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Do Tougher Tests Make Students Smarter?

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2012 //
8

Education suffers because of poor coverage by the media. For years, the media have been interested only in sensationalism and bad news.

Many newspapers do not have regular education writers, so when they do publish a story about schools, they don’t have a deep understanding of education issues.

I just read a story in the Buffalo News that said that a local high school succeeds because it gives tougher tests than other high schools.

Buffalo is a low-performing district with many poor students.

The high school in the story, called City Honors, is a college-prep magnet high school with selective admissions. It enrolls students from grades 5-12. This year, more than 1,100 students competed for 150 openings in the school.

All students are required to take AP and IB courses. Many succeed. City Honors does very well in the rankings of Newsweek and U.S. News, which are based on how many students take those courses.

If you read this story carefully, you understand that the school succeeds because it attracts and selects the very highest-achieving students in the city of Buffalo. You would recognize that very capable students do very well when they take the AP and IB courses.

If you read the story quickly, especially the headline, you would conclude that the school succeeds because the students take hard tests. You would conclude that if all schools required students to take tougher tests, they would get the same great results as City Honors. You would be wrong.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, Testing

Why Assess the Arts?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
10

Nancy Flanagan is one of the nation’s premier teachers and bloggers. Unlike many who opine about education (I include myself in that category), Nancy knows teaching inside and out. She was a music teacher for thirty years and was deeply involved in creating National Board Certification for teachers. Now she blogs for Education Week and she is always informative.

When a Washington, D.C., think-tank person suggested that students of the arts should be assessed by standardized, multiple-choice tests, Nancy was properly incensed. (And so were many of the teachers of the arts who commented on this blog.)

In her commentary, Nancy posed a basic question:

Why would we deliberately advance a worthless (and expensive-to-develop) mode of assessment for something as crucial to kids’ well-being and our own economic vitality as the arts? The humanities are a creative wellspring for individual and social innovation. They cannot–and should never be–reduced to rote, bubbled-in recitation of dry facts. What standardized testing in music and the arts yields is mere quantification of students’ ability to memorize. The tests tell us nothing about how students will apply artistic skill and expression to their real lives and careers. Further–they tell us nothing about the instructional quality of their teachers.

Nancy quite rightly criticizes the view that the only way to “save” the arts is to make sure that they are tested by bubble tests. I have heard the same argument from history teachers, and I think it is self-defeating. If you want to save your subject, don’t sacrifice it on the altar of standardized testing. There is no surer way to discourage students of the arts and students of history than to expect them to be judged by bubble tests. There are certainly far more rigorous and appropriate means to assess skills and knowledge than the cheap and easy computer-based and computer-scored questions.

As I read Nancy’s article, I found myself remembering a segment I saw several weeks ago on 60 Minutes. It was about a ragtag symphony orchestra in Africa. One man who loved orchestral music recruited the musicians (none of whom knew how to play anything), found or begged or made instruments, and taught them to play. The musicians left their daily work to study and practice and play together. The segment concluded with a large number of very joyful men and women–living in a desperately poor nation–playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

What a triumph of the human spirit!

Why would anyone give them a standardized test?

Diane

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Is Vermont the Best State?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2012 //
20

I have received many comments from readers nominating their state as the worst in the nation for having enacted legislations that removes due process from teachers or reduces their status or connects their evaluation to student test scores or defunds public education or harms professional educators and the public weal in other ways.

Vermont is different. Vermont still has leadership that wants to improve its schools and support teachers. Vermont decided to turn down the NCLB waiver when it realized that it provided no flexibility, just another bunch of mandates that would be bad for the schools and for children. Vermont doesn’t want to test its students every single year. Vermont realized that NCLB and Race to the Top are not good for students or education.

Are there other states that refuse the enticements offered by Washington, D.C., to create more market-style competition for public schools and to reduce the status of professional educators?

If your state has had the wisdom and foresight of Vermont, please let me know.

The question we must ask is, why is Vermont different? Why has it stood outside the destructive mainstream of education “deform” that has swept the nation?

We can all take heart in knowing that one beacon of sanity remains. And yet how discouraging to know that of our fifty states, there is only one that still wants children to have a childhood and for education to be a time to learn rather than a time to be ranked, rated, and numbered by instruments of limited value.

A reader sent this comment:

Vermont is one of the only states in the country that refuses to get on the bandwagon for corporate ed. reform. The state has a law against charter schools and they refused Race to the top funds. Vermont did try to get a NCLB waiver, but was rejected by Sec. Duncan because their proposal did not include tying student test scores to teacher evaluations or charter schools. Their proposal did include focusing more on creativity, a rich curriculum, and less on testing, but I guess that was not good enough. I’m getting certification in both Mass. and NY, but I may consider going to teach in Vermont. Burlington is beginning to focus more on equity and creating a system similar to what they have in Finland. If it is successful, then maybe people will begin to pay more attention to what actually works.
Please sign this petition to get rid of Arne Duncan:http://dumpduncan.org/

Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Test Scores or Creativity?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2012 //
6

An earlier post considered whether standardized tests were necessary or useful in the arts. Several arts teachers responded to say that they are not only NOT necessary and NOT useful, but they are actually harmful. They miss the point of arts education and they distort instruction. I agree.

This comment makes the case even stronger. Students who are incessantly tested suffer a loss of their capacity for original thinking. Of course, students need knowledge; no one doubts that. But the ability to check off the right bubble should not be confused with knowledge.

And the imposition of test-driven accountability may destroy the very qualities of mind and spirit that our society–and the world–needs most: creativity, originality, ingenuity, inspiration, inquisitiveness.

As a composer and professor of music teaching at the university level in New York City, I teach graduate students from all over the world drawn to our city for its unsurpassed artistic vitality. I have noticed that very talented, intelligent and well-educated students coming to my classes from countries with test-driven education systems often struggle with musical analysis, for one very simple reason: What I value most highly in my students’ analytical work is the capacity to have an original insight into a piece and to develop it convincingly. In other words, the student’s task is not to master what I think, but to teach me something I didn’t know before.This is a skill that can be taught – by nurturing and not stifling the natural creativity of children from an early age right through graduate school. It is also a skill that can be unlearned – by being subjected to an educational system that devalues originality and glorifies the mastery of received wisdom.Creativity without knowledge is as worthless as rote learning. What’s needed is a balance. Our national drive towards testing-based curricula in all subjects is taking education in exactly the wrong direction, towards conformity and away from innovation. I leave it to students of mass delusion to explain why we are doing this in the name of enhancing the competitiveness of our nation’s children in job markets of the future that we believe will demand high levels of flexibility and creative thinking. The major effect of the ever-increasing tendency to gear all learning towards standardized tests will be to undermine our children’s mastery of critical and creative thinking and diminish their prospects for employment — and the enjoyment of life.
Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Education Reform, Testing

How Should Art Be Assessed?

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2012 //
30

In a piece in Education Week, Sara Mead maintains that art can be assessed through multiple-choice standardized tests.

In defense of multiple-choice testing of the arts, she writes:

The point of arts education shouldn’t be to teach children to simply “enjoy art”–we are, after all free to choose which art we enjoy, or whether we enjoy it at all. Rather, it should be to give children the skills and background knowledge to experience art or music in an informed and more than superficial sense–much of which is about understanding and identifying concepts, vocabulary, and techniques in ways that can be assessed through multiple choice assessments. A major reason that high-quality education needs to include the arts is certain arts-related information–such as names and work of key artists and composers, specific musical or artistic vocabulary and meanings, and artistic movements over time and their relationship to broader historical and social trends–is key cultural knowledge that our students need to be culturally literate. But arts and music instruction in our schools has often ignored cultural literacy and key concepts in favor of performance and “creativity.” 

I don’t agree.

I understand and embrace the idea of cultural literacy, but I don’t think that multiple-choice standardized tests are the best way to teach it or to assess it. If a teacher of music wants students to understand the differences between Mozart and Schoenberg, the best way to do that is to listen to their music and discuss the differences. If the teacher of the arts wants students to understand the differences between classical Greek and Roman architecture, the best way to do it is to view it and discuss it. Picking a bubble is no substitute nor is it a valuable way to learn about art.

It is easy to memorize the names and work of key artists and composers to prepare for a test, and just as easy to forget them when the test is over.

If we want our students to have important cultural knowledge as part of their cultural literacy, we should expose them to the experience that this knowledge represents. We should encourage them to see, feel, hear, and engage with the art or music of other times and places. To the extent that they experience arts as a part of life–their own as well as its creator–they will remember it and have it as part of their own experience.

There is something in a bubble test that is inherently at odds with the arts. One can indeed test for superficial recall, not only in the arts but in other subjects as well. And there are times when it is useful to know the results of large-scale assessment. NAEP is valuable, for example, in providing a snapshot of the state of reading, math, science, history and other subjects. But it is only a snapshot. And the results that are informative for a nation, a state, or a district are less informative and less valid for individual students. For the purposes of large-scale assessment, multiple-choice standardized testing is useful and cheap.

But if it is understanding and discernment that we value, there is not a good case to be made for multiple-choice standardized testing. If it is learning that we care about, there is not a good case to be made for multiple-choice, standardized testing. If it is individual children that we care about, then we want to know what they have learned and what they understand. Conceptual knowledge does not lend itself to bubble tests.

Diane

Categories Arts Education, Education Reform, Testing

One Courageous Teacher Says No to Test Madness

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2012 //
7

Yesterday I heard from a teacher in New Jersey, who read my blog about giving tests in the arts and physical education. I said in no uncertain terms that giving state tests in the arts is wrong. It diminishes teacher professionalism. It has nothing to do with improving education. It’s just the mindless need to test everyone and create data so that teachers can be evaluated by numbers.

This teacher described the nightmare of testing that is descending on her state under the leadership of Chris Cerf. Not only will students be constantly pre-tested, tested, test-prepped, and post-tested, they will be tested in everything to measure their “growth.” They will be tested in dance, physical education, art, etc.

This teacher knows that what is happening is wrong. Other teachers know it is wrong too, but they are afraid to speak up. As the movement accelerates to strip teachers of tenure and any job protections, the climate of fear takes hold. Who will risk their job to do what is right? Who has the courage to stand up to the powerful? Who will defend the defenseless children who are the victims of all this obsessive measurement?

She will. Who will stand with her?

It is funny that you say that because my school is piloting the new teacher evaluation in NJ. NJ has chosen to go with the Student Growth Percentile (SGP) model in the teacher evaluation. So, with SGP, students are given pre-midterms, midterms, pre-final, and final to measure the growth of our students.Here is the breakdown of how it is calculatedQ: How does New Jersey measure student growth?
A: New Jersey measures growth for an individual student by comparing the change in his or her NJ ASK achievement from one year to the
next to that of all other students in the state who had similar historical results (the student’s “academic peers”). This change in achievement
is reported as a student growth percentile (abbreviated SGP) and indicates how high or low that student’s growth was as compared to that
of his/her academic peers. For a school or district, the growth percentiles for all students are aggregated to create a median SGP for the
school or district. The median SGP is a representation of “typical” growth for students in the school or district.However, since we do not have longitudinal tests in the high school, our district/school chose to create their own tests for every content area.
I’m talking dance, physical education, art, musical theatre, graphic arts, sculpture, play-writing etc. This week, our students are taking multiple choice tests mixed with open ended responses in dance and all those other areas I mentioned, and I found myself think, “this is absurd” yet I’m the only one saying anything. Am I the only one who thinks this is DEAD WRONG! No I am not, but I found out yesterday everyone else in our school is afraid to say anything. They are afraid to take a stand because they are not willing to suffer any repercussions from the administration. However we are doing our children a disservice by keeping silent.So, I’ll stand alone and take the stand with one or two other teachers. It may not make a big impact, but I will make a point. We owe this to our children and future generations.
Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New Jersey, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Why Test the Arts and PE?

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2012 //
24

As I read Dana Goldstein’s article about the advance of standardized testing into subjects like the arts and physical education, I began to get a queasy feeling. “This isn’t right,” I mumbled to myself. I thought of my grandchildren taking standardized tests in music and gym, and I shook my head. This isn’t right.

Race to the Top has promoted this movement to test every subject. Arne Duncan brandished $5 billion to encourage states and districts to judge teachers by the rise or fall of their students’ scores. The fact that there is no evidence for this method of judging teachers doesn’t matter. Bad ideas backed by big money have a way of catching on, no matter how mindless they are.

South Carolina has developed online tests for the arts, multiple-choice, of course. Florida is building tests of music and other pervormance arts that can be scored by machine, that is, by artificial intelligence. The vendors of these tests lobby to make them permanent, regardless of their quality.

Are they doing this at Sidwell Friends or the University of Chicago Lab School or Dalton or Exeter or Deerfield Academy? Of course not.

Is this what they do in Finland? Of course not.

What is the reason for testing the arts and physical education? It’s not to help students take joy in singing or playing a musical instrument or running fast or shooting baskets.

No, the purpose of all these tests is to collect data to evaluate the teachers! Wasting the students’ time with stupid questions and pointless activities and trivial measurements is just a way of gathering information so teachers of the arts and physical education can get a value-added score, just like teachers of reading and math.

Sometimes Americans do really foolish things. Sometimes they do these things because it is so easy to follow the crowd. Sometimes it’s because no one is thinking clearly. Sometimes they get caught up in nutty fads because someone is making a profit and buying legislators. Usually it’s because the people who launched these bad ideas have no moorings. They have lost touch with their own values. They do to other people’s children what they would never do to their own. They don’t listen to teachers. They don’t listen to parents.

History is not kind to people who do foolish, nay harmful, things and fail to exercise independent judgment. That’s why it’s best to say “no” when your conscience tells you to.

Diane

Categories Arts Education, Education Reform, Florida, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Outrage in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2012 //
8

Officials in the Oklahoma Department of Education posted on its website the personal information of students who received an exemption from state testing. The names, date of birth, test scores and disabilities of these students were made public.

To get an exemption from the state test, the students waived their rights under federal privacy law, but the waiver typically means that their records will be released to education officials with a need to know, not to the public.

Legislators who complained were unsure whether this act was done out of ignorance or as retribution for students who might be challenging the state superintendent’s testing mandates.

If any state official was ignorant of state and federal law governing student privacy, they should be fired. If they acted out of malice, they should be fired.

What an outrage.

Diane

Categories Oklahoma, Testing

When Parents Awaken: Game Over

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2012 //
8

Gotta love these parents. Here is a brilliant comment to an earlier blog about parent power. What will Gates and Broad and the U.S. Department of Education and the governors and state legislatures do when parents get engaged and angry? What will they do when parents rise up and say, “Enough is enough,” as parents in New York City did today? How will they defend themselves when parents demand an end to the use and misuse of their children?

Parents are the key here.  Unfortunately, parents tend to be invested in their own children’s education and that does not translate into a national movement yet.  Many parents are still ardent supporters of a data driven, educational model whether the numbers tell them something useful or not. The outrage is not universal, by far, as not every state, city, or local district has embraced the testing culture to the same extent.  It will come as we all jump on the common core bandwagon.  When parents throughout the country start to grumble, the political machinery will start to crumble.  I wonder how long powerful foundations and corporations will be able to control the agenda.  They can’t possibly be totally staffed by people who can afford elite private education for their children.  Will they sell out their own children?

The forces promoting the obsession with standardized testing and data are powerful, but they cannot hold back a tide of informed and committed parents. Once parents realize what is happening to their children, their teachers, and their schools, once they see how the quality of education is being eroded by data mania, once they understand that they are sacrificing their own children to the giant data-crunching machine, game over.

Rule of the day, the month, the week, the year, the decade, the century: Do not do unto other people’s children what you would not do to your own.

Diane

Categories Parents, Testing

When Policymakers Are Clueless

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2012 //
7

Over the past decade of mayor control in New York City, the newly established Department of Education has had a free hand to do whatever it wanted with the city’s 1.1 million students, free of any concern about the reaction of parents, teachers, principals, or the public.

One reform after another has rolled out of City Hall, after Mayor Bloomberg or Chancellor Klein or someone else got a new idea or had a conversation at a dinner party. Sometimes these ideas are announced with great fanfare, and almost always they are announced as the solution to some problem, trumpets blaring, success preceding implementation.

The state scores went up and up, evidence of the New York City “miracle,” until 2010, when the New York State Education Department acknowledged that the state scores were a hoax. Someone at the SED had decided to help raise test scores by lowering the passing mark, and had done the same year after year, creating the illusion of progress. This was enough to enable New York to win Race to the Top funding, enough to help Mayor Bloomberg win a third term in 2009, and enough to get mayoral control extended in 2009 by the Legislature for another six years , all because of those amazing but phony test scores.

When the test score mirage dissolved, we learned that graduation rates had gone up into the low 60%, but there were no press conferences to talk about the persistently high remediation rates for entering college students, nor about their low persistence or graduation rates in postsecondary education.

A new blog by Peter Goodman, a veteran observer of the New York education scene, reveals a new round of thick-headed decisions:

City and state policymakers are now applying what they think is a sure cure for low academic performance: They will raise the bar, make the courses harder, more demanding. High schools will be incentivized to offer more college-level courses to students who are three or four grade levels behind in reading and/or math. This is supposed to incentivize students who can’t read or do math to take advanced placement courses, to work harder and to get higher test scores.

Here is the theory: If you raise standards, students will get higher scores.

What exactly is the logic here? If a student can’t jump over a four-foot bar, how exactly does it help if you raise the bar to six feet?

Goodman sensibly asks: What is the evidence that taking a “college level” course for which a student is not prepared will increase college readiness?

Other changes now about to be imposed involved the placement of special education students, not decided on a case-by-case basis by experienced professionals, but by fiat.

And Goodman sensibly suggests: Policy should be based on peer-reviewed research and years of experience in teaching and leadership positions within an urban school system.

But that is no longer the way things work these days.

Diane

Categories Education Reform, New York, Testing
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