Archives for category: Standardized Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Arlington, Texas, School Board Takes a Stand Against High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2015 //
10

Texas is the home of high-stakes testing, and it is also home to some independent school boards who are sick of high-stakes testing. After 20 years or more of using testing to reward, punish, and shame students, teachers, principals, and schools, those closest to the schools know that this strategy has failed. Parent pressure forced the state legislature to back down on plans to expand the number of high-stakes tests from 5 to 15. Almost every school board in the state adopted resolutions opposing the testing regime.

 

Now the Arlington, Texas, school board has passed a resolution calling on the legislature to let local school districts devise their own accountability plans and specifically, to de-emphasize the importance of high-stakes testing. The district has created its own accountability plan, and only two of its 28 measures are test-baed. This may upset the battalion of lobbyists for Pearson, but it reflects the will of the people.

 

Here is the letter that accompanied the resolution (which is linked inside the letter):

 

On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the Arlington ISD, I am writing today to share information about the resolution regarding high-stakes assessments that the Board approved on April 16. The resolution urged the 84th Texas Legislature to end high-stakes assessments and to empower local school board to create and implement local accountability systems using standard measures of student success.

 

Accountability and assessment is a key point within the district’s legislative agenda. While an effective, efficient and equitable academic accountability system is necessary to carry out the mission and objectives of the Texas public education system, Texas’ current accountability system is too complex for school districts to drive continuous improvement for districts and campuses. Assessments should provide standard measures while allowing local superintendents and school boards to control how to respond to those measures but should not cause undue stress to students and families or teacher dissatisfaction and burn-out.

 

With the adoption of the Achieve Today. Excel Tomorrow. strategic plan, the district developed a comprehensive local accountability system. In that system, only two of the 28 measures are related to high-stakes STAAR testing. Other items included in that system are participation and success in rigorous courses, percent of graduating seniors taking and performing well on a college-bound assessment, percent of students on track to graduate on time, college enrollment and success, extracurricular and co-curricular participation, facilities, customer service, and effectiveness of leadership development. Each year, the Board receives a report on the districts’ success relative to the local accountability system. Last year’s report is available online.

 

We will continue to work with legislators throughout the session to encourage local control in establishing a sensible local testing system and setting an accountability system that works for the local community and best serves our students.

 

Sincerely,
Bowie J. Hogg
Board President

Categories Accountability, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Texas

Breaking News: Illinois Education Association Supports Right of Parents to Opt Their Child Out of Testing

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
7

According to Glen Brown, a teacher in Illinois, the Illinois Education Association endorsed the right of parents to opt their child out of state testing today.

Here is an excerpt from the resolution that was passed:

The IEA supports the right of a parent or guardian to exclude his or child from any or all parts of state and district-level standardized tests, provided the state or school districts are not financially or otherwise penalized if such students are excluded, and supports the right of educators without suffering from adverse actions regarding their employment or licensure to:

Discuss the impact of standardized testing with parents and/or guardians

Discuss the state and district-level standardized tests with parents or guardians and may inform parents or guardians of their ability to exclude his or her child from state and/or district-level standardized tests

Provide a parent or guardian with his or her opinion on whether or not a student would benefit from exclusion from a state and/or district-level test, and that no adverse action or discipline will be taken against a school district employee who engages in such discussion.

The IEA furthermore supports:

A school and its employees not being negatively impacted due to a student not taking a state and/or district level standardized test, such as by ensuring that students who are opted out of standardized tests by a parent or guardian are excluded from performance calculations for state and local accountability measures and from employee evaluations

Reducing the volume of standardized tests that students must take and to reduce the time educators and students spend on meaningless test preparation drills

Categories Illinois, Opt Out, Standardized Testing, Teachers

BATs Collect “Horror Stories” from ELA Testing in New York

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
18

I promise not to post any test passages, but the BATs don’t.

 

Here, they have gathered comments from teachers about the test questions. Some are general, some specific.

 

It appears that the tests contained many words that would be unfamiliar to most students, some with explanations, others not. In general, the reading level of the tests were well above the grade level of the students.

 

By the way, if you go to the NYSAPE website, you will learn that the opt-out numbers are up to 173,000 and 63% of districts have reported. These are not official numbers, as the state says it can’t release such numbers until the summer. This is truly a citizens’ revolt against bad policy imposed by the Governor, the Legislature, and the U.S. Department of Education. The opt out movement will likely continue to grow until toxic policies are rolled back.

Categories Common Core, Standardized Testing

Peter Greene: DFER Says Kids Must Take the State Tests to Protect the Community’s Property Value

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
40

Peter Greene–who seems to read everything–saw an article in USA Today, quoting an employee of the Wall Street hedge-fund managers’ group “Democrats for Education Reform,” which may or may not actually have any Democrats in its membership (but we will never know). She said it was important for students to take the state tests because property values hinge on test scores! Really! Without high test scores, the property values in high-wealth Scarsdale, a suburb of New York City, might plummet.

The DFER spokesperson said:

“Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs,” she said. “How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn’t clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data.”

Gosh, state officials never told us that the importance of the state tests was to shore up property values in elite suburbs. What then is the reason for students in low-income communities to take the test? Their scores might hurt their property values. Same for working-class neighborhoods. This argument is actually a good reason for everyone to opt out except for elite suburbs.

Categories Opt Out, Standardized Testing

NY Super-Principal Carol Burris Announces Her Retirement

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
34

Andrew Cuomo can put one notch on his belt. Carol Burris is stepping down. He better have a very big belt because his hatred for teachers eill drive out many from the profession. who will replace? Does he care? The much-honored principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center decided to retire early because of Cuomo’s punitive law. Morally and ethically, she could not continue to work in the environment he has created.

She said:

“We are now turning our backs on the very experiences that build on our children’s natural strengths in order to pursue higher test scores in this era of corporate reform. We have become blind to indicators of quality that can’t be demonstrated on a scan sheet.

“The opinions of billionaires and millionaires who send their own children to private schools awash in the arts hold more sway than those of us who have dedicated our lives to teaching children. In the words of our chancellor [Merryl Tisch], we who object are “noise.”

“Much to the dismay of Albany, the noise level is on the rise since the passage of a new teacher evaluation system that elevates the role of testing. I am not sure why I was shocked when the legislature actually adopted the nonsensical evaluation plan designed by a governor who is determined to break the spirit of teachers, but I was. What is even more shocking is the legislature’s refusal to admit what they did, which was to create a system in which 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is based on test scores. Whether that denial comes from ignorance or willful deceit doesn’t matter. It is inexcusable.

“What will happen to our profession is not hard to predict. Since the state has generated student “growth” scores, the scores of 7 percent of all elementary and middle school principals are labeled ineffective. Likewise, 6-7 percent of Grades 4-8 teachers of English Language Arts and math received ineffective growth scores. That is because the metrics of the system produce a curve.

“Based on the law, we know before even one test is given that at least 7 percent of teachers and principals, regardless of their supervisors’ opinion, will need to be on an improvement plan. They will be labeled either developing or ineffective. We have no idea what growth scores for high school teachers and teachers of the arts will look like — that has been, in the words of Assemblywoman Pat Fahy, “punted” to a State Education Department. Yes, they [state lawmakers] have turned the football over to the folks whom they publicly berate for the botched rollout of the Common Core.

“Well, the legislature has woken a sleeping giant. Around the state today parents are saying “no more.” The robust opt-out movement, which began on Long Island, has now spread across rural and suburban areas in upstate New York as well. Over 75 percent of the students in Allendale Elementary School in West Seneca refused the Common Core tests today. In the Dolgeville district, the number is 88 percent. Over 70 percent of the students in the Icabod Crane Elementary and Middle School refused. On Long Island, 82 percent of Comsewogue students, 68 percent of Patchogue Medford students and 61 percent of Rockville Centre students opted out of the tests. And that is but a sample.

“This is happening because the bond between students and teachers is understood and valued by the parents we serve. They have no stomach for the inevitable increased pressures of testing. Through opt out, they are speaking loud and clear.”

“She is not going away. She was already a leader in the battle against corporate reform. She has written many posts for Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog at the Washington Post. She will write more. Now she is joining the fight to save children and public education from corporate raiders full-time. Hers will be an experienced, wise voice in the fight for democratic public education.

Categories Common Core, Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Principals, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Peter Greene Watched Chris Hayes Interview Merryl Tisch and Me

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2015 //
14

Peter Greene watched “All in with Chris Hayes,” in which Merryl Tisch and I discussed and disagreed about the value of the Common Core tests. The reason for the debate was the reports of large numbers of parents opting out their children.

Tisch, whom I have known for many years, is Chancellor of the Néw York State Regents. She defended the testing as necessary and helpful.

Peter Greene analyzed her changing rationales about why the tests are valuable.

She believes they help the neediest children, but of course these are precisely the children likeliest to fail. I don’t see how children gain motivation by failing a test that has been designed to fail 70% of all students.

She thinks that the opt outs are a “labor dispute” between the Governor and the teachers’ union. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to respond that parents do not act at the union’s command. They act in the best interests of their child.

Merryl Tisch is an intelligent woman, and I look forward to having a conversation with her, off-camera.

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Standardized Testing

Early Reports on Pearson Common Core Tests

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2015 //
68

A parent reported in an email to me that questions from the ELA tests are plastered on Facebook and other social media, despite Pearson’s efforts to monitor students’ comments on FB or Twitter. While many thousands of parents have opted out, some students are engaging in civil disobedience by copying test questions and releasing them. I read one long and rambling passage written in what I imagine was cowboy slang. I won’t reproduce it because I don’t want to be sued by Pearson.

Teachers are reporting readability levels that are 2-4 grade levels above students’ age/grade. They are also reporting incomprehensible reading passages. A poem on the 6th grade test baffled students and teachers alike.

No one has a final talley on opt outs, but they are likely to exceed 200,000. Wow! Last year it was 60,000.

I have been told by a very high-ranking official in Néw York that the sheer number of opt outs will invalidate the governor’s plan to use the scores to evaluate teachers.

There is so much wrong with these tests and so little willingness to listen by the governor or state board, that only massive civil disobedience was left to parents and students. They are acting in the spirit iof a great American tradition: civil disobedience. Don’t Tread on Me.

Categories Common Core, New York, Standardized Testing

Steven Singer: Parents Have the Power to End Test Abuse

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
35

Steven Singer is a National Board Certified Teacher of secondary school in Pennsylvania, he is also a parent of a kindergarten student. He didn’t want her to take standardized tests, and he went to her school to meet with the principal and her teacher. One of the tests is DIBELS, the other is GRADE. He thought both were useless.

 

He writes:

 

“I think standardized testing is destroying public education. It’s stressing kids out by demanding they perform at levels they aren’t developmentally ready to reach. And its using these false measures of proficiency to “prove” how bad public schools are so they can be replaced by for-profit charters that will reduce the quality of kids’ educations to generate profits.”

 

The principal said:

 

“I’ve never had a parent ask to opt out of the DIBELS before,” he said.

 

He said the DIBELS is a piece of the data teachers use to make academic decisions about their students. Without it, how would they know if their children could read, were hitting certain benchmarks?

 

Singer replied:

 

“I know I teach secondary and that’s different than elementary,” I said, “but there is not a single standardized test that I give my kids that returns any useful information. “I don’t need a test to tell me if my students can read. I don’t need a test to know if they can write or spell. I know just by interacting with them in the classroom.”

 

The principal looked to the teacher, and the teacher agreed! She knows how her students are doing without the standardized tests.

 

Singer left feeling elated.

 

“It wasn’t until then that I realized the power parents truly have. The principal Smith might have refused a TEACHER who brought up all of the concerns I had. He’s their boss. He trusts his own judgment. But I don’t work for him. In fact, he works for me. And – to his credit – he knows that.

 

“I know everyone isn’t as lucky as me. Some people live in districts that aren’t as receptive. But if parents rose up en masse and spoke out against toxic testing, it would end tomorrow.

 

“If regular everyday Dads and Moms stood up for their children and asked questions, there would be no more Race to the Top, Common Core or annual standardized testing. Because while teachers have years of experience, knowledge and love – parents have the power. Imagine if we all worked together! What a world we could build for our children!”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Parents, Standardized Testing

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
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »