Archives for category: Testing
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When Competition Is Pointless

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2013 //
103

The other day, I was involved in an extended online discussion about proficiency and accountability with about 50 people, mostly inside the Beltway. These are big names, people who make decisions that control your child’s life in school. I got more and more exasperated as the various think tank experts waxed on about how and why parents NEED to know how their child compares to children of the same age in other states and other nations. I couldn’t restrain myself. I let fly that I never wanted to know this as a mother and I don’t want to know it about my grandchildren now. What I want to know is whether they are growing up to be healthy, to be thoughtful, to care about others, to shoulder responsibility, to think for themselves, to be good people. The last thing that interests me is whether their test scores are better or worse than children elsewhere.

This reader left a similar comment. Let’s keep speaking up for decency and character, not pointless competition on tests of dubious value. Let’s all think for ourselves.

This reader wrote:

“Here’s my take on school: I don’t care how my kid compares, I care that he grows up to be a decent happy person. It doesn’t matter if he can compete with China, it matters that he’s not a miserable wretch like most of us who grew up in this ugly system.

“Seriously, we have a our priorities all wrong. It’s not about being the best, it’s not about “success”, it’s about having a life full of love and a modicum of joy. Everyone is so busy trying to be a winner that we’re all losing.”

Categories Testing

Reader: The Public Doesn’t Understand the Flaws of High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2013 //
40

A reader whose nom de plume is “labor lawyer” responds to the AP survey–claiming that parents approve of high-stakes testing–with these observations:

 

Anecdotal evidence (my own conversations over several years with well-educated middle/upper-middle-class parents), the overwhelming majority of parents approve relying, at least in part, on student test scores to evaluate teachers, including to discharge teachers. In these conversations, I argue that high-stakes testing is 1) too unreliable to use for evaluation purposes due to variables impacting test scores that are beyond the teacher’s control, and 2) counterproductive because it has too many adverse side effects (i.e., encouraging cheating, narrowing the curriculum, discouraging teacher-teacher cooperation, and discouraging teachers from accepting assignments in low-SES schools). Usually, my arguments fall on deaf ears.

These conversations suggest — to me — that most parents do not know enough about what goes on in a classroom today (particularly a classroom in a low-SES-area school) to recognize the many variables that can impact student test scores and that the teacher cannot control. Similarly, most parents have not thought enough about high-stakes testing to recognize the adverse side effects it has on education. Unless the parent is him/herself a teacher in a low-SES-area school, the parent does not have sufficient information and has not spent sufficient time thinking about the issue of high-stakes testing to recognize its unreliability and adverse side effects.

If you would have asked me 15 years ago about high-stakes testing, I would probably have said it was a good idea. Since then, I have discussed the issue with family members and close friends who have taught in low-SES-area schools and, since my retirement a few years ago, have followed the high-stakes-testing debate on the blogs. As a result of these discussions and research, I am now strongly opposed to high-stakes testing. However, very few parents/voters (other than low-SES-area teachers) have experienced this level of exposure tot he high-stakes-testing issue.

The main culprit here — in my opinion — is the main stream media that has reported at length on high-stakes testing while devoting virtually no time to in-depth analysis of the problems inherent in high-stakes testing. The main stream media usually quote a sentence or two from a teachers union official regarding the union’s opposition to the testing without presenting or examining the union officials’ underlying arguments. The main stream media then follows the union official’s comments with responding comments from a pro-testing advocate to the effect that the union officials’ are merely trying to protect poorly-performing teachers, leaving the reader/listener with no guidance re which side of the debate has the better arguments.

A second important culprit are the elected officials — city, state, and federal — who have seized on high-stakes testing as an inexpensive and superficially reasonable solution to the problem of poor academic performance in the inner-city public schools. These elected officials are under significant pressure to “do something” about the inner-city schools and are also reluctant/unable to spend much $ on school reform. High-stakes testing is an easy solution to this political problem. So, we’re not likely to see elected officials — who have ready access to the mainstream media — out there attacking high-stakes testing.

A third culprit are union officials (and ed experts generally) who attack high-stakes testing (correctly) but fail to suggest alternative procedures for identifying/improving/discharging poorly-performing teachers. Virtually every parent/voter during his/her own school days or during his/her children’s school days came in contact with one or more teachers who appeared to be performing poorly and who continued doing so, year after year. These parents/voters will reject out-of-hand the argument that there are no poorly-performing teachers and the argument that current methods of teacher evaluation are effectively identifying/removing the poorly-performing teachers.

Bottom line: Unions and ed experts should strongly advocate for peer-review evaluation systems (like that in Montgomery County, MD — a large suburban school system outside DC — that has resulted in the discharge or resignation-in-lieu-of-review of over 500 teachers over 10 years) while continuing to attack the high-stakes testing.

Categories Parents, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

How the AP Turned a Survey into Propaganda

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2013 //
31

A widely
distributed AP story claimed that parents favor
high-stakes standardized testing and think that their children are
taking the right number of tests. The obvious intent of the story
was to deflate the anti-testing movement, which has been surging in
recent years (consider that almost every local school board in the
state of Texas passed a resolution opposing high-stakes testing and
the legislature, facing popular opposition to the state’s
over-reliance on testing, backed down and reduced the number of
mandated tests). In
this post, Mercedes Schneider shows how the analysts at
the AP massaged the survey questions and parent responses to get
the results they wanted. What the survey really shows is that
parents are generally very satisfied with their public school and
their child’s teachers. They turned some fairly straightforward
responses into an endorsement of high-stakes testing, by carefully
manipulating the questions and their reporting of the answers. It
is not too strong to say that the AP story is propaganda for the
corporate reform agenda. Where are the rallies of parents saying,
“Please keep testing our kids! Test them more! Fire their
teachers!” I haven’t seen any, have you?  

Categories Corporate Reformers, Testing

Paul Thomas: Common Core and the Gravy Train

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2013 //
11

Paul Thomas points out that standardized test scores correlate closely with family income. He notes the lack of any evidence that more testing makes students smarter.

The driving force behind the demand for Common Core and more testing is profit.

Categories Common Core, For-Profit, Pearson, Testing

Anti-Testing Movement Grows in NY Suburbs and Towns

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2013 //
44

The collapse of test scores in New York following the first
tests of the Common Core standards is fueling the growth of the
anti-testing movement. A huge protest took
place in Port Jefferson Station on Long Island on Saturday.

Fifteen hundred people turned out to denounce the Common
Core and the tests that labeled most children as “failures.” To get a turnout of this size on a Saturday in August in a small town signals big trouble for Common Core and its cheerleaders in the State Education Department.

Hero educator Dr. Joseph Rella was one of the speakers.

Newsday, the most widely read newspaper on populous and politically
powerful Long Island, published a vivid photograph of the rally
(open the link) and wrote as follows: “Protesters carried signs and
cheered as they waited to hear from Comsewogue Superintendent
Joseph Rella, a vocal curriculum critic.

“All of us have been passengers on a plane being built in midair,” Rella said to the
crowd. “Today, we are canceling our flight reservations.” “He urged
the group to use social media to spread the word and demand that
state legislators re-evaluate the potential effects of Common Core
standards. “Stop it, fix it or scrap it,” Rella chanted with the
crowd.”

A blogger noticed this great sign held by a child: “I should be blowing bubbles, not filling them in.”

Meanwhile, the Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review, the
main newspaper for the North Fork of Long Island, ran
a blistering editorial denouncing the Common Core and the
tests, predicting that state officials would end up
dropping them and admitting their error.

The victims of the Common Core, he warned, “will likely be the poorest among us.”

Michael White, editor of the Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review,
understands that the engineers of the standards and tests are
detached from reality.

He wrote: “Consider that many children in
poverty-stricken areas will still be living in single-parent or
no-parent households in our new, Common Core world. They still
won’t be eating or sleeping properly. They won’t be getting proper
medical attention for physical or emotional issues that interfere
with school. They won’t be getting help with homework, or even
having their homework checked at home. In fact, extra attention for
such students will be increasingly funneled away from them, as the
focus shifts to teaching to the Common Core assessments.

“For these kids, school’s simply getting harder, with no significant amount of
funding set aside to provide them better access to school supplies,
computers and internet access, or any plans to expand the school
day or school year or bulk up after-school enrichment programs.
With higher test failure rates, there’s also sure to be a huge
spike in students in need of additional support through mandated
programs such as academic intervention services. Where does that
money come from?

“State officials keep arguing that we must adopt
Common Core because America’s education system lags behind those of
other industrialized nations. But they never acknowledge that much
of the disparity is accounted for by the performance of students in
poor and non-English-speaking immigrant communities, which aren’t
as prevalent in more homogeneous nations like Finland and South
Korea.”

White sagely concluded: “Locally, it was revealed by the
state last week that for the 2012-13 year, 74.7 percent of
Riverhead School District students in grades 3 through 8 failed to
meet the state’s math proficiency standard and 73.8 percent failed
to meet the ELA standard. “Those numbers will change very little
moving forward (at least not after some initial curriculum
adjustments). Here’s why. In Riverhead, scores will increase
somewhat for wealthier students but will fall at about the same
rate, with potentially disastrous results, for those who don’t have
the same support systems at home. Those in the middle will break
one way or the other. “When these disparate results between
wealthier districts and the rest of the state become apparent —
especially in New York City — the backtracking on these
numbers-driven policies will begin.

“Yes, it’s my prediction Common Core will be reversed. But it’s also my hope. My fear is that so
much money will be tied up in pricey books, testing materials and
other increasingly entrenched funding sources for this initiative
that the politicians and policymakers won’t ever budge. Meanwhile,
our teachers will remain handcuffed and will continue teaching to
tests, and more and more students who lack either a natural
aptitude for learning or parental support will disengage from the
classroom and the educational process in general.

“Eventually, we’ll be wondering how we slipped even further behind Finland and
South Korea.”

Wow.

When suburban parents have the visionary
leadership of men like Joseph Rella and Michael White, they will
not fall for the lie that three-quarters of their children are
failures. They will catch on: the kids did not fail. The tests were
designed to label them as failures. Suburban parents will see this,
rightly, as an assault on their children, not “reform.” And they
will tell their elected officials to stop these crazy policies that
hurt children.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, New York, Testing

Do Parents Support High-Stakes Testing?

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2013 //
72

A reader posted this AP story about parent support for standardized testing and the Common Core. If you read the story carefully, it shows that parents have no idea how test results are being misused and are unfamiliar with the Common Core. The headline says parents support “high-stakes testing,” but nothing in the story supports that assertion.

One parent quote in the story below thinks the test results are used diagnostically, which would be appropriate: ““The tests are good be­cause they show us where students are at, if they need help with anything,” said Vicky Nevarez, whose son Jesse just grad­uated from high school in Murrieta, Calif. “His teachers were great and if there were problems, the tests let me know.”

Parents think that the test results will be used to help their child do better. They don’t realize that the results are not available for months, when their child no longer has the same teacher. Nor do they know that neither the teacher nor the student is allowed to see the test questions after the test, so they never learn what they got wrong and where they need to improve.

A thoughtful poll would reveal, I suspect, that parents know that the teacher is not the sole determinant of their child’s test scores. Even President Obama once opined that one of his daughters got a low test score in science because she wasn’t trying hard enough. He didn’t blame her teacher; he said Malia was “slacking off.” He said, ““But even in our own household, with all the privileges and opportunities we have, there are times when the kids slack off. There are times when they would rather be watching TV or playing a computer game than hitting the books.’’ In the school his daughters attend, teachers write their own tests, which is the way it should be.

How would parents react if they knew that the tests are not used to help their child, but to give her a rating and to rate the teacher and the school How would they respond if they knew that their child’s score would be used to fire her teacher or close her school?

Here is the story. If anyone can find the questions, please send a link or the questions.

Posted by a reader:

New poll: Parents back high-stakes testing

“By Philip Elliott and Jennifer Agiesta

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Often criticized as too prescrip­tive and all-consuming, standardized tests have support among parents, who view them as a useful way to measure both stu­dents’ and schools’ perfor­mances, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Most parents also say their own children are given about the right number of standardized tests, according to the AP­NORC poll. They’d like to see stu­dent performance on statewide exams used in evaluating teachers, and almost three-quarters said they favored changes that would make it easier for schools to fire poorly performing teachers. “The tests are good be­cause they show us where students are at, if they need help with anything,” said Vicky Nevarez, whose son Jesse just grad­uated from high school in Murrieta, Calif. “His teachers were great and if there were problems, the tests let me know.”

The polling results are good news for states look­ing to implement in­creased accountability standards and for those who want to hold teachers responsible for students’ slipping standing against other countries’ scores. Teachers’ unions have ob­jected to linking educa­tors’ evaluations to stu­dent performance.

As students prepare to return to classrooms, the AP-NORC Center sur­veyed parents of students at all grade levels and found:

» Sixty-one percent of parents think their chil­dren take an appropriate number of standardized tests and 26 percent think their children take too many tests.

» Teachers’ fates shouldn’t rest solely on test results, according to a majority of parents. Fifty­six percent said class­room observations should be part of teachers’ evalu­ations, and 74 percent of all parents said they want­ed districts to help strug­gling teachers.

» Despite many Re­publicans’ unrelenting criticism of the Common Core State Standards, in various stages of imple­mentation in 45 states and the District of Columbia, 52 percent parents have heard little or nothing about the academic benchmarks and a third are unsure if they live in a state using them. Still, when given a brief de­scription of what the stan­dards do, about half of parents say educational quality will improve once the standards are imple­mented, 11 percent think it will get worse, and 27 per­cent say they’ll have no ef­fect.

» Seventy-five per­cent of parents say stan­dardized tests are a solid measure of their chil­dren’s abilities, and 69 percent say such exams are a good measure of the schools’ quality. “We know when the tests are coming up. They spend a lot of time getting ready for them,” said Rod­ney Land of Lansing, Mich. His daughter, Selena, will be in eighth grade at a charter school this fall. The weights-and-mea­sures inspector supports the testing because “it shows what they know, and what they should know.”

“We need some way to keep track of whether the teachers are spending enough time educating,” Land said.

“Education union lead­ers have stood opposed to linking teacher evalua­tions with these tests, ar­guing it is unfair to punish teachers for students’ shortcomings. They also say teachers have not had sufficient time to rewrite their lessons to reflect new academic bench­marks, such as those found in the Common Core.

“When states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, which aim to provide con­sistent requirements across all states for math and English, test results often falter and the stan­dards can make schools and teachers appear to be faring worse than they did the previous year.”

Categories Parents, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Teacher: I Am Not Alone

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2013 //
68

A teacher in Connecticut will lose her job because she teaches the neediest kids. If she can get a job in an affluent district, she will get a high rating.

She writes:

“I have been reading your flurry of blog posts and the excellent comments from teachers and other concerned citizens all at once this morning, and while I must say, they are very cathartic, my stomach is all in knots because they so hit home with my present situation, and clearly of so many other teachers. What you say about charter schools being “free to choose its enrollment and kick out disruptive students while we must accept everyone” is one of the kernels of truth at the center of this whole mess.

“I teach 7/8 social studies in one of the “lowest performing” schools (read highest poverty and crime neighborhoods), in a large CT urban district (name withheld to protect the guilty…). According to the new teacher evaluation system tied to test scores, I have been labelled as ineffective, and am being terminated by the district after 10 years.

“My school is not a magnet, and so we must accept students who are “kicked out” of charters and magnets from around the city at all times during the school year, and I actually had 6 students transfer in after March! These are often children with severe emotional disturbances, but they are almost always children who are very low-skilled, and by middle school, very turned off by the “Brave New World” of being tested more than they are being taught. Just the change in the classroom dynamic when new students like these are brought in is enough to throw all learning out of kilter as my current students feel the need to establish themselves in the pecking order of their new classmates. This makes any of my cooperative grouping plans go right out the window until I can try to form relationships with the new students, which sometimes is next to impossible, and this is only one of a myriad of problems like 10 year-old computers, no librarian, huge school wide disciplinary problems, lack of parental involvement, etc., etc.

“However, all these challenges for me and other teachers in schools like mine might be overcome if it were not for the pressure of district and school administrators constantly harping on deficient test scores, not enough “higher order thinking” questions, (very hard to do when many of my students can barely read) and not perfect classroom management. I have always believed that good teachers teach the “whole student” and that before any of those higher order thinking goals can be achieved, I need to meet the students at their level, and try to build on their strengths to give them the confidence they need to succeed, let alone survive the many traumas they face from their home situations. It is cruel to give them tests that just confirm their feelings of inadequacy, and yet, sadly, that is the future for my students with the CCSS Smarter Balance testing on the way.

“Of course I am not trying to claim that I have all the answers, but I don’t think that the powers that be do either. Every weekend of the past two years I have spent countless hours online looking at excellent websites like teachingchannel.org or edutopia.org among many others, and all have been very helpful for me in improving my practice and finding methods to increase student-directed learning. I have attended workshops and served on school reform committees in my district, but still, according to my district, I am not effective because my children are deficient according to these “standards.” I came to teaching 10 years ago after having had another career because I really thought I could make a difference for children in a school like mine, and judging from the number of kids who come back to say hello after they graduate and have written me thank you letters, I think I probably have. I am 57 and have been sending applications to other districts, but this may be the end of my teaching career because of my age and my poor rating.

“Thank you, Diane, for making me feel that at least I am not alone in this tragedy that is occurring in public education, although it is a small comfort considering that the welfare of our most at-risk children is at stake.”

“

Categories Connecticut, Poverty, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

When Test Prep Isn’t Enough

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
15

Gail Robinson has written a stunning article about the impact of the test score collapse in New York City.

She begins by reminding us that students in New York City have been told for a decade that what matters most for their future and their schools is their test scores. They have done test prep, test prep, test prep, because the scores are so important. Nothing else matters so much to their future–their ability to be promoted to the next grade, to graduate, to go to college, to have a decent life–as test scores.

Test scores define the person. Test scores define the school. Test scores define life.

This is her opening:

“Energy and optimism burst out of the 2011 video [view below] by students at Young Women’s Leadership School in Brooklyn. Dancing and singing to the tune of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” they proclaim, “Test prep goes on and on and on….I am brilliant. I have confidence. Gonna ace these tests.”

“This month, many city students will see such optimism ebb when they learn how they scored on the state’s standardized reading and math tests. At Brooklyn’s Young Women’s Leadership, for example, only 24 percent scored well enough to be viewed as “passing” the English test, with less than 15 percent passing the math exam. In the first tests tied to the new Common Core standards, other schools, particularly in poorer parts of the five boroughs or with high percentages of black and Latino students, had similar results.”

What do you tell the students? You are not brilliant after all? All your efforts were in vain? You failed. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how often you did test prep, you failed. You failed.

Now city and state officials say, tell them the scores don’t matter all that much. All that stuff that said last spring, last year, and for the years before; forget about it. But we know–the kids know, the teachers know, the principal knows–that this isn’t true.

Why lie to them?

Categories Accountability, Students, Testing

How Albany Hurts ELLs

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2013 //
47

State Commissioner John King, Regents’ Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Chancellor Dennis Walcott are proud of the Common Core tests that failed 70% of the children of New York State. They say it is “”very good news” that the tests got much harder. They don’t care that the achievement gaps between the advantaged and disadvantaged grew larger. They bask in children’s defeats.

El Diario/La Prensa newspaper, written primarily for the Hispanic population in New York City, ran the following editorial, which reported the devastation to children who are not fluent in English, mostly Spanish-speaking. Only 11.4% of the English language learners were proficient in math. Only 3.4% were proficient in English.

Why are the state’s policymakers so pleased with these terrible results? Are they serial child abusers?

Here is the editorial:

The mayoral candidates have participated in many debates and forums and campaigned all over New York City. But to date, most of them have not discussed or offered plans to improve bilingual education.

In New York City’s public school system, there are 159,162 students who are known as English-language learners (ELL’s). Of them, 100,933 are Latinos.

Among ELL high school students the four-year graduation rate is below 50%, well below the average rate of 62% for non ELL students.

While all results were expected to be low, the outcomes of the most recent student testing under the new Common Core standards paint a bleaker picture. ELLs had proficiency rates of 11.4% and 3.4% in math and English, respectively.

These wide gaps in academic achievement need to be closed, for the sake of these students and the future of this city’s workforce. When strong leadership, teaching and adequate resources are in place, ELL’s are more successful and score higher.

The next mayor must make bilingual education a top priority. And this is a mission not only for the incoming chief executive but also for elected officials, community groups and state government. Among the critical steps needed:

The state must monitor and ensure that the city meets the requirements tied to the funds it receives. There are resources for ELL’s, but distribution is up to the city and whether they are reaching students in need is a big question.

The city’s Department of Education must properly train and qualify teachers and principals to meet the needs of ELL students.

Taking into account that 50% of ELL children in pre-K and kindergarten don’t speak English fluently, bilingual early childhood programs should be created.

The language of tests must match the educational level of the students. Currently, English-language learners must take standardized tests in English, which doesn’t allow for a real gauge of their academic progress. A transition process that is adjusted according to the student’s skills should be considered.

For too long, the challenge of delivering a quality education to ELL’s has been inadequately addressed and put on a backburner. The next mayor must ensure that New York City rises to a first-class public educational system and that begins with making sure all of our kids have access to excellent learning and support

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

California Teacher on Common Core Test

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2013 //
35

From a teacher in California:

“Our class had the “privilege” of taking the ELA SmarterBalance test for common core 4th grade. It was horrible. There were split screens, essays to type (our students have no keyboarding experience) and things to click and drag. So in addition to getting students ready for the CC standards, we will need time for computer and keyboard lessons AND we will need the updated technology in time to get our students familiar with it.

“Oh, and let’s not forget that in CA we are still expected to teach for the CST [California Standards Tests] next year…no transition time to Common Core. Ridiculous!”

Categories California, Common Core, Testing
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