Archives for category: Standardized Testing
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Ohio State Board Member Criticizes Obsession with Testing

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2015 //
9

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition sent this commentary by a member of the Ohio State Board of Education, retired Judge A.J. Wagner..

State Board of Education member A. J. Wagner weighs in on testing

Retired Judge A. J. Wagner, member of the State Board of Education, shared his views in a letter to Senator Peggy Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee and the members of an ad hoc committee she appointed to examine issues regarding the current testing debacle. His views are worthy of a read.

Dear Senator Lehner and Members of the Committee:

I am writing to you to share my opinion which is formed by the February 2015 Policy Memo from the National Education Policy Center on “Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Time to Move Beyond Test-focused Policies.” I urge you to carefully consider the analyses and recommendations in this Memo.

A compelling body of research exists about the problems with test-focused reforms, as described in the Memo. (available online athttp://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/esea). Key concerns include:

i) Research suggests at least two major problems with test-driven school reforms. First, the tests themselves have validity issues. The resulting scores are only loosely linked to the wide array of topics and depth that we all want for our students. So attaching high stakes consequences to those test scores results in decisions being made on weak data. Second, and probably even more important, when we attach high stakes consequences to test scores we change what and how our children are taught. This is not always bad, since much of what is tested is indeed important. But the overall effect is to narrow our children’s learning opportunities, squeezing out important and engaging lessons.

ii) Not surprisingly, then, we now face the failure of more than a decade-and-a-half of test-focused reforms. Even though we’ve been focusing on the content of our tests and even though we’ve been preparing students to demonstrate knowledge on tests, the testing trends after No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) implementation are almost identical to the trends before NCLB’s implementation. Not only did we come nowhere near the NCLB goal of almost-universal proficiency on standardized tests, we gained no benefit at the cost of broader, deeper learning – and at the cost of pursuing evidence-based practices that could have helped our children.

I urge moving away from test-focused reforms, and to a state role that encourages a focus on sustained and meaningful investments in practices shown to be effective in improving the educational opportunities and success of all students, particularly those in highest need. There are no magic wands, and the formula for success is very straightforward: children learn when they have opportunities to learn; closing opportunity gaps will close achievement gaps.

Key recommendations from the Memo include:

i) Assess students, teachers, and schools using frameworks that paint a more robust, accurate, and complex picture, with multiple data sources and scientifically credited methods of analysis. For example, for students, we might look at authentic performance assessments (http://fairtest.org/k-12/authentic assessment), and for schools, we might look at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s “Time for Equity Indicators” (http://timeforequity.org) or the National Education Policy Center’s “Schools of Opportunity” criteria (http://opportunitygap.org).

ii) Enrich opportunities through proven interventions such as high-quality early-childhood education beginning before birth. Extend learning time in ways that engage students, rather than just more time on drill-and-kill test preparation. Demand more of our schools, but only when providing the supports for students and teachers to succeed. Address problems not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of systems. Test-focused reforms detract attention from deeper and more systemic factors that can hinder any student’s opportunity for success, including such factors as poverty, racial segregation, inadequate resources, narrow and ineffective curriculum and assessment.

iii) Involve students, families, educators, and educational researchers in more substantive ways in decision-making processes involving educational policy and reform. It is particularly important to have powerful, listened-to voices arising from the communities that have been targets of educational reform.

This is a brief summary of the Memo, a document supported by over 2000 researchers and professors from colleges, universities, and other research institutions throughout the United States. I urge you to, please, consider the evidence based practices put forth by the National Policy Education Center.

My prayers and best wishes are with you for these important Deliberations.

Judge A.J. Wagner, Retired
Member of the Ohio Board of Education
District 3

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net

Categories Ohio, Standardized Testing

Steve Nelson: Opt Out to Save Democracy!

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2015 //
15

Steve Nelson wrote a powerful case for opting out from state testing.

“”Opt-out” may be the most important political movement of this generation. It may seem, at first glance, a small ripple in the education reform debate — an understandable reaction to the frustration over increased testing and test-prep in America’s schools. I suggest that it is much more important than meets the eye.

That “first glance” is important in its own right. There is no reasonable argument in support of the tedious, stressful mess that education reform has made of the nation’s schools. Even within its own circular, self-fulfilling paradigm, the testing and accountability era has been a dismal failure. Test scores are essentially meaningless as a measure of real learning, but even by this empty standard, no progress is evident. For this analysis, let us just stipulate that it has not even achieved the limited objectives on which policy is predicated.

The broader issue is hidden within plain sight: This growing struggle over the future of American education may be proxy for the future of our democratic republic.

Most folks who follow education policy debates are familiar with the players and high stakes. Dozens of AstroTurf organizations are funded by the same Daddies Warbucks: Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family Foundation. The incestuous network they’ve created, aided and abetted by the Brothers Koch and the publishing cartel, Pearson, ETS, McGraw Hill, are engaged in a hostile takeover of the entire education enterprise in America.

The Common Core and its primary architect, David Coleman, are parts of a well-oiled, cradle-to-grave machine. It has been going on for years, beginning when George W. Bush was Governor of Texas and helped the industry-led Phonics First movement begin the insidious commercialization of education. Many others, especially “Mercedes Schneider in her wonderful book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education,” have exposed this process in alarming detail.

Fed up by the dreadful experiences their children are having in school, parents and teachers are beginning to resist. In New Jersey, Illinois and New York, for example, the opt-out movement is gaining strength. A national organization called United Opt Out is working tirelessly to unite the many strands of this genuine grassroots effort.

Many of these parents may not be aware of the broader importance of this nascent national movement. They are just standing up for the well-being of their children. It is this simple, yet powerful, impulse that is at the root of every critical political movement in our history. Institutionalized social injustice is, at its core, the aggregate impact of highly personal injury. And millions of American children are indeed being injured in the stark, punitive, increasingly barren wake of so-called education reform.

The stakes are high already, but this battle is going to dramatically escalate. Mark my word. Every incremental growth in the opt-out movement is going to draw increasingly severe response. This is not even about education any more. It is about money. There is no reliable estimate of the overall investment in testing, the Common Core, and the various sub-industries education reform has spawned. As frequently noted, pre-secondary education is at least a $500 billion market and the capital invested to date will not be squandered without a fight. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars are in the pot, and these folks don’t like losing…..

“If enough parents are willing to join the movement, keep their children home on test days, ignore the threats, the battle lines will be clear. School officials, local school boards, state legislators and members of Congress will be faced with a real school choice: Whose side are you on? America’s children and families or a shadow government of plutocrats, investment bankers and publishing companies?

“Opt-out! Even if your child likes tests, keep her home. Like every other powerful movement in American history, this one requires a snowstorm of small acts of defiance. Which side of history will you be on?”

Categories Democracy, Opt Out, Standardized Testing

Is Standardized Testing a Civil Right?

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2015 //
35

Civil rights groups, led by Kati Hatcock of Education Trust, assert that standardized testing is a civil right. Without it, they say, black and brown children would be overlooked, neglected, forgotten. No one would know about the achievement gaps.

Of course, we do know about the achievement gaps in the nation, states and major cities whose NAEP scores are reported every other year. It is not necessary to test every child every year to report what is already known.

Nonetheless:

““Removing the requirement for annual testing would be a devastating step backward, for it is very hard to make sure our education system is serving every child well when we don’t have reliable, comparable achievement data on every child every year,” Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, said in recent testimony before the Senate education panel. Her group joined 20 civil rights organizations to lobby Congress to keep the requirement to test all children each year in math and ­reading.

“The civil rights argument adds a new dimension to one of the most contentious education issues in decades: whether standardized testing is good for students. Congress is wrestling with that question as it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind. The Senate education panel is expected to begin debating a bipartisan bill next week that would maintain annual testing, but it is unclear how the bill will fare in the House, where conservative Republicans want to drastically scale back the federal role in education.”

But Gary Orfield, a long-time civil rights watchdog, says that testing does not help minorities:

““The main victims of this misguided policy are exactly the people the civil rights groups want to help: teachers and students in high-poverty schools,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The focus on math and reading has squeezed out science, social studies and the arts from high-poverty schools, he said.

“Tests don’t address the social problems that poor children bring to school or the fact that many start kindergarten already lagging behind more affluent children, he said.

“They also don’t fix the inequality of a public education system funded primarily by real estate taxes, where schools in wealthy communities are well equipped and attract the strongest teachers, while high-poverty schools often have fewer resources and weaker teachers, he said.

“The idea that you can just ignore the conditions that create inequality in schools and just put more and more pressure on schools and if that doesn’t work, add more sanctions, makes no sense,” Orfield said. “As if it’s just a matter of will for the students and teachers in these schools of concentrated poverty.”

The civil rights groups apparently are unaware if the history of standardized testing, and its ties to the eugenics movement. I wrote about that in chapter 4 of “Left Back.” Historically, standardized tests were used to deny educational opportunities to under served groups and to re-enforce theories of white supremacy, based on test scores.

Like school choice, standardized testing was a weapon used by racists to deny civil rights, not a force for civil rights.

Categories Civil Rights, Poverty, Race, Standardized Testing

How the Obamas Opted Their Children Out of High-Stakes Standardized Tests

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2015 //
52

Read Alan Singer’s column posted in Valerie Strauss’s blog The Answer Sheet to learn how the Obama family opted out.””

Singer says that the Obamas opted out of high-stakes testing by sending their daughters to Sidwell Friends, which does not give standardized tests to every child every year and does not evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students.

Now you can opt out your children from high-stakes tests too. It’s not hard. NYS Allies for Public Education has a sample “refusal” letter and video instructions on its website. All parents have to do is fill out the letter and deliver it to the school principal, either in person or via email. They also recommend a follow-up call before the test dates to remind school personnel. Last year approximately 60,000 New York State students refused to take the tests. In New York State, high-stakes Common Core aligned math and reading tests will be administered in grades 3-8 from April 14 – 16 and April 22 – April 24.

Karen Magee, president of the New York state teachers’ union (NYSUT) is calling for a statewide boycott of the Common Core-aligned tests to protest new testing regulations and test-based evaluations of teachers propagated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Despite evidence against the validity of evaluating teachers using student scores on these tests, Cuomo demanded that 50 percent of every teacher’s evaluation be based on test results in their schools. Meanwhile, he is unable to explain how the 70 percent of teachers who do not teach tested subjects can legitimately be judged based on the tests.

Open the links and learn how you can opt out with sending your children to private school to escape the test prep and high-stakes tests imposed by NCLB and made worse by Race to the Top and the new Common Core tests.

Categories Accountability, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

Vicki Cobb: How to Teach Children to Hate School

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2015 //
45

Vicki Cobb is a prolific writer of science books for children. She has written more than 85 nonfiction books. As a child, she attended the celebrated Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village, where experiential learning was valued. Today, she dedicates herself to educating children about science and the joy of learning. Imagine her surprise when she conducted a workshop and discovered that the children did not share her enthusiasm for school.

 

Here is her assessment of the legacy of today’s school reforms.

 

The other day I was doing a program for a group of 4th-6th graders at a local public library. I introduced myself to them by telling them how I had LOVED school so much when I was a kid that I basically recreate it for myself everyday as I write my books. The kids’ reaction to my confession was a unanimous, vociferous, vocal expression of how much they disliked school. I was startled. After all, I’ve told this to children many times before at school visits. Was this because the venue was not in school and they felt freer to express themselves? Or has something changed to make school more onerous? These were privileged kids from an affluent public school district. Could it be because they had just finished a month of standardized testing? What’s going on here?

 

This is just the latest piece of evidence that something is rotten in American education. It seems that many people in a position of power believe that education is too important to allow professional educators do their jobs because they have failed to produce a consistently excellent product of people who are college and career ready after twelve years of schooling. They believe the way to excellence is to first write a law decreeing “No Child Left Behind” or “All Children College and Career Ready” to set a policy, without consulting anyone who actually teaches children. And then to test, test, test, to see if these impossible standards have been met. Meanwhile, they are creating a population of quietly submissive students and teachers who narrow the curriculum to what they hope will be on the test while administrators are cutting art, music, physical education programs and librarians to pour more of their limited financial resources into test prep and test grading….

 

Let me take this opportunity to remind us that human beings, from the moment they appear on this earth, are born to learn. A baby is as smart as s/he will ever be. Through infancy every day is filled with wonder and discovery. And although there are hard lessons along the way, as learning progresses, so does mastery. We know from research that there are many different learning styles but eventually we all learn to walk and talk and think . As we get older, if we’re lucky, we discover a passion that drives us to master more skills and contribute to society. But the skill of high performance on a test, is not an essential skill. There are many other metrics for success — the number of patents held by Americans, for example. The current “reformers” for education are simply imposing ill-conceived laws of the state and federal governments on schools as if we were a dictatorship not a democracy.

 

Deep in my bones I know that I would not be creating science books for children if I had grown up in one of today’s repressive schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Joy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Real Education, Standardized Testing, Students

Mercedes Schneider Is Reading the Alexander-Murray NCLB-ESEA Bill, Line by Line

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
20

I am happy to say that Mercedes Schneider is reading the 600+ page bill written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, under the bipartisan leadership of Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patti Murray of Washington State.

She is reading every word of it, a daunting task. She is up to page 136. What she sees is that the bill restricts the powers of the Secretary of Education and prohibits him/her from telling states what to do unless specifically authorized by the law. Thus far, she is pleased with what she has read.

We can anticipate more posts, as she goes through the bill. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it, other than committee staff in the Senate.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

FairTest: Call Your Senator to Demand Less Testing in New NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
15

Many people ask, “What can I do to reduce the testing that is making my children’s lives miserable and ruining their love of learning?” This is a democracy. Call your elected representatives in Washington. FairTest recommends citizen action NOW to Reduce Testing Requirements:
National Day of Action Today -April 8
Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning
What: Call your U.S. Senators and join the Twitter storm/Thunderclap. If we raise our voices together, we can persuade the Senate Education Committee to reduce testing requirements as it debates renewal of Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind.
When: April 8, 2015
Who: Testing Resistance and Reform Spring alliance, convened by FairTest, and including many national and state organizations.

Call your Senators: Take a few minutes today, April 8, to phone your U.S. senators in Washington, DC. Ask to speak to the staffer who works on education policy. If no one is available, leave your message with the person who answered the phone. Find the phone numbers at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

Tell your Senators: Here is a model message. Feel free to use it, modify it, or say something entirely different.

Hello. I’m [your name], calling from [your town]. I’m calling to ask Senator [name] to support changes to No Child Left Behind that will promote a saner approach to public school testing. I urge [him/her] to support a switch to testing once each in elementary, middle and high school, and to remove high-stakes consequences from federally required standardized tests. Both these measures will help address the current over-emphasis on testing at the expense of learning.

If you have specific stories about problems with over-testing, please relate them. Personal stories are the most effective.
Twitterstorm: Today at 1:00 PM Eastern time, send a tweet, help build the storm. Here is an example. If you modify it, be sure to include #cutfederaltests and the link to getting your Senators’ numbers:

“Join FairTest, Testing Resistance 4/8 #CutFedTests. Call Senate http://thndr.it/1P6DfEf. Cut back tests, end high stakes.”
The link is to Senate phone numbers. The last ‘sentence’ is the basic message.
To tweet your Senators, find their Twitter handles at:
https://twitter.com/gov/lists/us-senate/members

Email: Join the email campaign as well. To send a letter to your Senator, go to:
http://fairtest.org/roll-back-standardized-testing-send-letter-congres.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Resistance, Standardized Testing

Katy, Texas, School Board Votes to Eliminate High-Stakes Tests

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
45

The school board of the Katy, Texas, Independent School District voted unanimously to eliminate high-stakes testing.

This is a bold and dramatic step in a state that inflicted the “miracle” of high-stakes testing on the nation. Up until now, Pearson and its stable of lobbyists have called the shots.

The Katy school board has bravely demanded a return to common sense and real education, where tests are diagnostic and used to help students, not to label them. I place the Katy, Texas, school board on this blog’s honor roll.

“The Board resolution also calls for state-funded local assessments in lieu of the high-stakes tests. Such local assessments would provide detailed diagnostics that could assist students in their learning. However, these assessments would not be considered high-stakes, nor have any bearing on accountability ratings.”

Categories Honor Roll, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Texas

Daniel Katz: Does Merryl Tisch Want to Fire Black and Hispanic Teachers?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2015 //
165

Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, has proposed that high-performing districts be exempted from the harsh and punitive teacher evaluation program proposed by Governor Cuomo and passed by the Legislature. This would create a two-track system: one for affluent districts, the other for the less fortunate.

Behind the proposal, I suspect, is a strong desire to defang the Opt Out movement. Divide and conquer. Mollify the angry suburban moms and saddle everyone else with a harmful regime.

Daniel Katz predicts that Tisch’s proposal would destroy the careers of large numbers of black and Hispanic teachers. The plan will devastate many teachers, wherever it is fully implemented. Why focus the harm on the poorest districts?

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Regent Cashin of New York Speaks Out Against High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2015 //
65

I  received this statement from Dr. Kathleen Cashin, a member of the New York State Board of Regents, representing Brooklyn. Dr. Cashin has had a long professional career in education as a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent in the New York City public schools. She has taken a principled stand against the misuse of standardized tests.  I add her to the blog’s honor roll for standing up for what is right for children, for teachers, for principals, and for education.

 

She writes:

 

“As a Regent of the State of New York, I cannot endorse the use of the current state tests for teacher/principal evaluation since that was not the purpose for which they were developed. It is axiomatic in the field of testing that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed. They were designed to measure student performance, not teacher effectiveness. The American Statistical Association, the National Academy of Education, and the American Educational Research Association have cautioned that student tests should not be used to evaluate individual teachers. Nor should these tests be used for student growth measures until there is clear evidence that they are valid and reliable. The Board of Regents should commission an independent evaluation of these tests to verify their reliability and validity before they are used for high-stakes purposes for students, teachers, principals, and schools. How can we criticize people for opting out when the tests have not been verified? We need to cease and desist in the use of these tests until such time as we can be confident of their reliability and validity. If tests do meet those criteria, the tests must be released to teachers and to the public after they are given, in the spirit of transparency and accountability.”

 

Dr. Kathleen Cashin

Categories Honor Roll, New York, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, VAM (value-added modeling)
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