The Gallup Poll reports that three-quarters of teachers support common standards, a similar proportion oppose standardized online common assessments, while 89% oppose teacher evaluations based on student test scores.
Evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students is the most prominent initiative launched by Secretary Arne Duncan. The Gallup Poll shows that Duncan’s favorite “reform” is almost universally opposed by the nation’s teachers.
Hello, President Obama. Please pay attention.
Stephen Krashen, literacy expert, wrote a letter to the Denver Post to comment on Arne Duncan’s recent discovery that children take too many tests. Some little ones sit for 9 or 10 hours of testing, as well as test prep. Arne is not happy. But who brought all this testing that got out of control in the past five years. No Child Left Behind? Race to the Top? Race, race, race for higher test scores. Evaluate teachers by test scores . Evaluate education schools by the test scores of students taught by their graduates. Who is responsible for this madness that makes children cry?
Stephen Krashen wrote this letter in response to an article by Arne Duncan (or his press office);
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been an enthusiastic supporter of the common core testing program, accurately described as “nonstop testing” by education expert Susan Ohanian. The common core imposes more testing on our children than has ever been seen on our planet, and no attempt was made to determine if the new tests result in higher student achievement.
Now Secretary Duncan (“A test for school tests,” Oct 20) says he supports a movement to eliminate redundant and inappropriate tests. This should have been done using small-scale studies before the tests were forced on millions of children.
Stephen Krashen
original article: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26762648/test-tests?source=infinite
You can now read the full review in the New York Review of Books of Yong Zhao’s book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and the Worst) Schools in the World.”
It is no longer behind a paywall.
I did not realize that my review of Yong Zhao’s book (“Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best [and the Worst] Schools in the World) was behind a paywall on the website of the New York Review of Books. I have no control over that decision. In time, soon hopefully, it will be available in full, and I will post it. I really enjoyed the book, and I wish that President Obama, Secretary Duncan, members of Congress, and all our governors and legislators would read it. As Secretary Duncan would say, “It’s a game-changer.”
I hope you will read the book.
This is my review of Yong Zhao’s wonderful new book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China has the Best (and the Worst) Schools in the World.
Zhao describes how test-driven the schools of China are and how this focus produces high scores but crushes creativity and individualism. Chinese educators want to free children of this oppressive system, he says, but their “success” on tests like PISA keeps them trapped.
There is an important warning here for us. We are trying to be like China. Yong Zhao says: Don’t.
There is no state that has invested as much time, money, and belief in standardized testing as Texas. The deep belief that regular measurement will produce great results has been a dogma in that state. Its testing regime was the model for No Child Left Behind, which is now viewed as a failed law that set impossible targets and real punishments.
But that confidence has been shaken, as this special report in the Dallas Morning News shows, because test scores foremost districts have been stagnant for three years. Instead of blaming teachers and students, pictmakersare casting a skeptical eye at the tests–and maybe even at their dogmatic commitment to testing as a cure all. This is a state where the legislature it billions out of the school budget, expected schools to do better with larger classes and fewer resources, and counted on testing to make everything right.
Reporters Jeffrey Weiss and Holly K. Hacker write:
“For Texas school districts high-achieving and low, affluent and not, urban and suburban, the lack of progress on STAAR is consistent.
“Three years of stagnant statewide average test scores were matched by flat results in the districts where most Texas students attend, according to an analysis by The Dallas Morning News.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
“When STAAR debuted, state education leaders assumed scores would climb as they did with STAAR’s predecessor, TAKS. But no district larger than a Class 5A high school has shown significant progress on most STAAR tests compared with the state. Even for the smallest districts, about as many have lost ground as gained.
“And that feeds into questions being asked with increasing urgency by parents and politicians: Do these scores mean students aren’t learning? Or are the tests bad at measuring what kids know?”
And the elected officials are turning against the test mania:
“As a practical and political matter, Texas’ standardized tests are in trouble.
“Last year, lawmakers killed 10 of the 15 planned end-of-course exams for secondary schools. More pullback may be in the offing for next year’s session. The Texas Education Agency is even asking for $30 million to develop accountability measures that don’t depend so much on testing.
“Republican and Democratic candidates have all campaigned on cutting the number and use of the tests. Legislators peppered state education officials with tough questions during recent hearings. And many of those questions had to do with the gap between predictions and reality for STAAR scores.”
The reporters note that the tests are defended by the state education comissioner, but he was never an educator. Before Governor Rick Perry appointed him, he headedanagrncy charged with regulating the energy industry. We can assume that in Texas under a Republican governor, the energy industry is a lot less regulated than the public schools.
Weiss and Hacker ask a great question:
“Imagine putting a pot of food on the stove, putting a thermometer in the pot and walking away for a while. When you come back, the thermometer reading hasn’t changed. Is the problem with the stove, something unexpected in the pot or a busted thermometer?”
Mor and more parents, educators, and elected officials are saying that the thermometer is broken.
Those who long to see teachers fired based on student test scores must have been happy last week in Tennessee. Four teachers were fired based on the state’s evaluation system. Is it valid? Is it reliable? Were they fired for teaching in high poverty schools? Did the state or the district provide them with support?
Audrey Amrein Beardsley blogged about this termination process in Tennessee here. (The number fired went from five to four after she wrote about it.)
Beardsley wrote:
“It’s not to say these teachers were not were indeed the lowest performing; maybe they were. But I for one would love to talk to these teachers and take a look at their actual data, EVAAS and observational data included. Based on prior experiences working with such individuals, there may be more to this than what it seems. Hence, if anybody knows these folks, do let them know I’d like to better understand their stories.
“Otherwise, all of this effort to ultimately attempt to terminate five of a total 5,685 certified teachers in the district (0.09%) seems awfully inefficient, and costly, and quite frankly absurd given this is a “new and improved” system meant to be much better than a prior system that likely yielded a similar termination rate, not including, however, those who left voluntarily prior.”
A lawsuit seems inevitable.
Two board members were outspokenly critical:
“If the firings are approved then [after independent review], the group of teachers will become the first to lose their jobs under Metro’s new system that relies on state teacher evaluation to dismiss teachers deemed low-performing.
[Superintendent Jesse] Register, in pushing firings that state law authorizes, has said that all students deserve excellent teachers. But evaluations continue to be debated in Tennessee four years after their implementation
“If we have bad teachers in the classroom, I fully agree that we need to get them out of the classroom,” said board member Amy Frogge, who voted against certifying the teachers of each. “The problem is, I’m not sure we’re using a fair measure to do that.”
“Two of the teachers who face termination are at Neely’s Bend Middle School, another is at Madison Middle School and the fourth is at Bellshire Elementary School.
“Teacher evaluations in Tennessee, known as the Tennessee Education Acceleration model, have faced criticism particularly for their use of student gains on tests measured through value-added data. This compares student scores to projections and comprises 35 percent of an overall evaluation score. Qualitative in-class observations by principals account for an additional 50 percent. The remaining 15 percent is based on other student achievement metrics.
“The board’s Will Pinkston, a frequent critic of Register, objected to the board being asked to take up the votes after receiving details about the situations of each teacher only days before.
“I do not trust this process or the people behind it,” said Pinkston, who made four unsuccessful motions to defer voting on the charges.
“If mass teacher dismissals are going to be the new normal, then let’s do it right, not scramble to get information to meet some arbitrary deadline.”
John Thompson, teacher and historian, explains here why teachers are beating up reformers. Shocking but true. Charters don’t outperform public schools unless they exclude low performers. Vouchers are sending kids to church schools that do not perform as well as public schools. Teacher evaluation by test scores is a disaster. The testing culture has demoralized teachers. The reformers have no idea how to “fix” schools.
He writes:
“During the high tide of corporate reform in 2010, their scorched earth public relations campaign against teachers and unions was doubly effective because they all sang from the same hymnal. Since then, however, reformers’ failures to improve schools have been accompanied by political defeat after defeat. Now they are on the same page with a kinder, gentler message.
“Now, the most public message is that a toxic testing culture has mysteriously appeared in schools. As the Center for American Progress, in Testing Overload in America’s Schools, recently admitted “a culture has arisen in some states and districts that places a premium on testing over learning.” So, the reformers who made that culture of test prep inevitable now want to listen to teachers, and create a humane testing culture.
“As Alexander Russo recently reported, in Why Think Tankers Hate the Vergara Strategy, some indicate that the Vergara campaign against teachers’ legal rights is a dubious approach. I’m also struck by the number of reformers, who complain about unions’ financial and political power, and who seem to by crying that We Reformers Are Being Beaten Up by Teachers.
“Yes! Reformers Are Being Beaten Up by Teachers!
“I communicate with a lot of individual reformers who agree that test-driven accountability has failed, but they can’t yet visualize an accountability system that could satisfy their reform coalition and teachers. I repeatedly hear the pained protest that, Testing Isn’t Going Away.
“So, what alternative do we have?
“Talk about Low Expectations! Are they saying that a democracy can’t prosper without test and punish imposed from on high? Do they believe that families and students are just as feckless as teachers, and none of us will teach and learn without reward and punish regimes that toughen us up for economic combat in the global marketplace?”
Alice G. Walton has written an important article in Forbes about the controversy over Common Core. (She is a Forbes contributor with a Ph.D., no relation to the Arkansas Waltons.)
She addresses three questions? Are the standards developmentally appropriate? Is the problem with the standards caused by standardized testing, and would the standards be fine if the testing were eliminated? What is the science behind the standards?
She interviewed several eminent experts in the field of early childhood education who agreed that the standards are NOT developmentally appropriate for young children. She interviewed one of the writers of the standards, Sue Pimentel, who insisted that nothing is wrong with the standards and blames the schools for poor implementation.
But this is what the leading experts said about pushing little kids to learn more faster and earlier:
“It’s not clear exactly where the current trend – of pushing more information on kids earlier – came from, but it seems to be a response to the idea that the U.S. needs to catch up to other countries’ education systems. The problem with this strategy is that there doesn’t appear to be much evidence that “more sooner” is the most effective strategy. “The real school starting age is 7,” says Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, faculty at Weill/Cornell Medical School and author of Hyper-Parenting and The Over-Scheduled Child. “It may be 8 or 6, depending on the child. This is all based on what we know about child development, starting from Piaget. Your brain isn’t sufficiently wired to do it before then. And you also have to keep in mind, all kids are different, and it’s very hard to predict what will happen with age. Some kids who were reading Harry Potter at 4 end up as career baristas. Others can’t read till they’re much older, and they turn out to be highly successful as adults.”
David Elkind, long-time child development expert at Tufts University and author of The Hurried Child, says that a related problem with the Common Core standards is that “children are not standardized.” Between ages 4 to 7, he says, kids are undergoing especially rapid changes in cognitive ability, but this neurological and psychological development occurs at all different rates. “Some children attain these abilities—which enable them to learn verbal rules, the essence of formal instruction—at different ages. With the exception of those with special needs, all children attain them eventually. That is why many Scandinavian countries do not introduce formal instruction, the three R’s until the age of seven. In these countries children encounter few learning difficulties. Basically, you cannot standardize growth, particularly in young children and young adolescents. When growth is most rapid, standardization is the most destructive of motivation to learn. To use a biological analogy, you don’t prune during the growing season.”
Could the standards be acceptable if they were decoupled from standardized testing? No, the standards and tests go together. There is considerable doubt among the experts she interviewed about whether standardized tests are good predictors of life success:
Gene Beresin, Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, adds that the link between standardized tests and life success isn’t particularly clear. “The powers that be need to realize that there is not always a great correlation between high achievement on standardized tests and brilliant achievement in the workforce, in academics and in life,” says Beresin. “Some people, myself included, are notoriously bad multiple choice test takers… Good test takers know what is expected for an answer and give the test what it is looking for. But the most successful individuals may well do better on other measures of achievement, for example, writing, journaling, verbal expression, creative productivity, and group interaction. I can tell you as a medical educator there is notoriously poor correlation between results on standardized multiple choice tests and being a good doctor!”
By the time you finish the article, you realize that there is no science behind the Common Core. It is a cultural product, written by a small number of people who believe strongly in rigor and who see no problem either with standardization of children, as if they were widgets, or with setting cognitive demands beyond the reach of many–or most–young children.
This is an excellent article, not only because the author interviewed experts in child development and approached the subject with balance, but because it was published in Forbes and will reach people in the business world who need to hear these informed views.
Jeff Bryant writes that we are stuck in stale thinking about education. Our leaders think that there is a new or better way to do testing and accountability, which is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We have been stuck in the testing and accountability paradigm for at least a dozen years, in fact, for more than a generation. Governors and Congressmen think that “reform” means more and better tests.
But there comes a time to say, “that doesn’t work. We have been testing and holding people accountable since the passage of NCLB and even earlier.” It failed. It is time to think anew before we “reform” our teachers to distraction and our schools to extinction.
Bryant writes:
“Since the passage of No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002, the nation’s schools have been dominated by a regime of standardized testing that started in two grade levels – 4th and 8th – but eventually rolled out to every level for the vast majority of school children. Then, the Obama administration took the policy obsession with testing to extremes. Race to the Top grants and other incentives encouraged school districts to test multiple times throughout the year, and waivers to help states avoid the consequences of NCLB demanded even more testing for the purpose of evaluating teachers, principals, and schools. The latest fad is to test four year olds for their “readiness” to attend kindergarten.
“An increasingly loud backlash to the over-emphasis on testing has been growing and spreading among parents, teachers, and students for some time, resulting in mass public rallies, school walkouts, and lawsuits. There are clear signs those voices are starting to have an effect on people responsible for education policy…..
“What if instead of just getting rid of NCLB, we got rid of the thinking that created it? That was a question I asked three years ago when the failed legislation was gasping toward its tenth birthday. At that time, I likened the thinking behind NCLB to an econometric approach to problem solving, which is unsuitable for a pursuit like education that is values driven.
“Now there’s a new book arguing that we can’t change the way we think about education policy until we change the way we talk about education. The book is Dumb Ideas Won’t Create Smart Kids: Straight Talk About Bad School Reform, Good Teaching, and Better Learning by Eric M. Hass, Gustavo E. Fischman, and Joe Brewer.
“The book queries why federal and state policymakers put so much energy into “reforms” – such as raising standards and standardized testing – that have very little to no evidence of effectiveness. What the authors contend is that policymakers continue down the same never-ending path to policy failure because they operate from a failed “prototype” for education – a way of thinking about teaching and learning that leads to conclusions that sound good but are built on false beliefs (what the authors call “rightly wrong thinking”). And rather than looking for genuine results, policy makers tend to adhere to a “confirmation bias” that dismisses contrary evidence and reinforces the prototype.
“The authors observe that we tend to talk about schools – and indeed the whole nation – through the metaphor of the “family.” And whenever we think about family, we tend to think about two kinds: the “strict, authority-based” kind and the “caring nurturance-based” kind. It’s the authors’ belief that current education policy is dominated by the former and needs lots more of the latter.
“Policy adhering mostly to strict authoritarian ideals, they contend, promotes a faulty approach to education…..
“What’s needed instead of this failed strict, authority-based approach is a shift to the caring nurturance-based approach, the authors believe. This shift, they argue, would replace the metaphors we use to talk about education with metaphors that are more compatible with how students actually learn.
“Because the conduit-to-empty vessel approaches to education – too much step-by-step instruction, over-testing, and “delivery of lots of right answers” – lead to policies and practices that actually hinder learning, the authors call for a “learning as growth” metaphor.
“The learning as growth metaphor would reinforce thinking about students’ minds as “soil” and ideas and understandings as “plants.”
“The logic of learning as growth metaphor is based on two key ideas,” the authors write. “First, people develop or construct their ideas and understandings … Second, people need support to help them construct accurate understandings.”
“In this metaphorical description, the teacher’s role is more akin to a gardener and the education process more aligned to cultivation. “It says that teaching and learning are cooperative activities,” the authors write. “Like a plant, a student’s understanding will thrive when he or she gets attention tailored to his or her individual needs.”
“The authors also call for replacing the freedom as the lack of constraints metaphor with a “freedom as support” metaphor, which equates freedom to providing the resources teachers need to teach and the students with more opportunities to learn.
“Schools, for example should act as community centers that provide tutoring and library materials, and possibly food and health services,” the authors maintain. “Students need the inputs of basic resources to survive and thrive.”….
“Calls for “better testing” and evermore complicated “accountability” metrics are pruning around the edges of a dead shrub. With a new way to think about education, with the language of learning as growth, we can get beyond today’s failed remedies. Let’s talk it up.”
