Christopher Tienken and Julia Larrea Borst wrote this article for NJ.com, where it is behind a paywall. It was reposted by the Network for Public Education blog:
In a guest editorial at NJ.com, Tienken, an associate professor at Seton Hall University, and Borst, executive director of Save Our Schools New Jersey, explain why it’s time to put an end to the big high stakes standardized test.
They wrote:
A veritable industrial-testing complex has been set up across the country that siphons educational resources from public schools to large corporations. The United States mandates more standardized tests of academic achievement than any other democratic country in the G20 group of nations. So, what have we learned from all of this testing?
Studies over the last 35 years have demonstrated that results from standardized tests are highly subjective and not entirely indicative of what is happening in the classroom. Findings from decades of scientific research suggest that standardized tests are blunt instruments, whose results can be predicted at the school and district levels by using family and community demographic data found in the U.S. Census.
Simply put, results from study after study over the last 70 years suggest that the tests are measuring more of a child’s experiences outside of school than what’s happening inside of school. The results do not provide valid information about the quality of teaching in a school, how a student learns, what a student learned, nor the learning potential of a student. According to the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, which was developed by leading education and psychology research associations, the tests are not diagnostic and the results cannot be used to inform classroom instruction.
Supporters of large-scale standardized tests continue to tell parents and taxpayers that without the results from standardized tests, no one will know how their children are doing in school or where financial resources should be allocated to close learning gaps. Both notions are false.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Standardized Testing, as.prominently as it is brandished, is not implemented throughout the nation, despite claims to the opposite. I
This is false. There is a FEDERAL mandate requiring standardized testing. It is this that needs to be revoked.
Whose universe is your place of residence? Obviously not teaching.
“The United States mandates more standardized tests of academic achievement than any other democratic country in the G20 group of nations.”
During my more than three and an half decades in public education I witnessed an ever expanding testing creep. When I first started teaching, standardized testing were given in grades 3,6 and 8. By the time I finished, I lost 28 instructional mornings to standardized testing. This, in my opinion, is real ‘learning loss’ and missed opportunity. If a typical month includes roughly 20 instructional mornings, on a 10 month school schedule, students were losing more than 10% of their instructional mornings on bubble tests. I mention instructional mornings because I ended my career in an elementary school where mornings are instructional gold. Most teachers and schools tend to focus on mornings for reading and math instruction because it is the prime time for students to be alert and more attentive. We have gone off the rails with our testing obsession. All it does is make testing companies and data mongers wealthy at the expense of the well-being and education of our young people.
It’s a LOT more than those 28 mornings, RT. There’s the time spent in teacher trainings related to the standards and standardized testing regimen, there are all the instructional hours given to test prep. There are all the instructional hours given to curricular materials that have been revised to imitate standardized test questions or, supposedly, to teach the bullet list of “standards” in preparation for the test. And then there are the countless hours devoted to data walls and data chats and test-based personal evaluations.
You are so right, Bob! Far too much time and money are spent on this largely fruitless endeavor.
The Fordham Institute for Procuring Large Donations from Oligarchs for the Payment of Enormous Salaries to the Officers of the Fordham Institute published a “White Paper” (oh, so white) claiming that some tiny amount of time was spent every year on testing. Of course, they counted ONLY the time kids actually spent at computers taking the tests. They didn’t count the multiple practice tests throughout the year, the prep for these tests, the data chats, the preparation of data walls, the work done in curricular materials that had been redesigned to mimic the formats of the test questions, the time spent in test-based teacher and administrator evaluations, the time and effort spent informing parents of test scores and meeting with parents to discuss those, etc., etc.
Of course they didn’t. Because they have NO FREAKING CLUE WHAT ACTUALLY GOES ON INSIDE SCHOOLS.
The “largely” in that sentence is unnecessary.
I have to proctor the annual state tests that take a couple weeks, two interim tests that take a week together, and three district purchased tests that take another week. That’s nearly a month per year of instruction time lost. Gone. For no reason that helps my students or me. And people talk about learning loss. Ridiculous.
exactly. In my last school, it was about a month and a half of lost instructional time due to the testing itself, not counting all the test-related bs, like the practice testing and the data chats and the meetings with the Principal or AP re the test results or the test prep or the . . . .
Billions and billions and billions of wasted instructional hours and wasted dollars. The standardized testing is invalid; has ZERO diagnostic and formative value; and is useless for informing instruction. Even Bowman’s bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Put a stake in the standardized testing vampire. End it COMPLETELY.
Oops. Commas after invalid and value, ofc.
Standardized Tests make gobs of $$$$$ for a FEW.
Lots of kids make DESIGNS on those tests in protest. I have seen this happen a lot.
The worst of it is that the standardized testing has metastasized throughout our curricula and pedagogy, which have undergone wholesale reworking to conform with these ridiculous tests. And most people have no clue that that has happened. We have an entire generation of teachers, now, who have no idea what has been lost because they’ve been using this testing regime curricula and pedagogical strategies their entire careers. WITH THE RESULT THAT WE HAVE SEEN ZERO IMPROVEMENT BY THE ED REFORMERS’ OWN PREFERRED MEASURE, the test scores. Why has there been ZERO accountability for those who made the FALSE claim that these tests and these “standards” would improve outcomes. That would be HILARIOUS if it weren’t so tragic. Billions and billions and billions of wasted dollars. Billions and billions and billions of lost instructional hours. Staggering direct and opportunity cost. All because people don’t bother to do the work to think at all carefully about these “standards” and the tests that purportedly measure their attainment but in fact DO NO and CANNOT.
“All because people don’t bother to do the work to think at all carefully about________.”
Yup. FIll in the blank. I don’t even know if that’s possible anymore, Bob!
And I’ve even had teachers say to me that they look forward to the tests because they will tell them how well THEY (the teachers) have done their jobs!!! I cringe every time! And yes, it’s mostly the young teachers. Akkkk!!!!
The federally mandated state testing in ELA is, DEMONSTRABLY, pseudoscientific hooey. That it has been allowed to persist, given that, is a shocking indictment of our educational system. In fact, given its obvious flaws, given the fairly obvious and abundantly clear invalidity of the tests, that it wasn’t shouted down decades ago is itself demoralizingly shocking. The level of incompetence that would be required and the breadth of that incompetence across our institutions necessary in order for these invalid instruments to continue to be used is extremely high. So many people–including education leaders, politicians, journalists, professors of education, educational think tank pundits–are so clearly clueless, so clearly have not thought carefully about these tests. Many of them have probably never actually read one through. Please read the analysis that I posted above entitled Combating Standardized Testing Derangement Syndrome (STDs) in the English Language Arts.
The standardized testing in ELA has proved, unequivocally, one thing: that millions and millions of our educational leaders and researchers are so clueless that they actually think that these ELA tests validly test for what they purport to test for. That they do reveals breathtaking and almost completely widespread incompetence and/or laziness–inability or unwillingness to do the work necessary to think about whether these tests can and do measure what they purport to measure.
They don’t.
This level of ineptitude is sickening.
I totally agree. Sadly, we are unlikely to get the ill informed Dr. Cardona to take a stand against testing.
Nope. The only institutions I see that are big enough to end the federal testing mandate are the teacher’s unions, but that would require leadership that has the guts to take this issue to the streets, to declare a nationwide testing strike–a refusal of the membership to participate, any longer, in this CHILD ABUSE.
I so appreciate your comments, RT. Lots of experience. Lots of careful reflection.
Parents should understand that the emphasis on high stakes testing actually impedes and diminishes education. It takes valuable time from learning, thinking and exploring which is what students actually need.
We live in a country in which people respond to memes and slogans. Anything that requires even a tiny bit of thinking–like understanding why the ELA standardized tests cannot possibly be testing for what they purport to test for–goes WHOOSH, over people’s heads. There are some exceptions among folks who visit this blog–but out there in the country, among supposed educational leaders and researchers and pundits–it’s too much trouble, it seems.
After years of posting about why the standardized tests in ELA do not and cannot work as they are purported to, I finally sat down and wrote one fairly short summary of the issues that make these invalid instruments for measuring outcomes in ELA. This is that summary. It shows, conclusively, I think, several reasons why these tests are invalid–why they DO NOT and CANNOT work as people think they do. And I think that if people bothered to familiarize themselves with the tests and to think at all carefully about them, they would have long ago come to the same conclusions that I have. These tests are pseudoscience. They’re hogwash. They’re a multi-billion-dollar-a-year scam.
A multi-billion-dollar-a-year scam, with millions of dupes, some of them, alas, well-remunerated “experts” on education or even on assessment. Again, this would be hilarious–the stuff of comedy and farce–if it weren’t so tragic.
You make a compelling case against STDs. Too bad those at the top of the educational pyramid lack the understanding or guts to do anything about it. BTW, one of Biden’s campaign promises was to eliminate standardized testing. Yet, his DOE does nothing but give credence turning education into a jobs program and reinforcing the ‘testing industrial complex.’
Biden made that promise? Missed it.
He made the statement when he was addressing the NEA Convention, at least that’s what I recall, but I am not sure that he promised to do it. “Top congressional Democrats for education policy alongside some advocacy groups pushed to maintain the testing requirement, although President Joe Biden indicated that he opposed mandated standardized testing during his 2020 presidential campaign.Jul 21, 2021.
Biden spoke at an education town hall in Pittsburgh, where all the Dem candidates spoke. He said he would get rid of standardized testing and got a lot of applause
I feel duty-bound to be the devil’s advocate here, since no one else (except teaching economist) will do it. So I’ll say this:
The ed reform push to require standardized testing in grades 3-8, and efforts in states to tie test results to teacher pay and tenure decisions, was a gigantic strategic error that created a groundswell of anti-standardized testing sentiment. For the most part, I agree with that sentiment to the extent it applies to annual test requirements in K-12 and certainly to the use of those tests in school personnel decisions, which to me seems manifestly unfair.
But I do hope the tide turns back in favor of using the SAT and ACT in college admissions. Contrary to, I believe, everyone else here, I believe standardized tests are valuable in that context. They are not perfect, but nothing is. They don’t sum up a person’s worth, but nothing does. They have silly and stupid questions, but so do exams written by teachers. (I regularly tear my hair out when I see the half-literate assignments and grading commentary generated by my son’s English teacher at an insanely priced NYC private school.) But standardized tests like the SAT and ACT allow comparisons across entire applicant pools, as opposed to across single high school classes, and they have value in predicting success in college far beyond what grades alone provide.
Please read Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” if you haven’t already. If you have read please let us know where and how you disagree with his analysis. https://epaa.asu.edu/index.php/epaa/article/view/577
I read it many years ago, at your suggestion. It’s gibberish from front to back, in my opinion.
Reread it. It took me a few reads to fully appreciate what he was saying.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be insulting. I just mean that I genuinely can’t make heads or tails out of most of his sentences.
I understand. It took me more than a few times of reading to understand what he is saying. I sometimes think he did the dissertation a bit tongue in cheek to highlight the absurdities of a lot of educational discourse. It is a style of writing that is more popular in other languages, and we Americans rarely have the chance to see sentences that are a page long. Having the type of mind that thinks that way myself (I probably would have been diagnosed ADD/ADHD when I was a boy but that wasn’t part of the world back then) and having read a fair amount of Spanish literature wherein long sentences are considered erudite I eventually was able to figure out Wilson’s style.
I tried! It’s highly philosophical and to me doesn’t make sense.
Here’s an example. Imagine a standardized test with one question that asks what the number 10 squared equals.
How is that test “invalid”? On what basis do we believe it tells us nothing of value about the people who get the answer wrong?
FLERP!,
That seems like a weak example to justify standardized tests.
What is your definition of “something of value”?
It may or may not tell us that a student isn’t familiar with the expression “10 squared”. That student might be brilliant in math, and if someone told him that a number squared is the number multiplied by itself and they could answer that question plus easily grasp much higher level math when taught. Another student might have spent months prepping to learn common expressions used on standardized tests, and has memorized the meaning of “squared” but couldn’t understand higher level math without having a tutor 5 times a week, and even then barely pass math.
To be clear, I was speaking to Duane, in reference to Wilson’s essay.
FLERP!,
You make valid points, and another one should be made. The SAT – and later on the ACT – enabled students from varied backgrounds to gain credentials for admission to selective colleges. A kid from a rural, small high school could be admitted when his SAT showed that he had great potential. That’s still the case and even more important in these days of inflated high school grades that signify nothing more than a certain amount of seat time.
SAT and ACT are controversial in 2023 because they accurately reflect the major differences in academic qualifications between racial groups. Asians and Whites collectively score far higher on these tests than do other racial groups, especially Blacks. Assign whatever causes you choose for those differences, but they are real and every professor not immersed in racial ideology knows it, even though most are too afraid of being canceled to say so publicly.
The same anti-test mindset is everywhere in America these days. Any test – for admissions to academic programs or for professional certification – is called racist if politically incorrect percentages of non-Asian minority groups do poorly on those tests. So far the military is the only institution that still uses aptitude tests like ASVAB that have a decades long history of accurately predicting success in various military jobs. If you don’t score high enough in an occupational category, you aren’t assigned to training for that job. It’s only a matter of time until the Biden administration lowers military standards as well.
I anticipate the ad hominem attacks that are inspired by any dissent from the prevailing orthodoxies here.
Jordan Wiborg,
I DO disagree with your points here. Your defense of standardized testing using racist tropes is evidence-free and worthless.
These tests were created by eugenicists with the goal of sorting out society into desirables and undesirables.
“These tests were created by eugenicists with the goal of sorting out society into desirables and undesirables.”
I’ve never liked this “fruit of the poisonous tree” argument–the idea that something that had ignoble associations at its inception is necessarily and forever tainted and must be discarded. It also seems to ignore things like “common exams,” exams made up of standardized (or “common”) questions that students from wide-ranging rural locations within one jurisdiction were required to take, which I think predate the eugenics work you’re describing. And there’s also civil service exams from the 19th century, and imperial exams that go back centuries further, designed to identify “merit” and thus blunt systems of patronage that were rightly criticized as unfair and as producing incompetent bureaucratic classes. (Back then they didn’t know, as we do today, that “merit is a myth!!”)
It is a myth that “merit” CAN be measured scientifically. Why would anyone question that obvious truth?
But if FLERP! knows how to measure merit, I wish he/she would inform us which “merit scale” FLERP! uses. I haven’t heard of one that gives an accurate measurement of how to stack rank 5,000 students, or 5,000 medical school applicants but FLERP! seems to believe there is one.
“On what basis do we believe it tells us nothing of value about the people who get the answer wrong?”
On many bases. It could be the student guessed and got lucky. He/she may know the answer at that point in taking the test but when she/he walks out they have already forgotten it, in other words a lack of permanency of the supposed knowledge needed to answer the question. Or they may remember that knowledge a month later and then forget it again. There is too much variance in how a student can arrive at the correct answer at a single sitting of a test for us to state with any confidence whatsoever that the student “knows” the concept(s) behind the answer/thinking.
Psychometricians have attempted to eliminate those variances by ignoring them. Which leads us back to Wilson’s onto-epistemological invalidities in the whole standardized testing process, which renders any conclusions as you suggest to be “vain and illusory”.
Perhaps a simpler read of Wilson is his review of the testing bible “Standards for Educational and Psychological
Testing” titled “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” @ file:///C:/Users/dswac/Downloads/pkpadmin,+v10n5.pdf
“The SAT – and later on the ACT – enabled students from varied backgrounds to gain credentials for admission to selective colleges.”
And denied many others for admission.
An invalid process cannot give valid results. The whole process of standardized testing is chock full of onto-epistemological invalidities. Read Wilson’s work I reference above.
“SAT and ACT are controversial in 2023 because they accurately reflect the major differences in academic qualifications between racial groups.”
Define accurately. This should be fun if you have the guts and a modicum of integrity to respond.
FLERP!,
I don’t disagree with many of your points.
Flerp, have you even read any of the question on the new Common Cored SAT? The one that Decider for the Rest of Us David Coleman should have called the Standardized Common Core Aptitude Test, or SCCAT (a name that would perfectly capture its “value”?
questions
What’s the timeframe? I looked at some SAT questions a few years ago. Nothing jumped out at me at the time as outrageous, but I don’t remember any details now.
You should read the idiotic comments my kids’ English teachers have written on their essays, and the assignments they send out — I’ve had to resist the urge to redline them and send them back with comments of my own.
Don’t resist that urge, Flerp. When David Coleman took over as CEO of the College Board, he had the SAT redone based on the puerile Gates/Coleman Common (sic) Core (sic) bullet list, and he implemented the policy of attempting to pose “higher order” questions by having the answer to a given question on the test be the supposedly BEST of several plausible answers. So, the questions are now tricky and convoluted, like the questions on the state standardized ELA tests.
I hate test questions where more than one of the answers is correct. It’s a trap. The second best answer may in fact be the very best.
Judgment call.
This is a fatal flaw in many of the current tests. It came about as a result of attempting to commander multiple-choice questions to do a kind of service that they are unsuited for: testing for sophisticated, complex, “higher-order” thinking. Big mistake. The resulting questions are a mess.
A few years ago, I and my fellow English teachers received a directive from our administrators telling us to spend an enormous amount of time doing test prep. I did a question-by-question analysis of a 9th-grade FCAT ELA exam (the standardized tests nationwide are quite similar; I probably know them as well as does anyone in the country because I worked for their publishers for years). My analysis showed that TYPICALLY, more than one answer was arguably correct, the supposedly correct answer was arguably incorrect, the question was unanswerable, or none of the answers was (arguably) correct. This was true OF ALMOST EVERY QUESTION. The tests were so sloppily written that one could easily make a strong case that the answer deemed correct was not, in fact, correct.
When I served on the NAEP governing board, I reviewed test questions and insisted on elimination of questions with more than one plausible right answer. I took the issue very seriously. Most people would just go along with the “experts.”
When two answers are plausible, the “right” answer is subjective, arbitrary.
Exactly. But this is what all the state tests (and many of the new SAT questions) do. They want the student to choose what is purportedly the BEST answer from among those given. But on the state tests, the questions are often so badly conceived and worded that in fact the BEST answer is not the one that is supposed to be the correct answer. In other words, the writers and editors of the test were so inept that they couldn’t see that the best answer to the question AS WRITTEN was not that answer!!!!
Anyone who has had a class of high-school kids that has just come back from one of these tests will know what I am referring to here. They INEVITABLY and kvetching to one another about questions on the test that were UTTERLY BEWILDERING.
And they are right. It is often precisely the case that the questions are so badly posed as to be unanswerable.
For many years, I earned my living as a textbook writer and editor, and often as the head of a development team in a publishing house. I’ve worked for A LOT of these test publishers. Starting with the puerile Gates/Coleman bullet list, the standardized tests in ELA were required to have these multiple-choice questions in which there was more than one plausible answer, one of which, was the best answer. I have been to MANY meetings in which the editor doing the assignments to the writers gave the direction to make ALL of the multiple-choice answer plausible, but one of them the best answer of the bunch. Again, the idea is supposed to be that such questions require “higher-order thinking.” But in practice, they just end up being an unanswerable, mess, confusing because the questions themselves are so confused.
But that is FAR from the worst problem with the current spate of state ELA tests. There are far worse ones. See the piece of mine that I linked to twice, above.
I sent that analysis of the sample release FCAT questions to all my colleagues in the English Department and copied the Principal and the APs. I know. Brazen.
I have resisted the urge to publish one of these analyses of the test questions for fear of being sued by the publisher. I really don’t need that grief. But read the released sample questions yourself. You’ll soon see what I mean.
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to teach now. Absurdly low pay. Belligerent, unruly students with entitled parents. Administrators who totally fail to support staff members. A breathtaking degree of day-by-day, moment-by-moment micromanaging of curricula and pedagogy. A dumbed down, Common Cored curriculum. Ridiculous extracurricular work requirements. Tons and tons of paperwork. A nightmare. The best and the brightest spend a year or two and say to themselves, anything but this.
The current SAT and ACT (as well as the AP) test are pure BS test prep now. If they brought back the tests pre-Shrub, I would say that they really do have some merit to sort out who should invest in 4 year degree and who might need to do some community college. What concerns me the most is that the MCAT (as well as the LSAT I’ve heard?) has been rewritten and dumbed down so much that I don’t trust an intern/resident coming out of medical school. I will only see a physician who is 35-40 yrs+ or invest in an established physician that does concierge medicine. General/family/geriatric medicine is really scary right now!
I don’t doubt that the tests could be improved. But that doesn’t mean they have no value. Grading can be improved. But grades aren’t meaningless.
I think that the SCCAT was introduced in 2016, Flerp.
Flerp, did you read my piece about the state ELA tests? They do not measure what they purport to measure. They cannot, as designed, do that.
I am not one of those idiots who thinks that one cannot test for anything, Flerp. Please do not confuse me with such people. But please take the time to read my discussion of the current state ELA tests so that you will understand what the issues are.
Lisa, I predict that within ten years the LSAT and the MCAT will be gone. I hope I’m wrong. They’re also dumbing down the bar exams.
And I agree with you about Wilson. I will go even further and say, unequivocally, that Wilson is an utter crackpot, a crank on the level of those folks with grade-school educations who write to physicists to explain to them why Einstein got it all wrong, as one can see from made to Mayans by Atlanteans or Jesus in the New World or Ancient Astronauts from Alpha Draconis. A total kook. A wacko. But the most accurate characterization: a crackpot, like the folks with their proofs of squaring the circle and their designs for perpetual motion machines.
The Standardized Testing Task Force of the University of California Faculty Senate in 2020 published a report finding that
“The STTF found that standardized test scores aid in predicting important aspects of student success,
including undergraduate grade point average (UGPA), retention, and completion. At UC, test scores are
currently better predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and about as
good at predicting first-year retention, UGPA, and graduation. For students within any given (HSGPA)
band, higher standardized test scores correlate with a higher freshman UGPA, a higher graduation UGPA,and higher likelihood of graduating within either four years (for transfers) or seven years (for freshmen).
Further, the amount of variance in student outcomes explained by test scores has increased since 2007,
while variance explained by high school grades has decreased, although altogether does not exceed 26%.
Test scores are predictive for all demographic groups and disciplines, even after controlling for HSGPA.
In fact, test scores are better predictors of success for students who are Underrepresented Minority
students (URMs), who are first-generation, or whose families are low-income: that is, test scores explain
more of the variance in UGPA and completion rates for students in these groups. One consequence of
dropping test scores would be increased reliance on HSGPA in admissions. The STTF found that
California high schools vary greatly in grading standards, and that grade inflation is part of why the
predictive power of HSGPA has decreased since the last UC study.”
The faculty of the University of California have found standardized test scores are useful in predicting student success at the University of California, so I have to agree with FLERP and the STTF that this useful tool be part of the admissions process instead of relying only HSGPA, professionally curated high school experiences, and professionally edited (written?) admission essays.
For those interested, the full report is here: https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/sttf/sttf-report.pdf
The piece that I linked to above is NOT about the SAT or ACT. It is about the state standardized tests in ELA.
In 2020, the University of California dropped the SAT and the ACT.
In 2021, U of C dropped all admissions tests.
https://calmatters.org/education/2021/11/uc-admissions-no-tests/#
Thanks, Bob — it’s hard to tell these days!
My son’s taking these things next year so I will revisit what you’re saying.
The SAT and ACT are still a lot better than are the state exams, which are completely invalid. They are far more rigorously prepared. I take issue with them (even though I benefited from them) for various reasons, but I’m not going to get into those. That’s a long and detailed discussion. My issue is with the state standardized tests in ELA. THOSE are a complete scam.
Sorry, Bob, my comments here have been solely about the SAT/ACT.
Yikes. Correcting an egregious edit in this comment:
I agree with you about Wilson, Flerp. I will go even further and say, unequivocally, that Wilson is an utter crackpot, a crank on the level of those folks with grade-school educations who write to physicists to explain to them why Einstein got it all wrong, as one can see by studying the revelations made to the Mayans or the British Black Israelites by ancient Atlanteans or Jesus in the New World or ancient astronauts from Alpha Draconis. Wilson is a total kook. A wacko. He’s a common TYPE: the crank, the crackpot, like the folks with their proofs of squaring the circle and their designs for perpetual motion machines.
Do any of the folks spewing about how the MCAT and LSAT are “dumbed down” have a clue about what is in them or how difficult it is to get into a medical school? (Law school is a different story, since there are some law schools that are very difficult and some that are very easy.)
I haven’t seen a single study that says the higher the MCAT score, the better the doctor.
I haven’t seen anyone recommend an attorney based on their LSAT score.
The article states that the best predictor of college performance is a student’s high school GPA.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2020/01/29/its-gpas-not-standardized-tests-that-predict-college-success/?sh=6efb2c3932bd
https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/predicting-college-success-how-do-different-high-school-assessments-measure-2019
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-22/grades-vs-sat-scores-which-is-a-better-predictor-of-college-success
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/Research-Finds-that-High-School-GPAs-Are-Stronger-Predictors-of-College-Graduation-than-ACT-Scores
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/02/gpa-or-sat-two-measures-are-better-than-one/
Thanks, RT. I have cut that sentence based on the report that TE posted, though there are other studies that show that grades continue to be better predictors. It was a side issue anyone, not one directly related to the topic of the essay, the state standardized tests in ELA.
Retired Teacher,
Forgive me if you did not mean the report of the STTF when you were commenting on ‘the article”, but if you did mean the STTF report, it certainly does NOT say that high school GPA is the best single predictor of college performance. Let me pull a couple of quotes out of what I posted above
“At UC, test scores are currently BETTER predictors of first-year GPA than high school grade point average (HSGPA), and ABOUT AS GOOD at predicting first-year retention, UGPA, and graduation.”
“In fact, test scores are BETTER predictors of success for students who are Underrepresented Minority students (URMs), who are first-generation, or whose families are low-income..”
The last finding is especially concerning. An Unrepresented minority student, a first-generation student, or low income student who could succeed at the University of California might well be refused admission because the admission committee looked at high school GPA without having the benefit of a standardized admission exam.
So, at one time, there were a bunch of studies showing that grades were a better predictor. It’s quite possible that that’s changed because of grade inflation, especially among some student populations. Anyone who has taught in a middle-class community recently knows that now every parent seems to think that his or her kid is some freaking genius whose towering ability is not evident solely because of the failure of his or her teachers.
–Former teacher embittered by years of dealing with entitled parents and their lazy, irresponsible, insolent, delinquent, ignorant young adult children
At any rate, I don’t know how this wandered off into a discussion of the SAT and the ACT. The post was about the federally mandated state standardized testing, not about these college admission tests. DIFFERENT ANIMALS.
Bob,
I will take a look at all the articles, but so far I have only glanced at the AERA press release. The high school students in the study came from a single urban school district who attended a wide variety of post secondary institutions. Is it possible that there is more uniformity in grading within a school district than there is between school districts? Is it also possible that there is a wide variation in grading standards across post secondary schools?
The STTF had the opposite data set. Their first year students came from a huge variety of school districts across the county and attended the relatively uniformly graded graded UC system.
If a selective university admits students from a single school district I could see that high school GPA might well be the best single admission requirement. Most selective universities, however, are admitting from a variety of school districts. The STTF acknowledged this problem in the section I quoted above.
“The STTF found that California high schools VARY GREATLY IN GRADING STANDARDS, and that grade inflation is part of why the predictive power of HSGPA has decreased since the last UC study.”
In any case I don’t think that using any single measure for college admissions is a good idea. Students should be evaluated on many different criteria.
TE, I did not do an exhaustive search of the literature on this stuff. MANY YEARS AGO, a slew of studies showed high-school grades to be a better predictor, and that’s why they had to change the name of the test from the Scholastic Aptitude Test to the Scholastic Achievement Test and then to the plain old SAT. There are some more recent studies that have gotten different results, you are saying. Fine. I would be happy to have a look at all these different studies. My interests lie elsewhere–with the absurd state standardized ELA examinations required by federal legislation.
Bob,
MANY YEARS AGO the Standardized Testing Task Force said that high school GPA was more highly correlated with student success at the University of California. They say that TODAY that is not true. I humbly suggest that today’s policies should be made based on things that are true today.
And yes the administration ignored the findings of the faculty senate in their decision to eliminate standardized testing as a way for students to demonstrate academic potential. As the work of the STTF showed, this will weight most heavily on African American Male Students.
The administration knows best, I suppose.
I am FURIOUS that this thread about the state standardized tests–so important a topic–was hijacked and turned into one about the SAT, which is AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TOPIC.
And for the same reason that I get furious every time Duane interrupts a sane discussion of the issues with the state standardized tests with one of his rants about the crackpots notions of this Wilson fellow. We are spending BILLIONS every year on this standardized testing. It has led to an extreme devolution of ELA curricula and pedagogy to make it test preppy. It is breathtakingly abusive of kids. It is completely pedagogically useless. And it’s pseudoscience. But every time someone brings the subject up, instead of airing and making sure that people understand the actual problems with the state ELA tests, the discussion veers off into peripheral stuff, AND NOTHING WITH REGARD TO THE MAIN TOPIC GETS ACCOMPLISHED.
And so the waste and the devolution of curricula and pedagogy continue because people don’t understand and share with others the ACTUAL reasons why the federally mandated state ELA tests are invalid and pseudoscientific.
When I started working in educational publishing back in the 1980s, we would write coherent, cumulative units on topics like the structure and technique of the short story, how to write news articles, the ideas and major works of the American Transcendentalists, and so on, and students of those units would walk away having attained substantive bodies of discursive and procedural knowledge. Now, because of the importance of the puerile, almost entirely content free Gates/Coleman skills bullet list and the invalid tests based on that list, ELA curricula and pedagogy have utterly devolved into random exercises on random standards bullet list items stated so vaguely and broadly THAT NOTHING IS LEARNED BY THE STUDENT. No knowledge whatsoever is attained from the supposed “practice.” This is a SEVERE PROBLEM, and I have watched it UP CLOSE as an executive inside textbook publishing houses. But whenever the topic comes up, we veer off into peripheral stuff of relatively minor importance or into utter nonsense like the utterly idiotic crackpot Wilson book about how no intellectual attainment (you know, like learning the times table or the Level 1 kanji) can ever be measured.
The loss over these decades of coherence and substance in ELA curricula (roughly, what is taught) and pedagogy (how it is taught) has been EXTREME.
And almost no one is talking about it.
Ironically, the coming of the era of what I call Random Monty Python and Now for Something Completely Different ELA Curricula came about as a result of vague, broad, almost exclusively skills-related and content free “standards” that were accompanied by a call by David Coleman for a great return to reading substantive literary texts. The moron was so clueless about how U.S. K-12 education actually worked that he had NO FREAKING IDEA that every 6-12 school in the US was using one of five hardbound literature anthology programs containing SUBSTANTIVE WORKS OF LITERATURE FROM THE CANON. Seriously, the guy was CLUELESS. But the vague list and the high stakes attached to it–this became what mattered, and it drove out the substantive teaching. The textbooks, print and online, now are an incoherent Common Corey mess.
“ I am FURIOUS that this thread about the state standardized tests–so important a topic–was hijacked and turned into one about the SAT, which is AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TOPIC.”
Sorry, Bob. I made a comment about how I think certain standardized tests are worthwhile. I didn’t expect it would cause this much controversy or discussion.
Thanks, Flerp.
“Simply put, results from study after study over the last 70 years suggest that the tests are measuring more of a child’s experiences outside of school than what’s happening inside of school. The results do not provide valid information about the quality of teaching in a school, how a student learns, what a student learned, nor the learning potential of a student.”
You are welcome to state your opinion, but facts are facts and opinions are opinions.
Not sure what you’re quoting or who you’re responding to, but if you’re responding to me, I’ve made no statements here that test scores reflect the quality of teaching. Separately, there is a wealth of research showing that the SAT/ACT are as or more predictive of college success than high school grades, and that the combination of SAT/ACT and high school grades are more predictive still. SAT/ACT scores do correlate to some degree with family wealth, but so do high school grades, and so does success in college and in life generally. These are all facts, not opinions.
Quoting the article posted, responding to you, I was noting that standardized test scores do not correlate with teaching or learning as much as with wealth. Test scores are the boogeyman used falsely to justify segregation.
All I can do is direct you again to my response to you. Individual circumstances vary, but wealth correlates to learning. Everything that one can attribute to great teaching correlates to wealth. That’s true whether one uses SAT scores, grade point averages, success in college, or success in life as a proxy for “learning.” It’s not fair but it’s true.
Flerp, the article is about the federally mandated state tests, not about college admissions exams. These are very different things. Please do not confuse discussions of them. It’s worse than apples and oranges. It’s apples and shoelaces and Plato’s dialogues and matrix mathematics and Mork and Mindy.
So what is it? “Individual circumstances vary, but wealth correlates to learning.” Or: “Separately, there is a wealth of research showing that the SAT/ACT are as or more predictive of college success than high school grades, and that the combination of SAT/ACT and high school grades are more predictive still.” It’s tough when you are a card carrying bigot and at the same time try to equivocate. Pick a lane, show some consistency in your bigotry. Obviously, wealth matters to you.
Bob, I know the article is about federally mandated tests. I stated my view on those and then ventured to say something about the SAT/ACT.
Lol, no comment section is complete until Greg Brozeit waddles in and accuses of someone of being a bigot because they don’t see the world as he does.
FLERP, your son should consult FairTest. More than a thousand US colleges & universities are test optional for admission. Noted schools like Columbia, William & Mary, Dartmouth.
He does extremely well on standardized tests, thankfully.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
For Profit Corporations and the management of nonprofit organizations are adding to their wealth by getting state and federal governments to force our public school children to take more standardized tests than any other democratic country.
“Studies over the last 35 years have demonstrated that results from standardized tests are highly subjective and not entirely indicative of what is happening in the classroom. Findings from decades of scientific research suggest that standardized tests are blunt instruments, whose results can be predicted at the school and district levels by using family and community demographic data found in the U.S. Census.”
What does that previous paragraph mean when translated so most if not all readers will understand it?
In every developed country in the world, not just the United States, the children of the wealthy and/or educated do better on standardized tests than the children of the poor and/or undereducated. The poorer and less educated a family is, the lower those standardized scores tend to be.
Which country has best education system for children?
” Finland, which has the best schooling system globally, offers students free education and free meals from primary to high-school level. In Denmark, there are no educational dues until the students turn 16 years of age.”
Finland also doesn’t force its teachers to conduct standardized tests and its k-12 students to take those tests.
https://upjourney.com/which-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world#:~:text=The%20expenses%20and%20equity%20vary,turn%2016%20years%20of%20age.
Once established, it isn’t easy to get rid of a profitable industry in probably the most ruthless cutthroat capitalist country on the planet.
@Lloyd — I remember when all the kids had to pass the California Exit Exam to graduate, but they could not take till they were in 10th grade. My son had no problem with the test, but said, “I am so sick of teachers giving us homework for the test.” My younger son got a perfect score. Silly me, I mentioned, “You know all the kids should take this test in 8th grade. That way they can be placed accordingly while in high school. Kids pass — no worries. Other kids who need help, it isn’t a crap shoot.” Then, when I was trying to prep kids for the test in all my classes (even though it wasn’t ELA or Math, but all classes have that in them) I would often say, “This would be a great test question and here’s how to attack it.” I was told, “Oh, not everyone gets to take the test. You know how expensive that would be?” I then thought, “So, we will be judged by how many pass the CAHSEE, but not all have the most chances to pass the test, so in all reality, it is about money not kids.” Huh. Then we were told that who we are as a school depends on how many pass the test. Then I remarked, “So the art classes I teach really don’t matter. Or the science class, just reading and math. So why not make every classroom a test prep before the big test since, well, you just said only reading and math matter, right?” Again, what would that hurt if that’s what mattered? I was frowned upon. But, testing is big business. And computer canned classroom curriculums. Geez.
From the trenches…my kids hated standardized tests. Just the fact they knew “testing week” was here, they cut school. I had to tell them that I was going to get “slapped” if they didn’t show up. And, nothing bad was going to happen to them for not passing. But, we did need 95% of the class to take the tests or no matter what, the tests wouldn’t count. It took a lot of work to remind them, “Where would you go if you did poorly? Really, you know where we are so this is not going to affect you in the least. You all are professional test takers, can read, so go with it and we will all be okay.” We were at the lowest place for the “kids who didn’t matter” to go. And, what I found so idiotic is ALL the kids had to take the same test no matter if they had studied the subjects or not. Kids with extreme anxiety — start hyperventilating — going through some sort of withdrawal. I had to keeping them calm and moving forward. Our students used APEX online learning and attacked subjects by how many credits they needed. Many students took English all year. Others took basic math. The point is they were all “on a different” page but still attacking their graduation goals. The test, however, tested them in whatever juniors at the comprehensive school took. I told them, “Did you take science this year?” “No.” “Did you take Earth Science this year?” “No.” Then I would go on to say, “Well, then it makes perfect sense to test you on what you never studied and complain of your “learning loss, eh?” Finally, they got it. It pained me to see a kid just drown in simply trying to read the directions. But most were completely stymied by testing, hated it, and wondered if we could ever learn about financial literacy or how to get a job. I made sure they got that, too.
Though some sponsors of the testing-everyone-all-the-time idea were sincere–fighting segregation for e.g., overall the idea is based in the Reagan-Friedman idea of destroying or weakening public education. They have succeeded, so far. And, yes, only a common assault by NEA-AFT and other teacher-oriented groups could possibly stop this tragedy:
No Child Race to the Top
by Jack Burgess
If up were down, and black were white,
if Jesus were Satan, and you made a sect
of that, if yin were yang,
blood came from turnips,
and penciling bubbles was as
beautiful as painting
or singing, or God forbid,
daydreaming–or writing poetry–
it would be possible to combine “No Child
Left Behind” with “Race to the Top.”
If John Dewey were alive today
he’d be turning over in his grave.
“Learn by doing,” his legacy,
so kids today learn to take tests,
learn to get grades,
learn how little
we value them,
how bright we are.
We who sang songs,
read poems, wrote essays,
leave them the brain bending,
standardized, multiple guess.
No wonder they turn away
to the electronic matrix,
taught that Reagan the Great
was the beginning of history.
Schools will be fracked,
will be squeezed until
profits ooze out,
but can the imaginations
of childhood be wrung dry
for corporate greed?
Will children really stop
gazing at the moon
and loving one another
for either political party?
Or just burrow more deeply
into the sweetness of cyber space?
Orwellian logic would have
it that love finds a way
when Big Brother is not looking.
Wonderful, Jack. Just wonderful.
Terrific!
Stopping by School on a Disruptive Afternoon
Posted on January 6, 2020 by Bob Shepherd
after decades of test-driven education “reform”
Whose schools these are, I think I know.
His house is near Seattle though.
He will not see me stopping here
to watch what kids now undergo.
My better angels think it queer
to see a place so void of cheer
what with the tests and data chats,
the data walls with children’s stats.
Where are the joys of yesterday—
when kids would draw and sing and play?
The only sound I hear’s defeat
and pencils on the bubble sheets.
Disrupters say, unflappable,
“We’re building Human Capital!”
Such word goes out from their think tanks,
as they their profits build and bank.
“Music, stories, art, and play
won’t teach Prole children to obey
with servile, certain, gritful grace
and know their rightful, lowly place.”
The fog is heavy, dark and deep.
Where thinking tanks, Deformers creep
and from our children childhood steal
and grind them underneath the wheel.
Postscript:
Disruption of the Commonweal
is that in which Deformers deal
that they might thereby crises fake
as cover whereby they might take
(the smiling villains!) take and take
and take and take and take and take.
Robert D. Shepherd. Copyright 2020. This can be shared freely (please do), as long as this copyright notice is retained.
Thanks for sharing that sad parody…
Thank you, Christopher Tienken and Julia Larrea Borst. Thank you, NJ.com. Thank you, NPE. Thank you, Doctor Ravitch. Thank you for supporting education and for opposing tests that harm my students and me.
yes yes yes yes yes
The federally mandated standardized tests in ELA are invalid, subjecting kids to them is child abuse, and predicating educational decisions on them is pseudoscience, like phrenology or astrology or Marconics no touch energy healing. Idiotic.
$E$ (next post, Culture)
In over 70 responses did I miss the one about $E$?
Standardized test performance correlate with Social Economic Status.
A variety of arguments but among them is vocabulary entering school and beyond, “foundational” “everyday” knowledge, exposure to an array of unique learning experiences…
Higher $E$, higher exposure to experiences in learning outside of school.
yup
Culture
Standardized Testing is the same as guns in 2023.
The 2nd Amendment works for both:
The right of the state to a regulated militia and the right to bear arms.
The right of the state to a highly regulated Dept of Ed and the right to standardize test.
Sorry about oversimplifying but “they” are right –
It’s not the guns, it’s the GUN CULTURE.
And, the more normalized the culture, the more guns and gun ownership and gun brandishing.
It’s not the standardized testing, it’s the STANDARDIZED TESTING CULTURE!
And, more normalized the culture, the more standardized tests and high-stakes results brandishing.
Heck, even hand guns to AK-47s analogy works in the reformers’ world.
And, like the guns because of the culture, schools toss out rich curriculum, exploration, science and social studies and the arts.
“Tested subjects” obsession prevails.
Just on so many levels….
Next week at school (I teach Latin at a neighborhood public high school), very few students will come. Why should they? Testing has ended, so now we can submit grades, get our rooms cleaned up & celebrate the end of another year (39 for me!)
I can also look forward to all sorts of ‘atta girls’ because 154/155 of my students passed their End of Course exams. Since nearly 100% passed, I’ll probably get a nice certificate, a letter & golden crown from Gov. DeSantis about my awesomeness, & a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni (if not a check). I can sashay into year 40 & retirement next year with my head held high. I am a reformster’s dream.
And yet…
Ya wanna know what my students had to make to pass? 28%. 28%—and they can now receive full credit for Latin I or II.
THIS is all that’s expected of me? This is what has become of teaching? Teach 10 fewer days during the year to proctor exams, then end curriculum in April to get ready for testing, then allow lots of flexibility while students take exams in 7 other subjects during May? This is how we earn our paychecks?
It is BECAUSE of testing that we seem to have sunk so low. The delusions. The grift. The waste. The salary of one low-level reformster could send 30 of my students to Italy & Greece next Spring Break. —I’ll have ‘em back just in time for testing…. Any volunteers?
Thanks, Ms. Ranch, for capturing the absurdity of this. Testing season is so Kafkaesque.
What you describe is the sad state that exists when testing becomes the focus of education. Teachers become drones for the testing industrial complex.
On a completely different note, have you ever noticed that the out-and-out Fascist types manage to have, simultaneously, extremely ridiculous and stuffed public personae? They always look as though they are about to pop. The Ukrainian-American writer and critic Boris Dralyuk says of Hitler, Stalin, and a Nazi character in Vasiliy Grossman’s Stalingrad that they are “self-serious clowns.”
Sound like anyone you can think of?
One more time for Congress: “According to the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, which was developed by leading education and psychology research associations, the tests are not diagnostic and the results cannot be used to inform classroom instruction.”
Read it again, Congress: “Findings from decades of scientific research suggest that standardized tests are blunt instruments, whose results can be predicted at the school and district levels by using family and community demographic data found in the U.S. Census.”
On the road yesterday and missed a lot of this.
Proponents of testing, especially those who want to test students to evaluate teachers, miss a basic point (in addition to the Campbell’s law discussion). The basic question is so simple that it is complex. If you provide a stimulus on the form of a question, and the response is quick and simplistic, but correct, why have you learned anything except a bit about this particular stimulus?
For example, if you ask a test taker how many dots are on a picture, you might learn about the test taker’s ability to count that particular number of dots. But what if the dots are arrayed 2 by 3, and a simple multiplication make the process fast enough to proceed quickly to the next question? Now the question becomes a part of a more complex process, and you are probing the individual’s ability to make a connection that is different from counting. A whole list of problems arise from this matter. Is the student who takes a test adversely affected by stimuli other than the one you wish to investigate? Can this student count, or just up to six? Would 7 dots have been confusing? Could the student have, upon being asked to do this task noticed that the arrangement of the dots on the page resemble the arrangement of carbon molecules in a particular plastic and become excited at her discovery, distracting her from proceeding?
We descend into complexity too quickly for testing to be trusted. The only real test of ability arises from application of ideas in informal setting. Hence the maxim of Oppenheimer: the real physics discoveries happen over coffee. I am trying to recall the three famous British scientists who were discussing physics in a coffee shop when they conspired to give their problem to a young unknown named Isaac Newton. Gravity theories was the result.
On a more basic level, how do you know if an employee can use a standard tape measure? I knew a person who counted sixteenth marks. It took them a long time to read four and fifteen. But, if you wanted someone to walk a ridge pole forty feet up, fearlessly leaning out to nail a necessary board, they were the best.
The point is, we get the most out of our society when we look for the things people can do well. Testing simply tries to find the things people cannot do. We need to be teaching so that we learn what people are good at.
There is an old saying: give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will never get his fat butt out of a bass boat. Wait, something about that is not right.
Roy,
There are so many ways to be successful in daily life without regard to test scores. Every four years, when I watch the Olympics and am in awe of the physical accomplishments of these young people, I occasionally wonder, sarcastically, but what were their test scores? Simone Biles, what were her scores?
Diane: same. I can hear Michelangelo now preparing to paint: “now, what are my objectives in the cognitive and affective domains…”
Once again Bob S. rails against Noel Wilson’s work (May 26, 2023 at 5:58 pm) of which Bob admits that he hasn’t read nor understands.
It certainly doesn’t seem very kosher to rail against a work that one hasn’t read nor understands.
Draw your own conclusions.