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Lisa E. Litvin: How NCLB Continues to Ruin School and Childhood

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2018 //
28

 

Lisa Eggert Litvin, parent leader in Westchester County, remembers a childood in which testing was present, but far from dominant. There was time for play and hanging out with friends.

Today, however, standardized testing has become the measure of students, teachers, and schools. 

She writes:

“When I attended public school in the 1970s, we didn’t have the high-stakes tests in math and English Language Arts that elementary and middle schools now give every year. We studied math and English, of course, but we had time to dig into other disciplines. We didn’t have much homework, so that after school, we could play with friends and be with our families. Not every day was amazing by any means, but we had room to explore, have fun, make mistakes, and just be kids.

“We didn’t take many standardized tests. In fact, I remember taking a standardized test only two or three times over those years. There was no test prep, except for the reminder to bring a #2 pencil to school.

“Fast forward to 2001, with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law was well-intended, hoping to ensure that all children were accounted for. It required that schools test every year in grades 3-8, and report the results, including for traditionally underserved groups. The thought was that low scores couldn’t be hidden, students’ needs would be addressed, and every child would eventually show proficiency. The tests would provide accountability.

“But NCLB went astray: it limited its focus to annual tests in math and ELA, and imposed harsh repercussions on schools for low scores (hence the term “high-stakes testing”). At the time, the nation’s top adolescent psychiatrists warned Congress not to increase testing, especially with draconian stakes, explaining that “test-stress is literally making children sick” and that “the health effects of such policies” must be studied. But the law and its testing mandates passed anyway.

“Now, nearly two decades later, such testing-centric public education means that my childhood, with its range of studies and exploration and free time, is endangered. Playtime, recess, and the arts are considered throwaways as schools double-down on ELA and math. As early as 2005, a survey by the Center on Education Policy found that 71 percent of school districts cut back on subjects like history and music so they could spend more time on the tested subjects.

“In addition, the pressure for high achievement in the tested subjects has intensified tremendously. Teaching has become more about preparing children for the tests, and tested subjects are being taught earlier than ever. Kindergarten is the new first grade, with emphasis on reading and math over unstructured free play time — even though experts have warned of the grave consequences that this will cause.”

In theory, NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (which is just another way to say “No Child Left Behind”, but the reality is that standardized tests continue to dominate the lives of students and teachers.

Can anyone say that no child was left behind as a result of the imposition of annual testing? With enough test prep, scores may go up, but they don’t translate into success after school. Does anyone sentient person believe that “every student” will succeed because of annual testing?

No other nation imposes annual tests on children from grades 3-8. Why do we? It is a massive waste of time, purpose, and money. The biggest beneficiaries are not the students but the testing companies.

The emperor has no clothes yet has paraded around stark naked  since January 8, 2002, the day NCLB was signed.

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Peter Greene on Arne Duncan’s April Fools Day Joke

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
13

Peter Greene does his very best close reading of Arne Duncan’s bizarre article in The Washington Post in which he insists that his policies have NOT failed, contrary to the evidence and public opinion.

He begins:

Lately, a wave of apostasy has swept through Reformsylvania, and reformsters have stepped up to say that ed reform kind of, well, failed. Yesterday, just in time for April Fools Day, former secretary of education Arne Duncan (and current thinky tank fixture) took to the pages of the Washington Postto try his hand at some non-reality-based history and argue that ed reform has been a resounding success.

How has he managed this feat? Well, there are several tricks.

This damn guy

First, move the goalposts. All the way back to 1971. Fourth grade math and reading scores on the NAEP are up since then!! Why focus on fourth grade scores? Maybe because 17-year-old scores haven’t really moved much at all. And of course, reform hasn’t been in place since 1971– and most of that growth happened before modern ed reform ever took hold– you know, prior to those days when Secretary Duncan was explaining that American schools actually sucked? And all of this assumes that a single standardized math a reading score is a good proxy for the quality of the entire educational system.

Duncan has an explanation for those flat 12th grade scores– because the graduation rate is up, more weak students are taking the NAEP, and so keeping the scores flat is a win. Yay? Anyway, graduation rates are up, so that’s more proof of ed reform success, except that, of course, whether those diplomas actually mean anything other than districts have learned how to game the system with credit recovery and other baloney– well, never mind. There’s probably some real gain there, and that’s not a bad thing. The numbers are up, so woohoo…

[His] notion that test-based accountability “revealed” achievement gaps is baloney. Educators knew where the gaps were. We’ve4 always known where the gaps were. We’ve screamed about the gaps. I don’t believe any teacher in this country picked up test results and said, “I’ll be damned! I had no idea these non-white, non-wealthy students were having trouble keeping up!” At best, test-based accountability was a tool to convince policy makers who would listen to data spreadsheets before they would listen to teachers. And even then, policy makers didn’t look at the data and say, “Well, we’d better help these schools out.” Instead, all the way up to Duncan’s office, they responded with, “Well, let’s target this school for closure or conversion or a growth opportunity for some charter operators.”

This, it turns out, is another thing Arne “Katrina’s Destruction of NOLA Public Ed Is a Great Thing” Duncan counts as success- three million students in charter school. He cites Boston as a win (again, debateable) but ignores the widespread fraud, corruption and failure that charters have been prone to nationally…

Duncan has tried a variety of history rewrites for his administration (only politicians hated Common Core! charter school magic unleashed! ESSA was not a reaction against his work! CCSS should have been rolled out faster!) But all of his reflections stumble over the same problem– Duncan simply refuses to acknowledge the damage that his policies have done to public education. Here he is acting puzzled again–

[Duncan wrote:] Some have taken the original idea of school choice — as laboratories of innovation that would help all schools improve — and used it to defund education, weaken unions and allow public dollars to fund private schools without accountability.

No, Arne! Not “some.” Not some faceless mysterious group of folks. You. You and the people that you empowered and encouraged and cheered on and backed with your policies. You did that.

Well, as we have come to expect, Peter is right on target.

Charter schools are the gateway to vouchers. It is now widely understood that Arne Duncan and his friends paved the way for Betsy DeVos and her all-out war on  public schools. That is now widely recognized, even if Duncan doesn’t admit it.

Reform is failing, failing, failing. The public is wise to the reformers’ real goal, which is to privatize public schools and disparage teachers instead of confronting the real issues of poverty and segregation.

And nothing that Arne writes here changes that fact.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Arne Duncan: American Schools Are the Worst–No, the Best–Ever

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
11

 

For his entire seven years as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan repeated the mantra that American public schools were the worst ever. They were falling behind the global competition, they needed radical change, they needed privatization, they needed radical transformation. He thought that the remedies were testing, more testing, high-stakes testing, charter schools, and technology. Now he works for Laurene Powell Jobs at the Emerson Collective, where he is supposedly re-imagining the American high school, or something like that.

Having listened to his daily rants about failure for so long, it is startling to see his opinion piece in the Washington Post declaring that American schools are definitely on the right track because they have followed the advice of “reformers” like himself. He claims credit for every gain in test scores and graduation rate since 1971! Even though he was only 7 years old in 1971.

The funny thing is that I used many of the same data in my book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, to refute the claims of Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and the rest of the corporate reform wrecking crew, who insisted that America’s public schools were failing and obsolete. Their favorite word was failing.

Now, Arne doesn’t admit that he was wrong, but instead he claims credit for everything good.

No mention of the D.C. graduation rate scandal or the spread of credit recovery, which enables students to take an online course for a week and get credit for a semester that they failed. No mention of cheating scandals. No mention of the 2015 flatlining of NAEP scores.

But, you see what is really happening is that all the reforms he championed have made no difference at all. They are failing. There is not a single district controlled by reformers that is a shining example of success. The shine is off New Orleans, where most of the charters are rated C, D, or F. The District of Columbia has been firmly in the grip of “reformers” and we now know that most of its claims are illusory. Rick Hess, one of the chief reformers, chastised his fellow “reformers” that they had refused to recognize the D.C. realities and spun a tale of success out of their own fantasies.

Teachers and parents hate the high-stakes testing, and school officials are bullying them into taking the mandated tests.

But go back to 1971, and it is clear that we have made great progress. It is just clear that Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad had nothing to do with it.

Let’s credit the successes of our teachers and principals, our democratically controlled public schools.

The real struggle is not to double down on failed strategies but to protect our public schools from the rapacious grasp of privateers and profiteers.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: John White Is Nervous about NAEP Scores

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
14

 

NAEP scores will be released April 18. They have already been released to state Superintendents so they can study their state’s scores and get their press release ready.

The 2015 scores were flat. Some states saw declines. This was widely viewed as a rebuke of the test-obsessed federal policies of the previous 15 years. Intensive test prep produced gains, but they had come to a halt.

Mercedes Schneider writes that Louisiana John White is already worried and has sent out a pre-emptive letter complaining that the scores may have been pushed down by NAEP’s switch to online testing.  This is not a statement by a man who is looking forward to the score release. He is already making excuses.

White, a Broadie who got his start in TFA, has promised dramatic improvements. He has promoted charters and vouchers. He has hailed the New Orleans “miracle.”

We watch for the NAEP release.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Louisiana, NAEP, Testing

Rick Hess: Reformers Were Too Gullible About D.C. “Successes”

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2018 //
44

 

This is a really good article by Rick Hess of the DeVos-funded American Enterprise Institute about reformers’ credulous embrace of every claim made by D.C. and using it as their model for the success of “reform.” Having elevated D.C. as their paradigm, they were unprepared for and blindsided by the recent graduation-rate scandal.

He faults the Washington Post, for its infatuation with Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. And he faults President Obama for saluting a fake graduation rate increase.

Kudos to Rick for his fearless chastising of his compatriots.

He writes:

“Lots of self-styled “reformers” had good reason to observe DCPS through rose-tinted glasses. A wealth of advocates, funders, consultants, researchers, and friends had a rooting interest in DCPS’s success — and had every incentive to focus on the good news. This includes the senior author of this piece, who counted many DCPS leaders as friends of long standing — and who wrote admiringly about some of their efforts.

“After all, Washington, D.C., as much as any city over the past decade, served as a laboratory where philanthropists, policy analysts, and high profile media outlets converge. Philanthropists have poured more than $120 million into the school system since 2007. By 2010, the nation’s largest 15 philanthropies were spending more on K-12 education in D.C. than in any other school district in America.”

Curiously, he places some of the blame on critics of these fraudulent reforms, because their criticism made the reformers circle their wagons.

Maybe the reformers should have listened to critics like Guy Brandenburg and others who blew the whistle early on, instead of closing their ears and circling the wagons. Maybe they should have taken seriously the testing scandal that USA Today reported in 2011, instead of sweeping it under the rug.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Testing

FAIRTEST: News about Testing Resistance and Reform

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2018 //
11

Entering the peak weeks of school testing season, pressure from students, educators and community leaders for genuine assessment reform is accelerating as more people recognize how much classroom learning time is undermined by standardized exam overkill.

Multiple States Did Changed Test Questions Cause Decline in Smarter Balanced Test Scores
https://jaypgreene.com/2018/03/26/did-changed-test-questions-cause-national-decline-in-smarter-balanced-scores/

Colorado Testing Fixation Rushes Students Past Real Learning
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/opinion/2018/03/25/opinion-start-school-later-and-let-learners-take-their-time/445465002/

Florida State Uses “Mumbo-Jumbo” Calculation to Select “High-Impact Teachers”
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/lake/os-lauren-ritchie-high-impact-teachers-meaningless-20180322-story.html

Hawaii Teachers Push to Reduce Standardized Testing
http://www.khon2.com/news/local-news/teachers-push-to-reduce-standardized-testing-for-hawaii-public-schools/1064609297

Illinois Teachers. Parents and Community Push Back Against Testing
https://www.ctunet.com/media/chicago-union-teacher/downloadable-pdf/Mar-Apr-2018-CUT-FINAL_reduced.pdf  — see esp. pp 10-11

Indiana Pressure From Educators Blocks Bad School Grading Plan
http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/20180323/making-the-grade
Indiana Is the Thinking Behind ISTEP Testing Fair?
http://www.heraldbulletin.com/opinion/columns/shane-phipps-column-is-the-thinking-behind-istep-testing-really/article_e843cf9e-8c03-5ded-9647-e0d0a396e9f8.html

Mississippi Educators, Lawmakers Push for Move Away From State Testing
http://www.wdam.com/story/37798622/educators-and-lawmakers-push-for-a-move-away-from-state-testing

New York Opt-Out Leader Explains the True Costs of the Tests
https://vimeo.com/261373078/e139f7bab6
New York Petition to End Test-Based Teacher Evaluation
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/repeal-nys-teacher-evaluatio

North Carolina Timing of Supplemental Nutrition Benefits Affects Test Scores
https://sanford.duke.edu/articles/timing-snap-benefit-affects-children%E2%80%99s-test-grades

Ohio Let Real People, Not Computers, Grade Writing Tests
http://www.theintelligencer.net/opinion/editorials/2018/03/let-real-people-grade-the-tests/
Ohio State Senate Agrees to Eliminate Use of “Value-Added” Score to Evaluate Teachers
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/03/ohio_senate_backs_change_in_te.html

Oregon Oppose Mono-culture of School Testing
http://www.bendbulletin.com/opinion/6106779-151/letters

Pennsylvania Teachers Must Speak Out Against Standardized Tests
https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/the-lone-voice-of-dissent-against-standardized-testing/

Tennessee Bill Would Lower State Test Weight on Student Grades
http://www.lebanondemocrat.com/Education/2018/03/26/Bill-could-lower-TN-Ready-weight-on-student-grades.html

Utah Testing Season is the Real March “Madness”
https://news.hjnews.com/logan_hj/one-teacher-s-take-on-testing-and-other-grade-school/article_e9019fe1-f123-5950-8a3e-e875bc117c91.html

Washington New School Report Cards Show Many Factor Beyond Test Scores
http://www.krem.com/article/news/local/northwest/new-database-helps-wash-parents-keep-track-of-their-childs-schools/293-530454696

Worth Reading New Book by Sir Ken Robinson: You Can Change the System
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-21-sir-ken-robinson-s-next-act-you-are-the-system-and-you-can-change-education

Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office-   (239) 395-6773   fax-  (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 699-0468
web-  http://www.fairtest.org

Categories Testing

The Absurdity of Expecting All Students to Reach NAEP Proficiency

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2018 //
21

 

James Harvey here explores “the problem with proficiency.”

Common Core tests arbitrarily decided that the NAEP proficiency level should be the “passing” mark for all. Test results are routinely reported as if those who did not meet this standard were “failing.”

I have routinely argued on this blog that NAEP proficiency is equivalent to earning an A, and that it was nuts to expect all students to earn an A. Only in one state (Massachusetts) have as many as 50% reached the standard.

Harvey demonstrates the reality.

He writes:

“In 1996, the International Education Assessment (IEA) released one of the earliest examinations of how well 4th grade students all over the world could read. IEA is a highly credible international institution that monitors comparative school performance; it also administers the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a global assessment of 4th and 8th grade mathematics and science achievement. Its 1996 assessment (The IEA Reading Literacy Study, a predecessor to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, or PIRLS) demonstrated that out of 27 participating nations, U.S. 4th graders ranked number two in reading (National Center for Education Statistics, 1996). Only Finland ranked higher. To the extent these rankings mean very much, this second-place finish for the United States was an impressive accomplishment.

”But around the same time, the National Assessment Governing Board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that just one-third of American 4th graders were “proficient” in reading. To this day, the board of NAEP continues to release similarly bleak findings about American 4th graders’ reading performance (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). And IEA continues to release global findings indicating that the performance of U.S. 4th graders in reading remains world class (Mullis et al., 2012).

“How could both these findings be accurate? Was it true, as NAEP results indicated, that U.S. 4th graders couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time? Or was IEA’s conclusion—that the performance of American 4th graders in an international context was first class—more valid? A broader question arises here, one that has intrigued researchers for years: How would other nations perform if their students were held to the NAEP achievement-level benchmark for “proficient”? How might they perform on Common Core-aligned assess-ments with benchmarks that reflect those of NAEP?

”How Would Other Nations Score on NAEP?

“In 2015, statistician Emre Gönülates and I set out to explore these questions on behalf of the National Superintendents Roundtable (of which I am executive director) and the Horace Mann League (on whose board I serve). The results of our examination, recently released in a report titled How High the Bar? (Harvey & Gönülates, 2017), are eye-opening. In short, the vast majority of students in the vast majority of nations would not clear the NAEP bar for proficiency in reading, mathematics, or science. And the same is true of the “career and college-readiness” benchmarks in mathematics and English language arts that are used by the major Common Core-aligned assessments.

“This finding matters because in recent years, communities all over the United States have seen bleak headlines about the performance of their students and schools. Many of these headlines rely on reports about student achievement from NAEP or the Common Core assessments. One particular concern is that only a minority of students in the United States meet the NAEP Proficient benchmark. Frequently, arguments in favor of maintaining this particular benchmark as the desired goal for American students and education institutions are couched in terms of establishing demanding standards so the United States becomes more competitive internationally.

“But the reality is that communities around the world would face identical bleak headlines if their students sat down to take the NAEP assessments. So, when U.S. citizens read that “only one-third” or “less than half” of the students in their local schools are proficient in mathematics, science, or reading (or other subjects), they can rest assured that the same judgments could be applied to national education systems throughout the world if students in those nations participated in NAEP or Common Core-related assessments. (This is true despite the widespread perception that average student performance in some other nations exceeds average student performance in the United States. The metric applied in our study is not a rank ordering of mean scores by nation but the percentage of students in each nation likely to exceed the NAEP Proficient benchmark.)

“Our findings may not even be surprising when we consider questions that have arisen from previous research on NAEP.”

Harvey goes on to explain why it is absurd to use NAEP proficiency as a passing mark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Common Core, International, NAEP, Testing

Parent Founder of Long Island Opt Out Explains Why She Fights against the Tyranny of Testing

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2018 //
6

 

Jeannette Deutermann is the parent who founded Long Island Opt Out, and whose tireless activism inspired parents and education activists across the state. In this powerful video, she explains why she did it.

She saw that the tests were destroying her children’s spirit and love of learning. The more she learned about the uselessness of the state tests, the more determined she became to protect her children.

Jeannette is a gifted and passionate organizer. She joined with dozens of independent parent and educator groups across the state, which created a coordinating organization called NYSAPE (New York State Allies for Public Education).Through their efforts, 20% of the students in grades 3-8 have refused the tests for three straight years. They objected not only to the tests but to the developmentally inappropriate, highly standardized, lockstep Common Core.

In response to the Opt Out Movement, the state shortened the exams, which had stretched over two weeks for many hours and promised to revise the Common Core. State testing begins April 10-11, and the Opt Out Movement will once again reach out to parents across the state.

Opt out rates in the state have been highest on Long Island and upstate in rural communities. The Education Department in New York City has discouraged opting out and warned schools that low participation rates will harm their school.

Jeannette is a brilliant grassroots leader who is fighting not only for her kids but for all children in the state.

The test scores serve an insidious purpose: they are used to label and stigmatize students, teachers, and schools. They are essential to the privatization movement, which uses low scores as a pretext—not to help schools—but to close them and replace them with privately managed charter schools.

Please watch the video, tweet it, and share it on social media. Join the Movement to restore the joy of learning!

The video was filmed in Brooklyn and produced by professional videographer Michael Elliott with the assistance of Kemala Karmen. It was sponsored by the Network for Public Education.

https://www.facebook.com/carol.c.burris

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Opt Out, Parents, Privatization, Students, Testing

Economists with Common Sense about Education

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2018 //
46

 

Many of us on this blog criticize economists because it often seems that the only thing they value is scores on standardized tests. If they can’t measure a thing without precision, it doesn’t matter. They think they can measure teacher quality by student test scores, they can measure schools by test scores, they can measure students with test scores. As Daniel Koretz showed in his book The Testing Charade: Pretending to Improve Schools, the tests are misused and abused to make these judgments. They aren’t good enough to label students, teachers, or schools, and their misuse distorts the measures (Campbell’s Law).

Now a group of scholars seeks to rescue schools from the iron grip of standardized testing. (Among the authors is my favorite economist of education, Helen Ladd of Duke University.) They argue that test scores are not the only things that matter in education. They say that schools should be informed by evidence, not driven by it. 

Decisions should be driven by what we value, what our goals are, not simply by test scores.

They write:

Although evidence clearly contributes to thoughtful policy-making, evidence cannot and should not drive policy decisions. When we make decisions, or policies, we are driven by a desire to achieve a set of goals. The role of data is to provide evidence on how our choices are likely to affect the realization of our goals. Evidence informs decisions so that, if the evidence is good and we interpret it well, the results of our decisions align better with what we value.

A challenge for many decision makers is to think clearly about the values they are seeking to realize. In education, decision makers are often motivated by the desire to improve student outcomes and increase educational equity. Yet both “student outcomes” and “equity” are vague terms. Which student outcomes, or combination of outcomes, are most valuable? Do we care about students’ understanding of trigonometry or their ability to run fast? Do we want to work towards all students having more equal cognitive skills or to increasing the skills of the least well off? Without more precise understandings of which outcomes we care about and which distributions of those outcomes are fair, decision makers lack orientation. Their decisions may end up relying on data about outcomes that happen to be available rather than about outcomes that align with their goals.

In a new book, Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making (University of Chicago Press, 2018), we seek to spell out a set of educational values and distributive principles and to illustrate how they, along with a small number of non-education values, can be combined with the relevant evidence to improve education decision making. Two of us (Ladd and Loeb) are social scientists who bring a familiarity with the use of evidence, and two (Brighouse and Swift) are philosophers who operate in the realm of values.

This group of scholars is thinking differently. For example:

While educational goods and their distribution are central to education policy decisions, other values come into play as well. While it may at first seem like these additional values are too numerous and ill-defined to specify, in fact, only a small set of values—we identify five of them—typically come into play in education decision making. Think again of the possibility that equalizing educational goods would require extensive intervention in the family. Respect for parents’ interests limits the pursuit of distributive goals. Think of another independent value – what we term childhood goods. Childhood goods are the experiences that students have in childhood that contribute to their flourishing even if they do not build their capacities. These goods may include purposeless play, as well as the joys of learning or laughing. We may be unwilling to undertake an educational approach that develops students’ educational goods if it, in turn, makes the students miserable in the process. The other independent values—respect for the democratic process, freedom of residence and occupation, and other goods (e.g. heath care or housing)—may also put a brake on what should be done to pursue educational goods and their valuable distribution.

 

 

Categories Data, Economics, Research, Testing

Indiana: Total Confusion on Which Standardized Test to Use

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2018 //
12

 

Shaina Cavazos writes in Chalkbeat that Indiana has pushed back by two years its decision to require all high school students to take a college entrance exam. 

Neither the ACT nor the SAT are designed to measure high school students’ academic progress, and they are not even the best measure of student readiness for college (the four-year GPA is better than either of the tests).

ACT and SAT should oppose this blatant misuse of their tests, if they care more about integrity and professional ethics than profits.

The state is also confused about which standardized test to use in 3-8. Should they use the Common Core-aligned Pearson test? Didn’t Trump say CCSS was a disaster? Where does Pence stand?

”Lawmakers were expected to approve a House bill proposing Indiana use a college entrance exam starting in 2019 as yearly testing for high schoolers, at the same time state works to replace its overall testing system, ISTEP. But the start date for using the SAT or ACT was pushed back from 2019 to 2021, meaning it’s unclear how high schoolers will be judged for the next two years.

“This is the latest upheaval in testing as the state works to replace ISTEP in favor of the new ILEARN testing system, a response to years of technical glitches and scoring problems. While a company has already proposed drafting exams for measuring the performance of Indiana students, officials now need to come up with a solution for the high school situation. ILEARN exams for grades 3-8 are still set to begin in 2019…

”It’s just the latest road bump since the legislature voted last year to scrap ISTEP and replace it with ILEARN, a plan that originally included a computer-adaptive test for grades 3-8 and end-of-course exams for high-schoolers in English, algebra and biology. Indiana is required by the federal government to test students each year in English and math, and periodically, in science.

“The Indiana Department of Education started carrying out the plan to move to ILEARN over the summer and eventually selected the American Institutes for Research to write the test, a company that helped create the Common-Core affiliated Smarter balanced test. AIR’s proposal said they were prepared to create tests for elementary, middle and high school students.”

Fourteen states are now using college entrance exams to assess high school students, even those who want to enter the workforce, not go to college.

Perhaps Indiana should hire Duane Swacker to explain to lawmakers that the standardized tests are not reliable or valid measures of student learning. Or they might read Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz’s “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.”

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ignorance, Indiana, Standardized Testing, Testing
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