Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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Amy Frogge: My 9-Year-Old Will Take Tests That Are Longer than My LSAT Exam

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2016 //
14

Amy Frogge is a member of the Metro Nashville school board. She was elected despite being outspent 5-1 by the corporate reformers who are trying to take over local and state school boards. Amy didn’t know anything about corporate reform when she decided to run for school board. She is a mom of children in Nashville public schools, and she is a lawyer. She went door to door and won her race.

 

Once she became a school board member, she realized that much was wrong. The charter industry was targeting Nashville, threatening to skim off the students they wanted and to reduce the funding for public schools. State-mandated testing, she discovered, was completely out of hand, a time-wasting burden to children and an unnecessary financial drain on the district’s schools.

 

This post has been widely shared on Facebook. Here, she explains why parents must get involved and act to defend their children from the unnecessary and excessive standardized testing to which they are subjected.

 

She writes:

 

So to clarify the problem, let’s consider some facts:

 
1. The average school in Nashville will lose 6-8 weeks of valuable instructional time to standardized testing this year.

 
2. My 9-year-old third grader will spend more time taking standardized tests this year than I spent taking the LSAT to get into law school.

 
3. This year, children in grades 3-5 will be expected to sit still for two and a half hours on one day alone to fill in bubble tests.

 
4. This year, third graders will be expected to type multi-paragraph responses to essay questions and perform sophisticated manipulations on the computer screen in order to even complete the tests.

 
I have to pause here to ask: Do the people who developed these policies have children- or have they even spent any time around real children? I don’t know about you, but my third grader does not yet have proficient typing skills, and he’s among the lucky MNPS students who use a computer at home. Over half of MNPS students do not have home computers, and because of ongoing funding deficits, public schools do not have all of the technology they need to allow every child time to practice as necessary.

 
Furthermore, as for all the so-called “accountability” generated by standardized testing, here are a few more facts:

 
1. The results of this year’s standardized tests will not be available until NEXT YEAR, when the students who took the tests have moved along to the next teacher and grade level- and sometimes the next school.

 
2. Test questions and responses are not available for review by teachers, parents, or students. In other words, the standardized tests upon which we are basing EVERYTHING are like a black box. How do we know the tests are even correct or appropriate when only the testing company has access to the information contained in them? (Luckily, a new bill is pending that might change this.)

 
3. About 70% of Tennessee teachers will be evaluated using test scores of children they have NEVER taught. (Stop and read that one again. Yes, it’s true.)

 
4. There’s plenty of research questioning the validity of using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Research demonstrates that test scores are primarily influenced by out-of-school factors; only 7-13% of variance in test scores is due to teachers. (Haertel, 2013)

 
Why do I know all of this is wrong? Is it because I am a lawyer? Is it because I am a sitting board member who has spent years now considering education policy? Is it because I’m a genius?
No, it’s because I’m a mom. Also, I would like to think I have some common sense.

 

Those who say the tests help teachers help children are wrong. The results are not reported until the student moves on to another class. Furthermore, the results tell how children rank, but that does give the teacher useful information. Those who want to rank teachers by test scores don’t know that 70% of the teachers don’t have annual test scores and will be judged by the scores of students they never taught.

 

What can parents do?

 

OPT OUT. Refuse the tests. Tell the school that you will not allow your child to take the tests. They do not help your child. They do not improve teaching and learning. They make big money for testing companies, and they label most children as failures.

 

JUST SAY NO!

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Nashville, Opt Out, Parents, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Tennessee

FairTest: The “New” SAT Is No Better than the “Old” SAT

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2016 //
3

for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
cell (239) 699-0468

for immediate release, Monday, February 22, 2016
SAT “FACELIFT” FAILS TO ADDRESS EXAM’S BASIC FLAWS —
WEAK PREDICTION, BIASES, AND SENSITIVITY TO COACHING;
50+ SCHOOLS GO TEST-OPTIONAL SINCE REVISIONS ANNOUNCED

Saturday, March 5, is the first administration of the “redesigned SAT.” Though its sponsor, the College Board, is promoting revisions in the exam’s appearance, none of the upcoming changes addresses its key weaknesses, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).

Bob Schaeffer, FairTest’s Public Education Director, explained, “Even the College Board admits that the ‘new’ SAT will not provide more accurate forecasts of undergraduate success. It will still under-predict the classroom performance of women, older applicants and students whose first language is not English. The coaching industry is already selling high-priced ‘test prep steroids’ to teenagers whose parents can pay thousands to artificially boost scores on the revised exam.”

“The ‘new’ SAT may look more consumer-friendly, but is not a better test,” Schaeffer continued. “The facelift is largely marketing bells and whistles. The changes seem designed to compete with the ACT, the most widely used admissions exam. The College Board also appears more interested in trying to slow the test-optional movement than improving the test’s measurement precision.”

Schaeffer concluded, “Higher education decision-makers increasingly recognize that neither the ‘new’ SAT nor the rival ACT is needed for high-quality admissions.” Since the College Board announced the SAT redesign, more than 50 schools adopted test-optional policies. This month, a Harvard study encouraged other colleges and universities to follow suit. More than 850 accredited, bachelor degree granting institutions do not require SAT or ACT scores from all or many applicants. That list includes 200 schools ranked in the top tiers of their academic categories.

– – 3 0 – –

– FairTest’s directory of test-optional and test-flexible colleges and universities:
http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional

– Chronology of 140+ schools dropping ACT/SAT requirements in past decade
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf

– List of 200+ top tier schools that do not require admissions test scores from all or many applicants
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News-Top-Tiers.pdf

Categories Education Reform, Higher Education, Standardized Testing

Exemplary Program for Homeless Students May Fall Victim to Low Test Scores

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
13

Do you want a definition of educational insanity? It is not just the old chestnut about doing the same thing over and over again, after seeing that it fails every time. It is taking a holistic program intended to support the social, emotional, mental, and physical needs of homeless children and judging its success or failure by standardized test scores. This is madness!

 

Yet as Marilena Marchetti explains in this article, that is exactly what is happening in New York City. The city has a huge population of homeless families and children. Mayor Bill de Blasio created a “community schools” initiative to help these children with the multiple supports that they need. Marilena teaches in one of these schools.

 

She writes:

 

 

I work as an occupational therapist in Bronx District 10 where the highest number of homeless students are enrolled. A cornerstone of the Initiative is that school sites become resource hubs for vulnerable families, thereby making access to social services and programs easier. The program adopts a “whole child” approach that sees schools as places where social-emotional, mental and physical health are valued as much as academics. Quality and accountability to performance measures are emphasized to reassure families, communities and donors that success matters. Without a doubt, it is a tremendous step in the right direction.

 

High expectations have taken hold, flowing from the desperate circumstances of so many school communities alongside the financial investments and political clout associated with the program. Despite the many positives, I fear the Community Schools Initiative is operating with an internal contradiction that may doom it to fail if it is not corrected. The major problem is this: All the wonderful programming and promises of the Community Schools Initiative could be taken away if, after three years’ time, standardized test scores are not raised. Interestingly, nowhere in the 43-page Community Schools Strategic Plan are the terms “standardized test” or “high stakes test” used, as those phrases have been rightfully maligned by the Opt Out movement. No matter the semantics, the writing is on the wall. The plan talks about “tiered interventions that impact large numbers of students and families,” “aligned program supports and services that promote student proficiency in Common Core standards,” “processes for on-going review of student data” and “established performance improvement metrics and processes,” all of which are references to testing and its repercussions.

 

Later in the document, the following is stated:

 

“Within the Community Schools Initiative, on-going data collection will inform practice, track progress, and connect data with targeted outcomes [emphasis added]. Data collection will include both qualitative and quantitative data, both of which will allow City government leadership and researchers the opportunity to track Community Schools’ outcomes (pp. 29).”

 

It isn’t necessary to say directly what teachers, families and students in Community Schools can read between the lines: You must pass or you will perish. Just like adding one drop of red dye to a glass of water turns the entire liquid red, so goes the entire school culture when standardized testing is applied and laden with grave possible consequences. Tying test scores to funding streams and to the possibility that a school would be protected from being shut down reinforces the fear, anxiety and sense of instability that is meant to be alleviated for our children living on the brink. Must the issue of survival for them always remain an open question? Imagine struggling to improve teaching and learning under this pretext.

 

Chalk it up to the forcefulness of the Opt Out movement that high-stakes testing has finally been dialed down, albeit only slightly. Thanks to the many parents, teachers and students who spoke up, we can no longer deny that high stakes testing leads to a narrowing of the curriculum and all manner of stress for our young people. It undermines children’s interest in learning and teachers’ ability to engage them. When standardized-test results play even the tiniest part in determining if a Community School be allowed to stay open and continue receiving financial support for special services and programming, it sabotages the goal to boost academic achievement for students who need it most.

 

Using standardized test scores to judge a program serving homeless children is like judging fish by their ability to fly or judging horses by their ability to read or judging all children by their ability to run a mile in four minutes.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Common Core, New York City, Standardized Testing

Thousands Join “Walk-In” for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2016 //
11

Thousands of supporters of public education rallied across the nation on behalf of full funding of their schools. The walk-ins are taking place in more than 30 cities to protest school closings, budget cuts, high-stakes testing, and privatization.

 

 

The movement is being organized by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers, the Journey for Justice Alliance, and the Center for Popular Democracy, among other organizations and unions.

 

“The future of public education in the United States stands at a critical crossroad,” a statement from the Alliance reads. “Over the past two decades, a web of billionaire advocates, national foundations, policy institutes, and local and federal decision-makers have worked to dismantle public education and promote a top-down, market-based approach to school reform. Under the guise of civil rights advocacy, this approach has targeted low-income, urban African-American, Latino and immigrant communities, while excluding them from the reform process.”

 

“These attacks are racist and must be stopped,” the statement continues.

 

The movement is demanding:

 

Full, fair funding for neighborhood-based community schools that provide students with quality in-school supports and wraparound services
Charter accountability and transparency and an end to state takeovers of low-performing schools and districts
Positive discipline policies and an end to zero-tolerance
Full and equitable funding for all public schools
Racial justice and equity in our schools and communities.

Categories Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools

Jamaal Bowman on the Fundamental Flaws of “No Excuses” Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2016 //
17

Jamaal Bowman, principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action in the Bronx (New York City), wrote on Mark Naison’s blog about the fundamental errors of the “no excuses” charter schools that operate in high-needs communities like the Bronx, Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and wherever there is a concentration of children living in poverty.

Bowman is emerging as one of the most articulate critics of corporate reform. His credibility is enhanced by the fact that he is in charge of a school and is trying to forge a better alternative to the status quo.

Charters, he says, carefully select their students and set requirements to weed out and discourage unmotivated families. They can fire teachers at will and have high teacher turnover. Their model is sustained by Teach for America, whose members don’t plan to teach more than two years.

Based on what I know, as they are currently constituted, charters, TFA, and yearly standardized testing are wrong for our high need communities. We should stop funding them all unless they agree to make major adjustments to how they do business. Why? Because that money can be spent on giving all students a quality holistic education. Charters, TFA, and yearly testing infuse anxiety, disunity, and even worst, standardization into the psyche of society. They are trying to recreate a 21st century idea of “empire.” Keep the masses, and “lower class” under control while the elite continue to rule. A standardized mindset will always be controlled. Whereas in schools like Riverdale Country School, there are not state standardized assessment, no TFA and no need for a charter, and they are taught to lead and change the world.
Consider KIPP’S first graduating class. Ranked fifth in NYC in mathematics in the 8th grade, but only 21% graduated college. Why? Because KIPP test prepped the kids to death and the kids never built their character or learned to manage their own freedom. KIPP and many charters standardize and try to control everything from how kids walk through the halls to how they ask to go to the bathroom. But teaching and learning is organic; it is human. When are we gonna ask ourselves why must poor communities of color be treated like this, whereas middle class and upper class parents would NEVER go for this treatment!
WE HAVE TO hold politicians and private citizens who invest in education accountable to the true needs of our at-risk communities. We must give our communities a true voice. If charters, TFA, and the state really cared about our children being their very best, show us, by investing in daycare, Montessori, music, sports, counselors and everything in between. Charters should take all children and TFA should change everything! If not, the powers that be will continue to fatten up the district school kids to be slaughtered and fed to their private school bosses as adults.
For the rest we have jail cells waiting for them #wemustunitenow

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Equity, Standardized Testing, Teach for America TFA

Jonathan Pelto: My Daughter Will Not Take the Test!

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2016 //
14

Jonathan Pelto, former legislator and current courageous blogger in Connecticut, says that his daughter will not take the SAT test required of all juniors.

In response to parental objections to the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced Assessment, Connecticut dropped SBAC and replaced it with the Common Core-aligned SAT.

“Thanks to a contract signed by Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, Dianna R. Wentzell and approved by Malloy’s political appointees on the State Board of Education, Connecticut taxpayers will be shelling out in excess of $4.3 million in scarce public funds, over the next three years, to the College Board, the company that owns the SAT. In return, the College Board will allow students to take their NEW SAT — a test that has yet to be validated and has come under increasing criticism because, despite their claims, the SAT fails to adequately predict how students will do in college.

“This latest debacle started last spring when, in the face of growing opposition to the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing scheme, the Connecticut General Assembly and Governor Malloy decided to replace the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory 11th grade SBAC test with a new mandate that all high school juniors take what is likely to be an equally unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory NEW SAT.

“However, neither Governor Malloy, his Commissioner of Education nor the legislators had ever seen the NEW SAT that they are now trying to force 11th grader to take. They hadn’t seen it because the new version of the SAT isn’t even being released until March 2016.

“As the College Board website proclaims, students across the United States can take the NEW SAT for the first time on March 5, 2016 which means that Connecticut’s 40,000 juniors are truly little more than an initial round of guinea pigs for a testing company whose revenue is already in excess of $841 million a year….

“In my daughter’s case, of the dozen or so colleges that she is considering applying to, the majority DO NOT require an SAT test.

“For those schools that do require a standardized test score, my daughter will be taking the old version of the SAT on February 20, 2016. The last date for taking the old version of the SAT was supposed to be last week (January 23, 2016) but due to the snow storm on Saturday, the testing was postponed until the end of February….

“While she won’t be participating in the SAT test being “mandated” by the state of Connecticut, on March 2, 2016, if we determine that she should take the NEW SAT, then there are plenty of options to take the test in the spring, summer and fall, after the initial problems with the NEW SAT have been identified and resolved.

“What we won’t do is serve as pawns for the state of Connecticut’s attempt to collect standardized tests results so that they can unfairly evaluate teachers. Governor Malloy’s “education reform initiative” requires local school district to base 22.5 percent of a teacher’s evaluation on the standardized test results of their students.

“My daughter won’t be relegated to being a test subject for the College Board’s attempt to reclaim market share.

“Instead, we will do what is best for my daughter’s college aspirations – the state and its testing obsession be damned.”

Categories Connecticut, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

SAT Canceled in China

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2016 //
5

The SAT was canceled in China and Macau due to anticipated cheating. The College Board said that some students got access to the exam.

“Zachary Goldberg is the senior director of Media Relations for the College Board. Goldberg told VOA, “We act on all information.…We work…to [fight] cheating and to protect the integrity of the SAT.”

“Almost 400,000 foreign students registered to take the SAT in 2014.

“SAT cheating scandals have happened several times before. The College Board cancelled the SAT across South Korea in 2013 after finding evidence of cheating.

“Several Chinese citizens admitted in 2015 to being part of an organized SAT cheating group in the United States. International students in the Pittsburgh area would pay group members to use fake passports and take the SAT test for them.”

Categories Standardized Testing

Parents Across America Urges States to Abolish VAM

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2016 //
12

Parents Across America has called on states to take advantage of the Every Student Succeeds Act and abolish VAM.

 

PAA has been critical of high-stakes testing.

 

PAA also produced a one-page fact sheet to demonstrate the failure of value-added-measurement.

Categories Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, Parents, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Marion Brady: A Primer on Privatization

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2016 //
45

Veteran educator Marion Brady has written a concise guide to the privatization movement.

 

He begins with an overview of the talking points and tactics of the privatizers:

 

“The pitch

 

“Talking Points: (a) Standardized testing proves America’s schools are poor. (b) Other countries are eating our lunch. (c) Teachers deserve most of the blame. (d) The lazy ones need to be forced out by performance evaluations. (e) The dumb ones need scripts to read or “canned standards” telling them exactly what to teach. (f) The experienced ones are too set in their ways to change and should be replaced by fresh Five-Week-Wonders from Teach for America. (Bonus: Replacing experienced teachers saves a ton of money.) (g) Public (“government”) schools are a step down the slippery slope to socialism.

 

“Tactics

 

“Education establishment resistance to privatization is inevitable, so (a) avoid it as long as possible by blurring the lines between “public” and “private.” (b) Push school choice, vouchers, tax write-offs, tax credits, school-business partnerships, profit-driven charter chains. (c) When resistance comes, crank up fear with the, “They’re eating our lunch!” message. (d) Contribute generously to all potential resisters—academic publications, professional organizations, unions, and school support groups such as PTA. (e) Create fake “think tanks,” give them impressive names, and have them do “research” supporting privatization. (f) Encourage investment in teacher-replacer technology—internet access, iPads, virtual schooling, MOOCS, etc. (e) Pressure state legislators to make life easier for profit-seeking charter chains by taking approval decisions away from local boards and giving them to easier-to-lobby state-level bureaucrats. (g) Elect the “right” people at all levels of government. (When they’re campaigning, have them keep their privatizing agenda quiet.)”

 

The key weapon in the privatization campaign is standardized tests. Privatizers use tests to “prove” that public schools are failing.

 

Here is a great line:

 

“If challenged, test fans often quote the late Dr. W. Edward Deming, the world-famous quality guru who showed Japanese companies how to build better stuff than anybody else. In his book, “The New Economics,” Deming wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

 

“Here’s the whole sentence as he wrote it: “It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it — a costly myth.”

 

And here’s the clincher:

 

“Notwithstanding their serious problems, America’s public schools were once the envy of the world. Now, educators around that world shake their heads in disbelief (or maybe cheer?) as we spend billions of dollars to standardize what once made America great—un-standardized thought.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Myra Blackmon: How Testing Undermines Real Education

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2016 //
13

Myra Blackmon, a regular education writer in Athens, Georgia, concludes that our current emphasis on high-stakes testing is the antithesis of good education.

“I am sick to death of these demands for college and career readiness, including terrible policies of grading schools based on test scores, insisting a principal’s performance evaluation be based at least 70 per cent on test scores, and, like South Carolina did last year, making all 11th graders take the ACT college entrance examination, then evaluating them as “not ready” – even though they were still more than a year away from graduation.”

She adds,

“It is not the job of schools to make these experiences available. I did the bulk of my own career exploration through my involvement in Girl Scouts and my church’s youth group. My parents encouraged me to work, and carefully coached me on being a good employee.

“It is the job of the community to provide and support such opportunities, to help kids learn how to apply for a job, to practice interviewing and to try out areas of interest. It is the schools’ job to teach them to count money and make change, but it is the job of family and community to be sure that students understand the true value of money and hard work, to be able to choose quality merchandise, and save money for major purchases.

“We must be serious about this. We simply must stop the severe over-testing and give students real-life opportunities to be prepared for life after high school graduation. We must trust teachers to evaluate their students’ understanding using portfolios, simulation and other assessment techniques.

“If we truly want our high school graduates to be ready for the next steps in their lives, we have to let go of over-testing and support helping them learn and experience the things that will prepare them for life.”

Categories Real Education, Standardized Testing
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