Archives for category: Testing
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David Kirp Explains Why High-Stakes Testing Gets an F

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2013 //
5

David Kirp, professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “Improbable Scholars,” describes here the ruinous consequences of high-stakes testing.

Everything associated with the corporate reform movement is failing. How much longer will the hedge fund managers and the federal government continue to fund failing strategies?

He begins:

“It’s a terrible time for advocates of market-driven reform in public education. For more than a decade, their strategy—which makes teachers’ careers turn on student gains in reading and math tests, and promotes competition through charter schools and vouchers—has been the dominant policy mantra. But now the cracks are showing. That’s a good thing because this isn’t a proven—or even a promising—way to make schools better.

“Here’s a litany of recent setbacks: In the latest Los Angeles school board election, a candidate who dared to question the overreliance on test results in evaluating teachers and the unseemly rush to approve charter schools won despite $4 million amassed to defeat him, including $1 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and $250,000 from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Former Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall, feted for boosting her students’ test scores at all costs, has been indicted in a massive cheating scandal. Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. school chief who is the darling of the accountability crowd, faces accusations, based on a memo released by veteran PBS correspondent John Merrow, that she knew about, and did nothing to stop, widespread cheating. In a Washington Post op-ed, Bill Gates, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting high-stakes, test-driven teacher evaluation, did an about-face and urged a kinder, gentler approach that teachers could embrace. And parents in New York State staged a rebellion, telling their kids not to take a new and untested achievement exam.”

Categories Testing

Achieve Official Refutes Statements About PARCC

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2013 //
18

In an earlier post, a teacher in Tennessee wrote critically about the PARCC assessments of the Common Core. The teacher said that the assessments did not permit accommodations for students with disabilities.

Chad Colby of Achieve, one of the organizations responsible for developing the Common Core, says that these claims are wrong.

He writes:

“The information presented in this post is factually incorrect.

“Students with disabilities will have access to accommodations on the PARCC assessment. A draft accommodations manual is currently out for public comment: http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-releases-draft-accommodations-manual-public-comment and we encourage parents and educators to review and give feedback.

“Also, IEP teams will still determine what accommodations students with disabilities should receive. It’s the law.

“From the Individuals with Disabilities Act Regulations:
http://idea.ed.gov/download/finalregulations.html

“In §300.320(a)(6), it states that the IEP must contain:
(6)(i) A statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments consistent with §612(a)(16) of the Act”

Chad Colby – Achieve
(202) 419-1570
(202) 297-9437 cell

Categories Common Core, Special Education, Testing

Tennessee Teacher on PARCC Testing

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2013 //
24

A reader comments:

Wow, for those opposed to T-cap, wait until you get a good look at common core and the PARCC assessment. The nightmare is about to get worse. As a teacher, I have been working with the debut of common core in Tennessee this year. I don’t even know where to begin to express my frustration with the entire common core movement. It combines an exceptionally narrow curriculum with testing that is vague and open to interpretation (when our group of 6 teachers scored student work we frequently came up with three different scores). The narrow focus of common core does not coincide with the broad based knowledge required for ACT/SAT testing. So until they get all testing aligned, students caught in the middle are screwed. (I have one of these students)

The PARCC assessment is proposing to do away with students accommodations (for students with disabilities) because it invalidates the test! So we now have TESTING dictating what accommodations a special education student may receive. All students besides the very most severe will be expected to sit in front of a computer and take the test. If a special education student didn’t have a disability they wouldn’t need accommodations!

The worst crime of state assessments is that they they fail to recognize the individuality of learning. Students have brains that mature at different rates, learn at different rates, learn in different ways, and benefit from testing in different ways.

It is all insane!

Categories Common Core, Tennessee, Testing

8th Grade Student: Why So Much Advertising on Pearson Tests?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
23

A student in a gifted program wrote this piercing analysis of the state tests he and his classmates just endured.

The tests he took had many brand names and registered trademarks. He realized this is product placement.

He wrote:

“Non-fictional passages in the test I took included an article about robots, where the brands IBM™, Lego®, FIFA® and Mindstorms™ popped up, each explained with a footnote. I cannot speak for all test takers, but I found the trademark references and their associated footnotes very distracting and troubling.

“According to Barbara Kolson, an intellectual property lawyer for Stuart Weitzman Shoes, “The fact that the brands did not pay Pearson for the ‘product placement’ does not mean that the use is not product placement.” To the test-takers subjected to hidden advertising, it made no difference whether or not it was paid for. The only conclusion they (and this test-taker) made is that they could not be coincidental.”

When I served on the NAEP governing board, there was. Flat prohibition on any reference to brand names. I studied the guidelines of every publisher a decade ago when writing “The Language Police,” and all of them specifically banned brand names.

What gives here? Why the marketing in the new Common Core tests?

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, New York, Pearson, Testing

How Is Enron Like Atlanta?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
3

Jason Stanford writes a smart blog about education in Texas.

In this one, he explains that when the stakes get too high, bad things happen, whether in business or any other activity.

Most businesses are honest, most educators are honest. But it is wrong to tie a child or an adult’s future to standardized tests.

Stanford writes:

“Standardized tests have a valid role in education, but closing down schools or giving principals cash bonuses based on test results is new. That started when then-Gov. George W. Bush instituted a business mindset in Texas public schools and measured all schools by their tests scores. Enron did much the same thing with its stock price, gaming the system by hiding debt and booking future earnings. The stock price soared while the former pipeline company cratered. In Texas public schools, dropouts rose, preparing for the tests ate up more than half the schoolyear, and scores rose. Bush proclaimed it the “Texas Miracle.” Many of the schools he cited as proof of his miracle were later investigated for cheating, including Wesley Elementary in Houston, where the principal coached teachers “to administer a test the Wesley way,” which meant walking around the classroom and standing behind a student until they chose the correct answer. But by then, achieving miraculous gains on test scores had become a national goal.”

If we opened our eyes, he says, we would realize that what we are doing now is wrong. It is not working. It doesn’t help students and it doesn’t improve education. It is actually pretty dumb to put so much weight on bubble tests.

Categories Accountability, Testing, Texas

Paul Thomas: Now Is the Time for Non-Cooperation

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
7

Paul Thomas reacts here to Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on high-stakes testing associated with the Common Core and to Jennifer Jennings’ apology to Secretary Duncan for being booed at AERA.

He warns that moderation and civility are not appropriate responses to extreme conditions.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions

Texas: The Surefire Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
37

You think it can’t happen here?

You think your state is immune?

Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.

Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.

Yours too.

This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:

“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.

Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.

The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.

What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.

First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.

Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).

Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.

Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.

Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.

Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.

Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.

Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.

Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.

And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.

And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.

Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Alternate Route To Certification, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Pre-K, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Texas, Vouchers

Anthony Cody: Will a Moratorium Save Common Core?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
19

In one of his characteristically thoughtful and provocative essays, Anthony Cody ponders Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on the high stakes associated with Common Core testing. Randi praised the Common Core standards lavishly but warned that they would fail if high stakes are attached to them before teachers and students are prepared to master them.

Cody does not agree. He maintains that the Common Core testing will have even higher stakes than NCLB. Not only will there be more testing, but teachers and principals will be fired, schools will close, communities will be harmed–as Common Core raises the bar and failure rates grow.

How does raising the bar help those who can’t clear the bar now?

As Cody writes:

“We have this entire project based on the premise that raising the bar will bring up those on the bottom, and make them better able to compete. In fact, when you raise that bar, you create huge obstacles for those at the bottom, and in effect, rationalize and reinforce their own sense of worthlessness, and society’s judgment that they are subpar. You further stigmatize these students, their teachers and their schools, based on their performance in this rigged race.”

He concludes that a moratorium on high stakes test is insufficient:

“We must move beyond not only the bubble tests, but beyond the era of punitive high stakes tests. Only then will we be able to use standards in the way they ought to be used – as focal points for our creative work as educators. I would be glad to have a year’s delay for the consequences of these tests, but I think we need to actively oppose the entire high stakes testing paradigm. The Common Core standards should not be supported as long as they are embedded in this system.”

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Is VAM Junk Science? Matt Di Carlo and I Disagree

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2013 //
43

I usually agree with Matt Di Carlo. He is one smart guy.

But not always.

That’s okay. Friends can disagree and still be friends (I proved that by blogging with Deborah Meier for five years).

I think that value-added methods of using test scores to rate teacher quality are “junk science.”

Matt disagrees

Now, granted, I am but a historian, not a social scientist, but I do read lots of social science. I noted that the National Academy of Education and AERA held a briefing on Capitol Hill and issued a joint statement warning about the pitfalls of VAM. Here is a salient point from their report: “With respect to value-added measures of student achievement tied to individual teachers, current research suggests that high-stakes, individual-level decisions, or comparisons across highly dissimilar schools or student populations, should be avoided.”

Edmund Gordon, one of our nation’s most eminent psychologists, recently led a commission to study assessment practices. He concluded that the overemphasis and misuse of standardized testing to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable is not only ineffective but “immoral.”

I would say that “immoral” is an even stronger condemnation than “junk science.”

Campbell’s Law suggests that the use of high-stakes testing degrades education. Threatening to fire teachers if their students’ scores don’t go up does not produce better education. It produces worse education. It promotes narrowing of the curriculum. It promotes cheating. It encourages teachers and schools to avoid the neediest students.

Teaching is so much more than test scores. To think that teachers may be defined significantly by the rise or fall of the test scores of their students requires a belief in the intrinsic value of standardized tests that I do not share. We may learn something from wide assessments with no-stakes, like NAEP. But using these flawed instruments to fire teachers and close schools is–in my judgment–wrong. They were not designed for those purposes. And the first rule of psychometrics is that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.

All things considered, the term “junk science” seems appropriate, as does Dr. Gordon’s phrase: ineffective and immoral.

One reason parents flee public schools, if they can afford it, is to escape the dead hand of testing that now strangles learning. The sooner we can put testing in its place as a diagnostic tool for teachers to assess what they have taught (not as a Pearson-designed 14-hour ordeal), the sooner we will restore the rightful purposes of education and the dignity of the teaching profession.

Categories Accountability, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Why Carol Burris Is Disappointed by TC

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2013 //
26

Carol Corbett Burris has been one of the leaders of the battle against the Néw York State educator evaluation system, which was developed after the state won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. Burris helped created the principals’ rebellion against test-based evaluations of teachers and principals.

She also was recently selected by her peers as New York’s Principal of the Year. She is principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center.

Here Carol explains why she is disappointed by Teachers College’s decision to honor the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, whose policies Carol and her colleagues oppose.

I quoted TC’s press release earlier today, in which it saluted Merryl Tisch for her leadership in tying teacher evaluation to test scores. It applauded more for her support for judging education schools by the test scores of the students of their graduates. To ice the cake, the press release heralded Tisch’s willingness to permit museums and other non-traditional institutions to grant masters’ degrees. Odd that TC would like that.

But I mention the press release because I have heard that the press office is revising it to remove any reference to the state’s zealous devotion to standardized testing. It may have disappeared by now.

Carol Burris writes:

“As a proud TC grad, I am saddened. It appears to be one more more betrayal of the progressive ideals on which the college was founded. The fact that the press release hails her work in evaluating teachers by test scores (opposed by most TC scholars) and data that ties schools of education to public school results, confounds me. What does TC stand for? I guess in the future we can expect TC student teachers to be placed in Scarsdale so that the school gets good ratings. Which of the following statements make her worthy of the award?

–M Tisch saying that if educators are not prepared for CCSS they are –”living under a rock”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/27/26newyork_ep.h32.html

–M Tisch saying in NYT that now that teachers are evaluated under APPR, the public will not dislike them so much

–M Tisch donates 1 million, along with Bill Gates and charter schools, to fund the Fellows who have pushed the corporate agenda and test score evaluation policies.
http://www.cityandstateny.com/cash-flow/

I feel most sorry for the idealistic young teachers who worked hard for their degrees. They understand what is happening.”

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Testing
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