scored high on most of them, but only scored a thirty percentile (or less) in mechanical ability. Don’t ask me to fix anything – I’m a mess with a tool. If I change a light bulb I’m proud of myself. You have to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses.”
Is it possible that you simply internalized that score on the test long ago that said you had low mechanical ability and then simply shied away from even trying to learn how to fix things because you just “knew” it was a waste of time? (Because you had been told)
Based on experience, i’m pretty sure that mechanical ability is actually not innate and that it takes a lot of knowledge and practice, both of which require significant investment in time and effort.
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Sorry Duane, I didn’t see the results until years later (as an adult). I’m just clumsy. (I also can’t snap my fingers).
Luckily my husband is super handy with tools. He was taking the registers off the wall with a screwdriver when he was three. Plus, if he doesn’t know how to fix something, he looks it up. It used to be with books, but now it’s utube.
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Not incidentally , I think the same is actually true with a lot of things.
Girls are told at an early age hat they can’t do math and science , so they shy away from technical subjects in school.
It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
That’s actually the central problem with standardized testing as I see it. It leads people to question their own potential and even their own worth.
It has always interested me that here in the US , we claim to celebrate individuals who persist and eventually succeed when they are told they can’t possibly do something, all the while erecting “standardized barriers” to convince people they simply don’t have what it takes.
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I have heard this “I’m not mechanical” claim many times and it has always been from women.
I don’t believe that’s because women don’t have the potential.
I don’t even really understand what it means. Does it mean they can’t use a screwdriver? I don’t believe it because anyone can learn, even probably an octopus.
Far more likely is that women have either been told from an early age that they can’t fix things or simply steered away from those types of things so they never have a chance to get good at them.
A woman friend of mine who IS very good at fixing things had a father who taught her how to fix and make things in a workshop in his basement.
I think that is the key difference between those who are mechanical and those who are not, but I don’t have any evidence other than anecdotal.
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As far as mechanical ability, I’m sure I could do a few simple things with enough guidance, but believe me, my “disability “ has nothing to do with gender. My brothers are also less than mechanically inclined. My one brother keeps trying and he has cost a fortune in repairs to those repair projects. My other brother is a little better, but not much. I won’t even mention how my grandfather broke every electronic device he ever had.
My daughters had the same shop teacher my brothers had in high school. They got As, my brother got Ds.
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I think it has something to do with the fact I am directionally challenged. I get lost a lot. When my son was as young as three, I used to to ask him which direction to turn and he always knew. He has a perfect sense of direction, I don’t. I even have trouble with Google Maps.
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Although they might be related, I don’t think the two are causally related. One need not follow from the other.
I am very visually oriented, so if someone describes how to do something or how to get somewhere with a sequence of steps, I am likely to get lost, figuratively and literally.
On the other hand, if someone shows me a diagram or map, I can generally both fix/make something AND get from point a to point b.
But other people are very good at remembering and following a sequence of steps to both fix things and get somewhere by driving.
I think if one both gets lost while driving and while trying to fix something , it is probably related to how one is presented with the “instructions” and how one processes the information (and whether one even has the necessary information to begin with).
I agree that some people are better at doing things with their hands than others, but I also believe that at least part of that comes from practice .
Maybe some of it is “innate”, but, if it exists, I don’t believe that part has anything to do with gender
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While I do get lost (a lot), I do learn from my mistakes, so the next time there a better chance I will reach my destination (or know enough to make a u-turn when I notice that the familiar landmarks are on the wrong side of the street).
Don’t laugh – I’m referring to an incident which happened just a few days ago. I was in familiar territory, yet found myself going in the wrong direction not once, but twice.
I also don’t have good eye hand coordination, which is important if you want to repair things (or take off jar lids). I had the grades to become a doctor, but the world is lucky I stuck with books.
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The valley of indecision…
Wait in the sitting room or sit in the waiting room.
No room to talk, go into the prefix wiggle room.
Mix CUT with scores to pretend SOME scores
are arbitrary, as if all of them aren’t.
Mix STANDARDIZED with testing, to pretend
SOME tests are the real deal.
Preach testing is a sham, BUT practice
testing by giving them.
Over egg the word pudding ’till the chickens come
home to roost.
You cannot give up on SCORES while wearing
a score foil hat, the score based avatar…
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It is long past time. It has been past time. It is never going to be time again.
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Sounds like the block universe.
According to the block universe theory, the universe is a giant block of all the things that ever happen at any time and at any place. On this view, the past, present and future all exist — and are equally real.”
https://www.realclearscience.com/2018/09/03/the_block_universe_theory_explained_282664.html
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The biggest reason we should not have testing is that it leads to national standards. Since standards is an ill-defined word, it has been shrouded in jargon that attempts to make the process of creating them seem legitimate. People look upwards when they say “standards,” as though they had uttered an incantation that would please the gods. But standards are just statements and lists. The de-mystification of such statements and lists might offend some, but my experience with standards and their mates, the test questions has been anything but awe-inspiring.
In fact, such experience has led me to disrespect tests, scores, and any other attempt to “measure” student progress. We can measure with a yes or no, whether a student can choose Washington as the first president in answer to a question: Who was the first president? Having known that, we must proceed to another yes or no question that may or may not be related to the first. What do we learn from this? Less than nothing. Modern testing is a series of unrelated questions designed to see if the student is sufficiently experienced in a very limited scope of study.
All this makes Pearson wealthy, but everyone else stupid. An now, directly from Tennessee, the state that gave you VAM, comes Pearson being responsible for certifying Tennessee teachers. I am teaching with a student teacher who is earning a degree and teaching certification through the on-line University. She is responsible to mail stuff to Pearson, where it will be graded. Holy Crap!
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Certificates of completion, electronic badges, competency certificates, etc. . . through the modulated, surveilled and simplistic internet schemes, cons and scams. Sure looks great, though, that certificate. . .and with the teacher shortage all adminimals can have their pic of supposedly qualified applicants. Maybe it’s better than TFA, but if that is all it is, what a sad state of affairs.
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Roy– “Modern testing is a series of unrelated questions designed to see if the student is sufficiently experienced in a very limited scope of study.” BINGO. You’ve identified a general characteristic of limited [wasteful] pedagogy, the kind that does not lead to desired goals. We can all probably think of other classroom exercises that = “a series of unrelated questions designed to see if the student is sufficiently experienced in a very limited scope of study.”
My immediate connection is to so many world-lang texts which separate [& quiz] vocabulary from verbs & their conjugations from prepositional use from etc fragmentation of lexical study. Good luck linking all those separate mental exercises into formation of a written sentence, let alone spoken in a real-time conversation! (And yet one expects to come out of world-lang study, um, speaking the language.) The most apt students can transcend this & connect the dots. Other students left in the dust & concluding they’re ‘no good at languages.’
Standardized annual assessments ‘aligned’ to state stds are the über-example of inefficient pedagogy. Stdzd tests were designed to provide a periodic [like every few yrs] snapshot, giving a rough thumbnail comparison among regional and state school systems. ANY stakes warp results, causing tested regions/ states to try to outguess & outwit the testing method to plump scores. Give them annually instead of periodically & you can predict they will start overshadowing authentic choices in curriculum and pedagogy.
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Roy, I have a long “part 2” reply to you, which I put below under general comments, to get more margin room.
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It seems no amount or quality of research is enough to persuade decision-makers/leadership in American education that over testing is worthless and insane. It’s insane because it literally does the opposite of what it purports to do. It robs time, energy, creativity and a love for learning from students and teachers. And it is now beginning in pre-K. Sad and pathetic. I have seen firsthand the fear and panic that take hold of a principal who has received test data that is less than glowing. I’ve also seen the giddiness when the data shows progress.
We are a wreck. I’ve lost hope.
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What’s worse is the child’s response when they don’t have a clue. I’ve even seen an eighth grade boy cry because the math questions he was supposed to answer weren’t in the curriculum and his teacher was only planning on giving them an introduction to the topic so they were ready when the subject was taught in algebra. (If he had time at the end of the year – not in the beginning of April). I’ve also seem elementary students have a meltdown. I’m glad I never had to proctor those cuties in Pre-K – I would have been the one in tears.
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No wonder there is a shortage of teachers! Public schools and teachers have become the “whipping boy” for all of societies ills. Our testing obsession is helping to drive dedicated teachers out of the profession.
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It’s one thing to be the whipping boy– you could maybe resign yourself to being an unacknowledged saint. But when your professional training demonstrates that the very measure used to frame you as a whipping boy– annual state-stdzd test scores– has zippo to do with your kids’ curriculum or learning– in fact gets manipulated in different ways every year for $$political reasons that have nothing to do with education and never result in extra $$/support to your schsys… Sheesh!! [& I didn’t even address the social ills part! ☹ ]
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It is maddening. You know what the problem is with fighting the national testing obsession? It’s not sexy. It’s not sensational. The testing industry is able to get away with crimes against education and students because we’re trying to argue the technical issues with the tests instead of doing what the corporate deformers do, making everything racial and sexual. When we show, as the University of California schools did while dropping the SAT requirements, that testing harms people of color and perhaps gender identity, we will capture the attention of a much wider audience.
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But we have decades of study showing that standardized test scores reflect zip code [residential poverty/ minority segregation]. The racial impact is there now, & always has been. Why is the national attitude evolving toward inclusiveness of poor/ minorities in college education [hence less or zero emphasis on entrance testing]– but at the same time using stdzd test scores to close poor/ minority pubschs & shuffle students into half-baked charters & [zero-baked] voucher schools?
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Ironically, the shortage of workers is here to stay. Businesses are actually going to need the students who graduate from both the urban and rural schools to meet the demand. By raping the system with Charter Schools, plus closing instead of improving local schools in need, we are doing the economy a disservice. Add in the lack of infa-structure – like child care, available/affordable transportation, plus access to reliable internet services, as well as the inequitable systems between the haves and the have nots, and we have a crisis on our hands which will affect us all. Testing is the least of the governments problems. They need to actually turn the schools around to graduate productive/competent workers.
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That is exactly it. There is only so much time in the day. A good chunk of K-2 school time should be spent engaged in hands-on, creative and play-based learning (including free play). Every minute spent assessing and tracking data could be spent doing so many more meaningful things.
I have lost hope for changing the system too – it’s been too damaged.
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With you a million percent about what school should look like for early childhood and kindergarten. All one must do it watch students in an environment that is not restrained from interactive, hands-on play-based learning. One of the most exciting and fascinating things to see! Creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking… brilliance come alive! And our system is destroying this. Many kindergartners don’t get more than 15 or 20 minutes outside for free play. I simply do not understand how a system can, through research, determine conclusively what is best for children’s emotional, physical, social and cognitive health AND for optimal learning and then literally do the opposite.
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Kindergarten interlude: basic [infuriating] Q: how can a system, through research, determine… what is best… and then literally do the opposite? That’s the deprofessionalizing of teaching, right there. It’s like decapitation: the “system” removes the thinking head– the profession, its research, its standards. Teacher is just a body to implement the shifting whims of the political state.
I too taught little ones– visiting Spanish teacher to various regional PreK/K’s, 2001-2020. Where privately funded (which most of them still are in my area), the state leaves them alone, and they are mostly play-based, run by directors with a deep background in early-childhood ed. But since 2010, every single one with state-subsidized tuition has been infiltrated and warped by wrong-headed, age-inappropriate standards that spilled down from the accountability systems of K12.
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Yes. It is malpractice to only let K students play for 20-30 minutes a day. The powers that be see what you are describing as frivolous. If teachers aren’t “teaching” they are not working and accountable – and children must not be learning. It’s actually the opposite – play, painting, drawing, coloring – cutting, creating, building, tinkering – are the most engaging learning experiences. If you think there is little time for that in K – there is almost no time in 1st.
It’s actually an art to set up an activity or environment that allows for children to have the experience you describe…. and to know when to interact and support what they are doing and when to step back and just let them figure things out.
We need a massive revamping of K-3, that is less “rigorous” and more humane – so that children have the proper tools to interact with peers and the natural world – in a way that is sustainable and healthy for our humanity and planet.
The Lego Foundation is leading an international movement for this. I hope it builds in the U.S.
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A New Hippocratic Oath For Teachers
https://theeducatorsroom.com/a-new-hippocratic-oath-for-teachers/
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A few years ago, I did some charts of cut scores for ELA and Math exams for the state of New York over many years. They jumped around like a gerbil on methamphetamines. In some years, the math cut scores for passing were JUST BARELY ABOVE WHAT ONE WOULD GET BY GUESSING RANDOMLY
Here’s the deal. If it’s a year in which the state wants to say, “We need to start getting tough and implement this shiny new magic elixir system for improving schools,” they’ll set the cut scores high and point to them as evidence that something dramatic needs to be done. If it’s a year in which they want to say that their current magic elixir is working or if people want to show what a great job they are doing,” they’ll set them really low.
IT’S A SCAM.
But this is only ONE of MANY scams in the state testing industry. Here, read it and weep for our children and grandkids:
I tried, in this piece, to give a brief but relatively thorough overview of the many reasons why these state tests are pseudoscientific poppycock.
Enough. It’s time for our unions to start mobilizing people to end the testing regime. Until they do, they are complicit in this child abuse.
I am quite serious about that. Complicit.
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Complicit? Perhaps. Toothless? Certainly.
Our biggest problem is membership. No one will join. There is in my space, a complacent attitude born of short tenure. Teachers come and go, year to year. No one perceives how corrosive testing is because all the teachers have never known real teaching.
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Bob – it’s sad that we aren’t relying on experts like you at the federal level to shape policy.
Roy – I see the same thing. Teacher’s have been indoctrinated in a type of teaching that they believe is best because that is what they have been taught and have seen over the last 2 decades. There isn’t the outrage over data and assessment at the younger levels that is strong enough to support change.
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Complicit.
The only way the ignorant federal testing mandate is going to end is if the major national unions lead a concerted, nationwide effort against it, including action in the streets and a media campaign. So, since they could stop this CHILD ABUSE and choose not to, they are COMPLICIT in it.
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What do you call a gerbil on methamphetamines?
A gerball
Those standardized test folks sure can play gerrr-ball
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The GerBall Wizards (apologies to Pete Townsend)
Ever since I was a young boy
I’ve played the furry ball
From Soho down to Brighton
I must have played ’em all
But I ain’t seen nothing like em
In any amusement hall
Those standardizing test folks
Sure play mean gerr-ball
They stand with their statutes
Become part of the machine
Fielding all the “stumpers”
Always testing clean
Collecting their tuition
The cut scores rise and fall
Those standardizing test folks
Sure play mean gerr-ball
They’re the gerrBall wizards
There’s got to be a test
The gerrBall wizard’s
Got such a score finesse
How do you think they do it? I don’t know
What makes them so good?
Ain’t got no distractions
Can’t hear no buzzers and bells
Don’t see no lights a-flashin’
Play by sense of smell
Always get a replay
Never seen em fall
Those standardizing test folks
Sure play mean gerr-ball
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Did you ever examine how the NYS Regents Exam scores are weighted now? When I went to school, you got what you scored. Now the results are skewed so more kids will pass. That why they can keep the requirement of passing 5 exams to graduate.
Can’t let those suburban kids all fail. Their parents vote.
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Roy [part 2 reply to your 9/10 2:51 pm comment]–
I cannot say I am against standards.
I know you said “national standards” – I think there might be room for national standards, but I doubt it. Given the limited ability of our fed govt to impose ed specifics on states– & the mirrored funding that results [only 8%-9% federal funding for pubschs]—my sense is that those footing the majority of the bill will dictate state stds. I can’t get exercised about poor ed in poor states: if they’re going to be backwards & ideological about what’s taught in their schools, they will suffer in the capitalistic way. Big fancy intl corps won’t locate where local pubschs are crummy. Universities in those states will lose credibility/ draw as their GOP super-majorities chip away at funding & quality of the public ed in those states. [Would you want to be a prof at Chapel Hill today, as opposed to 20 yrs ago, knowing your kids would go to NC pubschs?] Kids will leave those towns & relocate to where ed & jobs are better. Those states will up their game when their backs are to the wall.
But let’s go to state stds. You said “standards and their mates, the test questions.” What were state stds like before NCLB & RTTT? Those here in NJ [long in the top 5 states for ed achievement] were short & sweet, & did not correspond to “test questions.” They were a simple set of “can-do” statements for each subject area, & not necessarily broken out by grade, often several grades at a time, to show you where you should be headed. It was up to locales and teaching professionals to flesh them out with curriculum and pedagogy. Individual school systems might develop their own special programs– ours e.g. got ELA staff together to devise a unified K12 writing program, & the district became noted for producing excellent writers. In the pre-NCLB (golden) era of the digital revolution, all these stds & programs were put onto webs & available to other districts & states.
Midterms and finals—“test questions”– were designed by [gasp] the individual teachers who taught those courses. Sure, we had “team-teaching” in many of the schools; groups of peer teachers would collaborate on curriculum and tests. Or not. Somehow, without state-stds-aligned stdzd tests attached to funding stakes [“accountability systems”], NJ hischs had a high % of grads & many got into good colleges [hence high national rating]. Those stds were scrapped for Common Core, which at this point has barely been tweaked, & we have the whole magilla of annual PAARC tests (plus hisch exit exam). NJ is still ranked in top 5 for ed achievement. Not because of any of that, in spite of it.
Bottom line: the old NJ stds were excellent. Their implementation depended on professional teachers. They were not even translatable to computer-friendly aligned assessments provided by remote testing orgs. I’ve perused stds of various high-achieving Euro countries—they were very similar. Sad to say, some of the best [I’m thinking Netherlands] have recently been replaced by laundry lists of computer-testable ‘skills’…
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I am very much in favor of professional argument about the ideas we teach. Questions about when it is appropriate to introduce what concept or what is meant when we teach a concept should be ever before the instructor. Still, in order to lure competent instructors into teaching so that we maximize our ability to respond to the student’s needs, we need to grant as much autonomy in the classroom as we can. We will never be able to pay a teacher what she is worth. What we need to do is to lure good teachers by making their job go smoothly and efficiently, and making the instructor feel that progress is in sight. Otherwise the despair of burnout creeps into the system, and teachers become the function of various outside pressures. This is what is happening now.
I think it is by design. I think many would like to turn the profession into a place where very low paid employees turn this bolt and paint this panel so that overhead is low. But this is dangerous.
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as much autonomy as possible
This sounds so radical now, but it’s the way it always was before this standardization madness, which has not only not led to increased test scores (the deformers’ measure of success) but has clearly led to devolved teaching and pedagogy as well.
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I agree. The old NYS Standards were created by teachers over several years. I was on one of the curriculum committees and the input was thoughtful and relevant. We even included sample lessons (one I was able to adapt for the library and it was one of the most well received ideas I ever presented).
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To clarify: I was on the curriculum committee for Music in the Buffalo Public Schools and we reviewed and made suggestions to submit to the state.
We were encouraged to give input – even us lowly teachers.
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Selling illusory salvation 101.
Perpetuate the themes and myths that serve the
interests of the PTB.
“The causes of problems can be explained or
described in many ways. The choice of explanation
or description usually determines the nature of
the problem’s resolution.”
The Problem:
Many would argue, it’s the LACK of ELA proficiency.
It’s the undermining of ELA experts in the field.
“it’s sad that we aren’t relying on experts like you at the federal level to shape policy.”
Problem is POLICY is the fruit of LEGALISE,
the monied monopoly of definitions and applications,
far removed from ELA.
But, the constitution sez, the law sez, Simon sez,
ad infinitum…
What the wording means, and how it is applied, has
always been a function of the system steered by
legalise, unchallenged by ELA.
It seems reducing the conflict to an ELA issue,
smacks of endless academic debate, functioning
as a bourgeois trap, that gets us nowhere…
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Encouraging a love of books by providing access to well stocked school libraries and certified school media specialists has been proven to be a single factor which has the potential to improve literacy. The librarians should not be a “special” to give the teacher a break, but a co-teacher who uses their expertise to teach essential skills and introduce children to good literature.
Unfortunately, the librarian is often the first to be cut. Then administrators wonder why students aren’t developing their ELA skills the way they should.
I know everyone isn’t me, but I made library exciting for both the teachers (or aides) and my students (even parents were impressed by what I had to offer). I’m still “collecting” the data of my master plan to encourage kids to read (via my Facebook friends which include former students). Scholastic has published the studies which support my thesis.
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It’s time to end our obsession over OBSESSING over testing, period. Again, JUST.STOP.TAKING.THE.TESTS.
With COVID here to stay (& variant Mu has been detected: coming soon to a city near you), opening schools will close again. & open again. Then, finally, go remote. WHY did ANY student at home, last year, turn on his/her/their computer & take the damn tests?
The vast majority of colleges & universities aren’t even using SATs as entrance requirements.
ENOUGH…end of discussion.
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“end of discussion” NOT
Is EXAMPLE the best leader?
F. Douglas:
“Do not call for a battle for which you are not
willing to fight yourself. To do otherwise is
to earn contempt.”
Your “example” is following the orders given,
give tests.
Most students get hit with the testing bullet.
Your fix…DUCK
STOP FIRING THE TESTING GUN.
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In many states, students’ diplomas can be withheld if they do not complete the mandated state testing. They can’t graduate.
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