Yielding to demands by students and educators, the Rhode Island State Senate voted a three-year moratorium on high-stakes testing.
The bill must still pass the House and win the Governor’s okay.
The bigger problem is that the moratorium kicks the can down the road. If it is wrong to use a standardized test for high school graduation, it will still be wrong in three years.
At a rally against high-stakes testing in New York City, high school teacher Rosie Frascella explains the uselessness of high-stakes tests. The students get no feedback about what they did well and where they need to improve. As their teacher, she learns nothing about how well or poorly they did and why. The tests are useless other than for data for bureaucrats nd for the bottom line at Pearson. The interview was conducted by a local television station in New York City but never broadcast. Fortunately it was also taped by retired teacher and videographer Norm Scott.
Share it with your friends and colleagues, with parents and students.
Laura Chapman says it is no improvement to substitute student growth in test scores for plain old test scores. Both reduce teaching and learning to multiple choice test questions.
She writes, in response to this post:
“Instead of judging schools solely by test scores, they might be judged–at least in part–by student growth.”
This is not an improvement of any kind, but the precise language from Race to the Top Legislation (see reference below).
In federal and state policy “student growth” is just a euphemism for a gain score from pre-test to post-test, or year-to-year. In other words, the term “growth” has been thoroughly corrupted to mean just another score, and preferably a score with properties that can be processed to produce a VAM–value added score. (See reference below on the new grammar…)
Do not be mislead. The marketeers of “growth” as if this is some gold standard or “fair” measure for judging educational activity are engaging in a propaganda campaign. Participants include USDE and its hired hands who know that this term “growth” has a rich and elaborate semantic reach in education. They are cynically trying to cut away understandings of growth and development as teachers understand it for individual students–multifaceted and asynchronous (e.g. bright but socially awkward; coordinated dancer, but not an athlete; enchanted with calligraphy but has terrible handwriting). To be sure, there are normative patterns for a large number of students, but so-called “developmental levels” also mask all of the wondrous variability in students. Forget all that, the new meaning of “growth” is a gain or increase in a metric derived from a test.
A perfect example of the marketing effort on behalf of redefining “human growth” (as a difference in metrics) is the infamous “Oak Tree Analogy” (see reference below)–that conveniently ignores that fact that students, unlike trees, have minds of their own.
I call this a cynical move because the oak tree analogy is framed to place teachers in the role of workers in a nursery in charge of providing the “nutrients” that are needed for trees to thrive. This frame, as Lakoff and Johnson remind us, taps a “nurturing parent” metaphor for teachers, and also the traditional role for women. The campaign to portray teachers as bad nurturers, lay, soft, uncaring is nowhere more evident that in the excessive use of “rigor” and “rigorous” as obligatory adjectives for almost everything bearing on “improvements” in education. See Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2008). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago press.
Repeat. Federal and state policy documents define “growth” as a gain in pre-test to post test scores, and a gain in year-to-year scores. Such scores are used to radically simplify judgments about districts, schools, teachers, and students. The distorted views of education produced by aggrandizing tests and “metrics” as if these refer to the actual complexities of human growth and development–perceptual, intellectual, social, physical, creative, aesthetic–is a fraud.
For federal language for “growth” see: Final Definitions 559751-52 Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 221 / Wednesday, November 18, 2009 / Rules and Regulations DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 34 CFR Subtitle B, Chapter II [Docket ID ED–2009–OESE–0006]
RIN 1810–AB07 Race to the Top Fund AGENCY: Department of Education.Retrieved from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-11-18/pdf/E9-27426.pdf
For the false comparison of human development and oak tree “growth” see:
Value-Added Research Center. (2012). Teacher effectiveness initiative value-added training oak tree analogy. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/oak/index.htm
For the cynical promotion of a preferred “grammar” for education see:
Reform Support Network. (2012, December). Engaging educators, Toward a New grammar and framework for educator engagement. Author. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/engaging-educators.pdf
A reader posed this question about Governor Cuomo’s reason for promoting a $2 billion bond for new technology. He wrote this after seeing that Pearson and AIR are dueling over control of PARCC assessments, which will ultimately provide several BILLIONS in revenue to the testing corporation with the contract. Pearson recently won the PARCC contract, being declared the sole bidder. AIR is suing:
The reader writes:
I hope New York residents who oppose Common Core are astute enough to grasp that Governor Cuomo’s support of a $2B Technology Bond Issue is a requisite to make many districts PARCC ready. If you want to stop Common Core you need to recognize the underlying reason that Cuomo is willing to go into debt to fund a technology bond issue–PARCC! Strange how Cuomo prefers Tax Cuts for the wealthy over aid to local school districts–but promotes a bond issue to support technology. Mr. Tax Cap–and Mr. Tax Freeze is out there promoting $2B for Gates and Google–don’t believe for a second that he does not have ulterior motives that are not good for NY kids!
The centerpiece of Race to the Top is evaluating teachers by test scores. The students of good teachers, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama believe, get higher scores. If they have low scores, it is the fault of bad teachers. There was no evidence for their beliefs, other than the speculations of economists and statisticians. Real teachers never believed the theory, because they know that many favors affect test scores, not just teachers.
Thirty five states and DC followed Duncan’s lead, even though his hunch lacked any evidence . Lyndsey Layton has a comprehensive article in today’s Washington Post, describing the latest study to disprove Duncan’s theory.
Spurred on by Duncan, many states now use test scores to determine tenure and compensation. Duncan recently said he wants to judge the quality of teacher education programs by the test scores of students taught by their graduates.
Secretary Duncan’s love affair with standardized testing is inexplicable. There can be no question that he has caused immense damage to children, teachers, and public education.
Jack Schneider of the College of Holy Cross and Pat Jehlen of the Massachusetts’ Senate Committee on Education have a sensible article about the use and misuse of test scores to measure school quality.
As they point out, test scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic status, so schools that serve low-income students look like “bad” schools even when they are doing a good job of educating the students.
The matter of how a state identifies the “lowest performing” schools is a high-stakes enterprise. After all, labeling a district as such can lead to the flight of quality-conscious parents—weakening the district’s capacity and increasing segregation by class. And additionally, schools identified among the lowest ten percent of performers face the charter “cap lift” provision, allowing the state to send up to 18 percent of the district’s funds to charter schools — twice as much as in other districts. When the cap is raised and more charters are granted, students leave, budgets are cut, and schools can close. While some families now have a new choice, others find their chosen school closed.
To be clear: some districts really are ineffective. And no one wants children to be trapped in failing schools. Yet the simple truth is that current approaches for measuring effectiveness are methodologically weak and ethically dubious.
Standardized test scores, which constitute the lion’s share of how we evaluate school effectiveness, are highly problematic. Standardized tests capture a narrow slice of life in schools and reflect only a fraction of what the public values. They are designed to be time efficient and cost-effective rather than to align with what we know about cognitive development. And they are subject to gaming.
Although they recognize that standardized tests in general capture only a very small aspect of what schools and teachers do, they think that they could be used more wisely.
Instead of judging schools solely by test scores, they might be judged–at least in part–by student growth.
This is certainly wiser than what Massachusetts and most other states do now.
But if you bear in mind that standardized testing itself is highly contested, even student growth scores will contain defects–just different defects.
Imagine living in a world without standardized testing. That might be bad for Pearson, but just imagine it.
Such a world exists.
It is found in almost every private school in America, where teachers make judgments about their students’ progress and their needs.
It is found in Finland, where teachers teach as if they were in an American private schools.
Why are we so wedded to those standardized tests, which originated as IQ tests, filled with racial and ethnic and class bias?
Which state or district will be first to try a new way of assessing school quality, for example, with an inspectorate of expert educators?
The OECD has created tests that schools can administer to their students in order to compare them to the nations of the world.
Some schools have gleefully administered the tests, happy to discover how their students compare to children of the same age in the rest of the world.
Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg, a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education this year, warned that it was not valid to compare schools to national systems.
The OECD test has sponsors now but it will eventually be a money-maker:
“Although these early administrations have been partly subsidized by private philanthropies, most districts will have to pay $11,500 per school in order to participate starting next year, according to Peter Kannam at America Achieves, a nonprofit that has been recruiting new schools and coordinating exchanges among participants.”
http://www.americaachieves.org/oecd#faq
“The development of this new diagnostic tool by the OECD was made possible by America Achieves, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Kern Family Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Craig and Barbara Barrett Foundation, National Public Education Support Fund, the Stuart Foundation, and the Rodel Charitable Foundation of Arizona.”
Many educators can’t resist the temptation to administer yet another test. What would they do without data? Would they know how to diagnose children’s needs and plan for education without external tests to guide them? Surely, they cannot trust teachers to write their own tests or evaluate student needs.
In the ideal world of the future, school will be devoted entirely to testing, preferably to tests created solely by Pearson and/or the OECD. All learning will be standardized, and all children will be test-taking machines, programmed to find the right answer to every question. Th questions and the answers will be the sole property of Pearson and/or OECD.
Any learning not on the test will be considered a waste of time. Those who choose to think for themselves will be considered outliers, rebels, outcasts, possibly dangers to society. All “knowledge” will be strictly monitored by the Pearson/OECD bureaucracy.
The rules of life in this new society will be:
“We measure what we treasure.”
“You can’t control what you can’t measure.”
“Whatever cannot be quantified does not matter.”
“All problems can be solved by measurement and data.”
“Test scores determine one’s life potential.”
“Test scores are the best measure of students, teachers, and schools.”
Welcome to our Brave New World.
A brilliant post by G.F. Brandenburg about NAEP scores.
Shows how little has been gained by the Bush-Obama demolition derby of testing, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, opening charters.
It is all a mighty failure that has not improved test scores or education
Hoax!
This New York parent decided the state tests were useless and worthless. She went to hearings and rallies and realized that state officials made only minor changes but that her children would continue to sit for 500 minutes of state testing in grades 3-8. She thought it made no sense. So she opted her children out of state testing. Here is her letter to the editor of her local newspaper.
She writes:
“I recognize that students have always taken some form of standardized testing and that testing has a value in education. I am not saying that students should never take tests or that teachers should not be held accountable. What I am saying is that we as a state and as a country have lost our focus. What I am saying is the rules have changed and these tests are different. When No Child Left Behind was introduced in 2002, our children were federally required to take state tests in 4th grade and 8th grade. In 2006, the federal requirement changed to all grades 3-8th. In 2012, the tests changed again increasing the time, the complexity and consequences.
“The single largest change at the center of this all is that teachers are now rated on the results of these tests. Teachers are not saying they shouldn’t be evaluated – in fact – most feel that a good evaluation makes them a better teacher. There are so many things wrong with the APPR process that I would have to write another letter on this topic. Basically, our children and our teachers work hard all year. They should not be reduced to a single score.
“The reasons my children have not taken the state tests the past 2 years is simple: they do not help my children in any way. While the test is given in April, the scores are not received until July. There is NO data or explanation of where my child had weaknesses or strengths for that matter. The teacher will see 25% of the questions but will not have ANY information on how MY child did on those questions or on how they may help future students. These tests lack quality, as evidenced by the numerous errors and poorly worded questions. These tests are not used to determine student promotion or grades and are not included in a child’s permanent school record. The children receive a score on a scale of 1-4 which becomes a statistic used to rate teachers and schools- minimizing their educational experience to just a number. What could that number mean to me as a parent? Commissioner King and the Board of Regents are repeatedly quoted in the media saying, “Why wouldn’t a parent want to know how their child is doing?” My response is simple. If I need to know how my children are doing, I will ask their teacher!
“Our children are athletes, musicians, singers, dancers, artists, scientists, and community volunteers, among other things, none of which can be measured by a single assessment. I am not sure when or why test scores became so important. It used to be that parents looking for a place to live chose Garden City, perhaps based on the colleges that our students attend. Our children’s test scores have become a metric by which we assess our property values. The tests have somehow become “practice” in preparation for the NYS Regents Exams, the SAT’s, and ACT’s. Why have we become a society that cares more about the test scores than the quality of our child’s educational experience?”
Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., is an insightful critic of contemporary “reforms.” In this post, he envisions a different way to use assessments.
“Frequent high-stakes testing and its misuse for teacher evaluation are poisoning the assessment waters. Assessment should not be the goal of learning. The word “assessment” should not make students, teachers, administrators and parents cringe. It does not have to be this way. For students and their teachers the most effective use of assessment is to guide next steps for learning.
“What if we shifted the balance of our assessment attention from the summative to the formative—assessment that can be used every day to support learning?
“What if we could more precisely identify where each student was along the pathway to learning?
“What if we could be more accurate at sorting out the nuances in his or her gaps in understanding?”
His central point: Don’t judge, inform.
He concludes:
“Less focus on summative assessment of learning and more focus on daily, embedded formative assessment will help us reclaim the central role of teachers and the art of teaching that I think has been de-emphasized by the focus on summative testing, Adequate Yearly Progress and value-added metrics for teacher evaluation. Research that compares the relative effects on posttest student performance from grades, grades with comments, and comments alone suggests that summative judgments, even when accompanied by comments intended to help, are far less effective than helpful guiding comments alone in motivating students and increasing their learning (Butler, 1987). It may be that summative and formative assessments have that same relationship on effective teaching. A focus on formative assessment and its key component—feedback to students—will shift our perspective on diagnostic data from a source of judgment to a source of information for improvement.
“Of course, not every educational goal is easily measured. Subject matter knowledge and skills are certainly important, but so are imagination, creativity, flexibility, respect and social responsibility. I am not arguing for turning classrooms into a diagnostic laboratory. Classrooms should be places of joy, friendship and discovery. However, I do believe that we can learn to be more productively tuned into the nuances of students learning. We can learn to more effectively provide feedback to students so that they can move their own learning forward.
“I have tried to articulate what I consider challenging aspirational goals. Achieving all of them will be a long-term effort, demanding shared learning and responsibility among teachers, principals, school systems, curriculum developers, psychometricians, and policy makers at all levels. Most importantly, it will require time for teachers to collaborate to share ideas and practice. However, I believe that this balanced view, with an emphasis on classroom assessment, gives us direction and points us toward small steps we all can begin to take on the journey.”
