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Archives for category: Testing
The Pearson server crashed in Colorado as tens of thousands of students were taking online assessments in science and social studies.
It was not what you would call an opt out, but it had the same effect. The Brave Néw World of online assessment is not quite ready for prime time.
Here is an excellent analysis of what is behind the Opt Out movement. Last year, 50,000-60,000 students opted out in Néw York. The figure will be more than double that this year.
Parents are reacting against the overuse and misuse of tests. They are reacting against Governor Cuomo’s harsh and punitive education legislation.
In a democratic society, parents can’t be pushed around by public officials who are more interested in politics than in children. It makes parents angry.
My favorite quote:
“The most dangerous place on Earth is between a mother and her child. Cuomo has crossed the line,” declares GiGi Guiliano of East Islip, a mother of three who will refuse the test. “We want our classrooms back. We want our teachers to be able to teach again. I want my kids to enjoy the love of learning, not how to fill in bubbles. I want them to be lifelong learners.”
A letter from a teacher:
“Two of the students that I tutor called me up to give me feedback about the tests. One student is an honors student in the 6th grade in a middle school. He is a high achiever from a professional family. He was so upset that his voice was breaking up on the phone. He described a poem that he did not comprehend at all. He stated that the vocabulary was so difficult and that he never encountered most of the words that were used in this poem.
I asked if at the bottom of the poem some of the meanings were footnoted. He said no.
He then said that at the end of the assessment, his English teacher looked at the poem and said to the class that she did not really understand the poem herself . In addition, there was another nonfiction passage that he had to read twice to get any meaning from. As a result, he was unable to complete all the questions for this passage by the end of the assessment.
My second student is a 8th grade student who goes to a middle school in Queens. He has second language issues that have caused many gaps in his vocabulary. He said that he had to read many of the passages twice and could not finish the test. He said that the passages on the assessment were harder than the passages I gave to him. The readability of the practice passages I gave to him were mostly on the 10th grade level. Most of the material I used came from two well known publishers. Both these publishers claimed that their material supposedly mimic the difficulty level of the assessment. I guess not.
More important is the fact that this is a boy whose parents have very high expectations which have caused him to have issues in self-concept. After this assessment, his self-concept is in the garbage. His parents were always opposed to opting out because of their cultural background. His mother came on the phone and is now considering opting her son out from the rest of the assessment.
What I am hearing is nothing less than criminal. Forget about the fact that it appears that these passages and questions are so hard that teachers cannot comprehend them. Also forget about how these tests are being used against us teachers.
It is more important that these assessments represent, in my mind, child abuse. What is the purpose of destroying children that try so hard. Both of these students are boys who want to please their parents. their teachers and me. They now feel like failures. No child should ever be made to feel this way. I even feel like a failure because I worked so hard with these two boys. At least I understand that it is not me. It is the tests. There is no doubt that the purpose of these tests is to create failure. They were never intended to measure learning.
A letter was circulated to all principals in the Rochester, New York, school system, advising them to identify teachers who had encouraged parents or students to opt out and to report teachers who were absent on testing day.
Adam Urbanski, the president of the Rochester Teachers Association, sent the following letter to his members:
Colleagues,
The attached email was sent to school principals by Beverly Burrell-Moore. Understandably, teachers find the tone and content of that email to be a blatant attempt at intimidation and an infringement on teachers’ rights and academic freedom. I have immediately brought this to the attention of Superintendent Vargas who said that he was unaware of the email but would communicate his position to teachers directly later today.
As well they should, teachers feel a moral obligation to speak up when they witness harm being done to their students. The tests being now imposed on students are educational malpractice and should be objectionable to teachers, parents and all others who care about students. I applaud all parents who choose to refuse to subject their children to these meaningless and bad tests and commend teachers who insist on their right to respond to inquiries from parents and students.
Today we have filed a Class Action Grievance against the District for already taking disciplinary action against individual teachers. Please let us know if you or your colleagues suffer any reprisals as a result of speaking out against these tests. We will continue to defend the rights of teachers to speak out against harmful educational practices and to advocate for the best interest of their students.
Adam Urbanski, RTA President
It gets harder and harder to keep up with the news about testing, because the popular sentiment is changing against standardized testing in general and Common Core testing in particular with great rapidity. Even this list is slightly dated. As I reported earlier today, some of the Atlanta educators convicted of racketeering were given stiff prison sentences.
It is an extraordinary coincidence that the Senate revision of NCLB is occurring at the same time as the biggest test refusal in American history. The parents who are opting out are sending a message to Congress at the same time that Congress plans to renew annual testing for another seven years. Will Congress hear the message? Or will the opt out movement grow even stronger next year? And will there be more Teachers of Conscience who refuse to give the tests?
Fairtest reports in its weekly update on testing resistance and reform:
Today is huge for assessment reform with the U.S. Senate education committee starting markup of legislation to overhaul “No Child Left Behind,” tens of thousands of students planning to opt-out of the first day of standardized exams in New York State, and sentencing scheduled in the Atlanta cheating case that has focused attention on damage from the fixation on test scores.
Here’s a sampling of just one week’s news from across the nation. Please continue sending us your clips and let us know if FairTest can help your local campaigns in any way
U.S. Senate Rewrite of “No Child Left Behind” Does Not Go Far Enough
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/10/why-the-senates-proposed-no-child-left-behind-rewrite-doesnt-go-far-enough/
Congress Many Years Behind in Move to Overhaul NCLB
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/04/13/398804901/senators-try-to-revise-no-child-left-behind-a-few-years-behind
Is It a “Civil Right” to Take Federally Mandated Tests?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/is-it-a-students-civil-right-to-take-a-federally-mandated-standardized-test/2015/04/10/7f1b731c-d3e4-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html
California Parents Can Choose to Opt Out of Common Core Tests
http://www.kionrightnow.com/news/local-news/some-parents-choose-to-opt-out-of-states-common-core-testing/32242858
Colorado Senate Overwhelmingly Approves Opt-Out Bill
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27867251/colorado-testing-opt-out-bill-wins-final-senate
Colorado Moms Take Frustration About Standardized Testing to State Capital
http://kdvr.com/2015/04/09/moms-students-take-frustration-over-standardized-testing-to-capitol/
Connecticut Opt Out Policies Vary Among Districts
http://www.courant.com/education/hc-for-students-who-opt-out-of-sbac-some-allowed-to-leave-testing-area-others-not-20150407-story.html
Florida Legislature Sends Governor Bill to Scale Back Testing
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-florida-house-passes-testing-bill-post.html
Florida Congresswoman Calls on State to Ignore Results of This Year’s Tests
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/us-rep-wilson-urges-florida-lawmakers-to-disregard-test-results/2224816
Georgia Debates “Fair’ Punishment for Atlanta Educators in Testing Scandal
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/crime-law/whats-fair-punishment-for-aps-cheaters-depends-on-/nkqsR/#6ba5566b.149964.735700
Atlanta Cheating Scandal Exposes Everything Wrong with Test-Driven Education
http://www.alternet.org/education/latest-big-city-school-testing-scandal-exposes-everything-thats-wrong-standardized
Louisiana Teachers Should Be Inspiring Students, Not Just Preparing Them for Tests
http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/opinion/11990159-123/letter-teachers-should-be-inspiring
Maine Students Opt Out of New Standardized Test
http://www.penbaypilot.com/article/camden-hills-parents-overwhelmingly-say-no-new-assessment-test/50881
Michigan PTA Calls for Suspension of New State Assessment
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/general-news/20150409/parent-leaders-ask-state-to-put-m-step-assessments-on-hold-for-this-year
Michigan Parents Pulling Kids Out of State Tests
http://www.minbcnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=1190733#.VSxM40ZLUZw
Nebraska Presses Own Model in “No Child” Overhaul Debate
http://journalstar.com/news/local/education/finally-some-movement-on-nclb-with-nebraska-in-the-discussion/article_3aaf1141-5a12-5f87-b85b-6d0b354e8ce5.html
New Hampshire SmarterBalanced Testing Is Unethical, Invalid
http://www.fosters.com/article/20150407/NEWS/150409532/-1/ROCNEWS
New Jersey PARCC Is Part of State’s Education Problems, Not a Solution
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/15/04/07/opinion-parcc-is-part-of-the-problem-not-part-of-the-answer-for-nj-schools/
New Mexico School Counselors Speak Out Against School Testing Overkill
http://www.taosnews.com/news/article_ece6d7a8-def0-11e4-997b-d70a26278f16.html
New Mexico Opt-Out Numbers Grow
http://www.koat.com/news/parcc-opt-out-numbers-for-aps-announced/32345118
New York Opt Out Movement Grows Rapidly
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/opt-out_movement_grows_across_state_thousands_of_students_expected_to_refuse_tes.html
Western New York District Opt-Out Rate Tops 56%
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/10/fairport-opt-cala/25575961/
New York Teacher Licensing Test on Trial for Racial Bias, Lack of Relationship to Job
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/nyregion/questions-of-bias-are-raised-about-a-teachers-exam-in-new-york.html?ref=education
North Carolina Test-Based School Grades Get an “F”
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article18438515.html
North Dakota Legislatures Can’t Reach Agreement on Opt-Out Bill as Grassroots Movement Grows
http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/bismarck/testing-opt-out-bill-dies-in-house/article_d74b3f4d-de9c-503c-b56c-0c02cc9fe41e.html
Ohio Governor Signs Bill Protecting Students From Negative Consequences of New PARCC Test Scores
http://www.timesreporter.com/article/20150409/OPINION/150409376/2011/OPINION
Ohio Educators Give Law Marks to Rollout of New State Tests
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/04/ohio_educators_give_bad_marks.html
Oregon Students Lead Movement Against New Tests
http://portlandtribune.com/lor/48-news/256291-126869-students-board-square-off-over-smarter-balanced-assessment-tests
Oregon Opt-Out Gains Steam, Especially in Portland
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/04/portland_common_core_testing_o.html
Pennsylvania Suburbs See Twenty-Fold Increase in Opt-Out Requests
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/80602-main-line-district-sits-for-pssas-with-20x-increase-in-opt-outs
Pennsylvania Should Not Waste Time With Keystone Exams
http://www.delcotimes.com/opinion/20150408/letter-to-the-editor-dont-waste-time-with-the-keystone-exam
Tennessee Dueling Test Standards Put Squeeze on Teachers and Students
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/09/dueling-tests-standards-put-squeeze-on-tennessee.html
Texas Concedes New Math Test Scores Will Not Count in School, District Ratings
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local-education/math-staar-tests-for-grades-3-8-wont-count-in-camp/nkp2j/
Texas Lawmaker Takes Aim at STAAR Testing
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/katy/schools/article/Fort-Bend-lawmaker-takes-aim-at-STAAR-testing-6184831.php
Washington State NAACP Joins Critics of New Tests
http://kuow.org/post/naacp-joins-fight-against-new-standardized-test
Washington High School Students Boycotting Smarter Balanced Test
http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/04/10/22029704/why-roughly-220-garfield-high-school-students-are-boycotting-a-standardized-test-in-their-own-words
Congratulations, Pearson Offered Me a Test-Scoring Position
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/14/congratulations-to-me-i-have-been-offered-a-position-as-a-professional-scorer-by-pearson/
Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office- (239) 395-6773 fax- (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 699-0468
web- http://www.fairtest.org
A recent poll reported in the Los Angeles Times produced interesting results and a divide between Latino and white voters.
Latino voters support standardized tests, while most white oppose them.
Both groups support public schools (as compared to privately managed schools), but Latino voters support them by larger margins.
A majority of Latino voters, 55%, said mandatory exams improve public education in the state by gauging student progress and providing teachers with vital information. Nearly the same percentage of white voters said such exams are harmful because they force educators to narrow instruction and don’t account for different styles of learning.
None of the voters know that the new Common Core exams provide no information about how a student is progressing other than a score; they offer no diagnostic information whatever so there is nothing that a teacher or parent learns other than how many answers they got right compared to others in the same grade.
Voters were critical of tenure, assuming it means a lifetime job, with whites more critical than Latino and black voters.
Latino and black voters believe that more money should be put into schools in poor neighborhoods to improve them:
Nearly half of voters surveyed said publicly funded, independently run charter schools offer a higher-quality education than traditional public schools. Still, a majority of white voters, 56%, believe the state should invest in improving existing schools instead of spending additional money to create more charters. Minority voters held on to that belief more strongly, with support between 67% and 69%.
Eight out of 10 black and Latino voters said putting more money into schools in economically or socially disadvantaged areas would improve the quality of public education somewhat or a lot, compared with 68% of white voters.
The article includes an interview with Dan Schnur of the University of Southern California, brother of Jon Schnur, the architect of Race to the Top. USC conducted the poll.
Parents are told that their children should take the new online Common Core tests because doing so will help their children.
The president of the State University of Néw York said students should not opt out:
“When it comes to whether students should opt out of standardized testing, no one is actually talking about what’s best for our kids. Standardized tests have become a pawn in political debates about teacher evaluations and we have lost sight of what they are: a way to measure what students know so we can help them improve,” President Nancy Zimpher wrote.”
Advocates and defenders of the tests assert that parents and teachers will learn about how the children are progressing, and teachers will be able to use this information to tailor instruction to meet the needs of individual children.
None of this is true. The information provided by the tests is worthless. It is a score. It offers no information about how to help students improve. It gives a score and a ranking compared to others in the state.
There is nothing individual in each student’s report. The teacher can’t see what the student got right or wrong. The teacher and parent learn nothing except the student’s score.
A test is valuable to the extent it is diagnostic. If a test is diagnostic, it identifies strengths and weaknesses so the teacher can help children do better. This report is not diagnostic. It says nothing of importance.
This is akin to going to a doctor with a painful stomach ache. He gives you tests, then says he will get back to you in four months. When you see him again in four months, he tells you a score, and he compares you to other patients with similar symptoms, but he has no prescription, no advice about how to feel better. Why would you want to know that you are better or worse than others with similar symptoms? Wouldn’t you prefer to have treatment?
Knowing that the test consume a large part of the school year, knowing that they are designed to fail most kids because of their absurdly high passing mark, knowing that the tests have no diagnostic value, the best decision for parents is to opt out of the testing. Send a message to the state capitol and to D.C.
What if every parent said, “I refuse”?
What if every parent said, “My child is not taking the test”?
What if everyone said, “No, thank you, I’d rather not”?
The message would resound from one corner of the nation to the others. It would be heard by the Congress, now about to impose another seven years of annual testing on the nation’s children, even though no high-performng nation in the world tests every child every year. It would be heard by the President, who says teachers should not teach to the test, but that teachers who can’t produce high test scores don’t belong in the classroom. It would be heard by Arne Duncan, who said that testing is taking the joy out of learning, but nonetheless insists that every child take the test every year, no excuses. It would be heard by governors and legislators. They would hear the voice of the people. This is what democracy sounds like.
And what then? Teachers would be judged by their peers and supervisors, not by test scores. Teachers would write their own tests, to see whether children learned what they were taught. Standardized tests would be used sparingly, preferably on a sampling basis. Students would have time to explore, time to play, time to read, time to experiment, time to learn without test prep and interim assessments, without fear and anxiety. Pearson would have to reduce its profits for the year.
Send a message. Save your children. Save learning. Stop the machine.
Here is Mercedes Schneider’s fourth installment in her monumental task of reading and analyzing the 600+ pages of the bipartisan Senate bill to reauthorize NCLB.
She writes:
As was true of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Alexander-Murray reauthorization is an assessment-centered document. A principal difference between this draft and NCLB is in the role of the federal government, with the federal role being much more prescriptive (and punitive) in NCLB. The Alexander-Murray draft mandates assessments; however, the particulars it leaves up to states without the punitive outcomes of NCLB.
Thus, state selection of assessments is critical. What a state chooses as its assessments largely determines the focus for the rest of the Alexander-Murray programs and “competitions.”
The “competitions” in the Alexander-Murray draft are optional to states; nevertheless, when coupled with a state’s choice of assessments (which could be assessments specific to the “competition”), state involvement in many of these “competitions” could mimic the oppression of NCLB or even US secretary of education Arne Duncan’s NCLB “waivers.”
A state could go the way of NCLB oppression. Or it could not.
It all depends upon the preferences of a state’s governor, or legislature, or board of education, or superintendent.
The Alexander-Murray reauthorization leaves room for states to implement assessment systems that require a lot less classroom time lost to testing, for example, or to even further downplay the importance of standardized tests by also incorporating projects and portfolios in the assessment process. However, the important piece here is that the states must be willing to pursue these avenues and include them as the official assessments selected for inclusion in the state ESEA application.
The state-level choice of assessments is critical in determining the degree to which education in that state will continue to be “NCLB-like” or even “Common Core-PARCC-SBAC-like.” Beyond that, the state’s choice of Alexander-Murray “competitions” can set the same NCLB/CCSS “stage.”
The mandate of annual assessment aside, under the Alexander-Murray draft, the state is the principal decision maker and therefore the primary entity for determining the degree of pressure brought upon public education by both the assessments it chooses and the ESEA “competitions” in which it participates for ESEA-related funding.
The state is even able to change its standards and assessments after receiving ESEA money by submitting the changes for re-evaluation by the US secretary– who does not have the authority to mandate a particular set of standards or particular assessments. According to the language of the Alexander-Murray draft, there is no rigid, seven-year lock-in to state standards and assessments. That noted, it would be best for a state to be certain about its choice of assessments at the outset of the application process for the proposed Alexander-Murray reauthorization.
Stay tuned. She will slog through this leviathan to the very end and inform us all.
