Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the NYC principal who was removed from her job for changing students’ grades and giving course credit to failing students was retained by the NYC public schools as an “Achievement Coach?” (See New York Times article.) That seems like a stretch. Apparently she will still be paid a principal’s salary “but will no longer be eligible for a $25,000 performance bonus like the one she earned in 2009.” Well, that’s a relief.
I’m not even going to bother being outraged (or even surprised) that this principal wasn’t fired, that the NY schools chancellor seemed to think this wasn’t a very big deal. Let the NYC parents get upset about that. I’m more concerned about the lesson to be learned by those who push financial incentives for higher test scores. This type of thing – tweaking scores or massaging grades or “misapplying grading policies” or, let’s be real, cheating – is going to become tempting as the stakes get higher and higher. Perhaps you’ve heard about the cheating scandal recently coming to light in some Pennsylvania public schools? Or what about Atlanta? Desperate people, in desperate times, will do desperate things to keep their jobs.
Of course, another irony is the fact that incentives like bonus pay have been shown to have ZERO effect on student performance. (Click here and here.) But lawmakers don’t want to hear that. The public doesn’t want to hear it. It’s easier for them if the answer is simply to reward educators for higher test scores.
Seems pretty clear to me that this is not going to end well…
Update: There's a new story today on the NY Times website, reporting that allegations of cheating and grade tampering in the NYC public schools have tripled since 2002. Yep, expect to see more and more stories like this...
Showing posts with label test scores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label test scores. Show all posts
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Some thoughts on merit pay for teachers, tied to test scores.
Teacher quality is vital, but I’m concerned about increases in high-stakes standardized testing (and imperfect tests) to evaluate teachers, influence compensation, etc. Testing and data mining is going to cost a lot of money. Who will pay? What will be the effect on students?
How will the state develop standardized tests for Art? History? Theater? Health? You know there are no state tests for those right now. How long is that going to take? How much more learning will students lose in order to participate in testing? These are just a few of my concerns.
Then I read Dana Goldstein's story in the Daily Beast about high-stakes testing and something called "Campbell’s Law" — the social-science maxim that holds that the reliability of a decision-making tool is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision being made. That is, the more a test score is worth, the more it’s worth cheating on the test. (The story was about allegations of high erasure rates -- cheating -- on supposedly-improved standardized tests in Washington, D.C.)
So that gives me even more worry about placing all this emphasis on state-developed tests.
Did I mention how pretty much every 9th grader in New Jersey failed the state's first Biology test? So now they're back at the drawing board trying to come up with a better test.
And, finally, Diane Ravitch tweeted today, "Imagine putting fate of students and teachers in hands of the testing agencies" like those described in the book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry by Todd Farley, an eye-opening (and frightening) book that I read last year. Another good point, Diane!
What does this mean for Ridgewood? The political pressure in Trenton is forcing a rush to policies for evaluating teacher quality, based on extremely flawed state tests. Eventually, the requirements will hit Ridgewood, we'll be forced to comply (rather than rely on our own education leaders to evaluate our teachers), it will cost a lot of money, it will suck even more time away from our administrators and teachers...like I said, I'm worried.
How will the state develop standardized tests for Art? History? Theater? Health? You know there are no state tests for those right now. How long is that going to take? How much more learning will students lose in order to participate in testing? These are just a few of my concerns.
Then I read Dana Goldstein's story in the Daily Beast about high-stakes testing and something called "Campbell’s Law" — the social-science maxim that holds that the reliability of a decision-making tool is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision being made. That is, the more a test score is worth, the more it’s worth cheating on the test. (The story was about allegations of high erasure rates -- cheating -- on supposedly-improved standardized tests in Washington, D.C.)
So that gives me even more worry about placing all this emphasis on state-developed tests.
Did I mention how pretty much every 9th grader in New Jersey failed the state's first Biology test? So now they're back at the drawing board trying to come up with a better test.
And, finally, Diane Ravitch tweeted today, "Imagine putting fate of students and teachers in hands of the testing agencies" like those described in the book, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry by Todd Farley, an eye-opening (and frightening) book that I read last year. Another good point, Diane!
What does this mean for Ridgewood? The political pressure in Trenton is forcing a rush to policies for evaluating teacher quality, based on extremely flawed state tests. Eventually, the requirements will hit Ridgewood, we'll be forced to comply (rather than rely on our own education leaders to evaluate our teachers), it will cost a lot of money, it will suck even more time away from our administrators and teachers...like I said, I'm worried.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Governor Christie and Education Commissioner Cerf unveil NJ tenure reform proposal.
I don't have time right now to write a full reporting of the Governor's proposals announced today, but I wanted you to know about them ASAP. Thus, the following is reprinted from the blog New Jersey Left Behind. I'll share my own thoughts shortly:
This afternoon Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf gave a briefing on the Christie Administration’s five-part tenure reform proposal. Legislative language will be released in two weeks. Here’s the skinny; I’ll fill in the details tomorrow.I know I said I'd share my opinions soon, and I'd like to give a more thoughtful response, but off the bat I can report that while I'm all for demanding quality from our teachers, I'm troubled by the emphasis on standardized tests and "student growth" as such a primary way to measure teacher effectiveness. More on the pitfalls of that to come...
1) Teacher Evaluations: currently teacher evaluations are subject to collective bargaining in local districts. According to the proposal, the Department of Education will craft a state-wide evaluation form that bases 50% of a teacher’s rating on student growth (measured by standardized tests) and 50% on best practices. This new instrument will not be subject to negotiations between local unions and school districts. Other tenured employees – principals, child study team members, custodians, secretaries – will be unaffected by this legislation.
2) Tenure: teachers will be judged to be highly effective, effective, partially effective, or ineffective. These measurements will be wholly based on student learning. A teacher will be awarded tenure after three consecutive years of effective teaching. If a previously-tenured teacher amasses two consecutive years of ineffective ratings, he or she will revert to non-tenure status.
3) Mutual Consent: currently teachers can be placed in a school regardless of whether the building principal considers that teacher to be effective. The proposed legislation eliminates that practice. If a school within a district closes or is replaced, both the teacher and principals must mutually agree on a teacher’s placement within that school. If either party rejects the placement, then the teacher retains employment rights within the district for a full year and the district must assist the teacher in placement. If, however, the teacher is still not placed within a year then he or she will go on unpaid leave.
4) “Last In, First Out” (LIFO): under current law, when a district lays off teachers due to shrinking enrollment or funds then seniority dictates the order of job loss and it is illegal to consider teacher effectiveness. This proposal mandates that districts take into account teacher effectiveness when deciding on lay-offs.
5) Compensation: all districts base teacher compensation on years served and degrees earned. This new proposal dictates that the primary factor in salary is student growth. Teachers would also receive higher salaries by teaching in high-needs districts, teaching in hard-to-staff disciplines (math, science, special education), and by graduating from a teaching college with proven methods that advance student learning.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tiger Mother, burning bright.
Have you been following the “Tiger Mother” story all over the media over the past 10 days or so?
In a nutshell, a Yale law professor, Amy Chua, wrote a book (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) describing how she’s brought up her two daughters in the strict Chinese fashion that her own parents used. The original story in the Wall Street Journal – Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior – described a childhood with no playdates, not TV, no computer games and hours of music practice. Her daughters are not allowed to: attend a sleepover, be in a school play, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, or not be the No. 1 student in every subject (except gym and drama). Mrs. Chua told about her priority to raise “successful” kids, often with “tough love” tactics. For example, the time her 4-year-old daughter brought her a homemade Birthday card and Mrs. Chua returned it, saying “I want a better one – one that you’ve put some thought and effort into … I deserve better than this. So I reject this.” Yikes!
Needless to say, mothers around the country reacted…and they were not supportive.
Mrs. Chua started going on the defensive, and tried to explain in a follow-up WSJ interview that she was telling about how she parented in the past, and now she has learned some lessons and is not so harsh. Her protestations were a little weak, if you ask me, and she really doesn’t apologize or regret those rules and tactics she used when her girls were younger.
I’ve read a few interesting responses to Mrs. Chua’s “tiger mother.” I recommend Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate, who wrote a column featuring stories of his own “crazy Asian mom” and his own interview with Mrs. Chua.
This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a feature under The Way We Live Now header, titled “No More Mrs. Nice Mom,” in which author Judith Warner discussed the Tiger Mother and hit on some points that really resonated with me and the way I often describe the Ridgewood parents I encounter at HSA meetings and soccer sidelines. Ms. Warner writes,
That, my friends, is the source of so much frustration here in Ridgewood (and undoubtedly elsewhere in other so-called affluent communities). We are in a strange time, as we parents start to acknowledge how our children are under so much pressure to succeed, that the college acceptance merry-go-round and the AP course race might be out of control, that the childhood resume-building could be unhealthy (you think?). Parents at our high school and middle school HSAs have been captivated by the movie Race to Nowhere, and have begun questioning the amount of homework kids receive or how many AP classes they really need to take.
At the same time, sometimes even in the same room (at the high school HSA meeting, for example), parents are strategizing and looking for the magic combination of courses and GPA and AP scores that will make their child most attractive to colleges. I’m still trying to understand the parents who commented in the District’s recent parent survey that they wished their 1st grade child had more homework, or wished that there were more history and science tests in 2nd grade. I have often commented and attributed some Ridgewood parents’ drive to this phenomenon described by Ms. Warner – the belief that every little decision parents make for their children, every teacher assignment, every single activity or project or sports team, etc. – will actually determine their child’s future success (and, presumably, earning power). It's crazy, if you ask me, but it's there all the time: If I do everything right, then everything for my child will work out OK. Don't you think that's just a bit conceited of us? And isn't history riddled with stories of perfectly good people who did all the right things and yet life doesn't work out so well for them?
We parents have got to reconcile this dichotomy. We can’t simultaneously decry the stress our kids are under while maneuvering to get the “right” extracurriculars onto their resume. We can’t say “give them less homework and fewer tests” and then turn around and complain that RHS is not ranked high enough in New Jersey Monthly magazine.
One thing this "tiger mother" story is bringing to light for Ridgewood parents is that we are all part of the problem and, thus, we all need to be part of the solution.
In a nutshell, a Yale law professor, Amy Chua, wrote a book (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) describing how she’s brought up her two daughters in the strict Chinese fashion that her own parents used. The original story in the Wall Street Journal – Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior – described a childhood with no playdates, not TV, no computer games and hours of music practice. Her daughters are not allowed to: attend a sleepover, be in a school play, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, or not be the No. 1 student in every subject (except gym and drama). Mrs. Chua told about her priority to raise “successful” kids, often with “tough love” tactics. For example, the time her 4-year-old daughter brought her a homemade Birthday card and Mrs. Chua returned it, saying “I want a better one – one that you’ve put some thought and effort into … I deserve better than this. So I reject this.” Yikes!
Needless to say, mothers around the country reacted…and they were not supportive.
Mrs. Chua started going on the defensive, and tried to explain in a follow-up WSJ interview that she was telling about how she parented in the past, and now she has learned some lessons and is not so harsh. Her protestations were a little weak, if you ask me, and she really doesn’t apologize or regret those rules and tactics she used when her girls were younger.
I’ve read a few interesting responses to Mrs. Chua’s “tiger mother.” I recommend Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate, who wrote a column featuring stories of his own “crazy Asian mom” and his own interview with Mrs. Chua.
This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a feature under The Way We Live Now header, titled “No More Mrs. Nice Mom,” in which author Judith Warner discussed the Tiger Mother and hit on some points that really resonated with me and the way I often describe the Ridgewood parents I encounter at HSA meetings and soccer sidelines. Ms. Warner writes,
The terror of losing ground is the ultimate driving force in the middle- and upper-middle-class American family today, and however unique Chua’s elaboration of it…however obnoxious and over the top her attempts to cope, she is hardly alone in believing that, in her carefully considered ministrations, she will find the perfect alchemy that will allow her to inoculate her kids against personal and professional misfortune.
Through all the iterations of Mommy madness, “good” and “bad,” this article of faith always remains intact: that parents can have control. Developmental neuroscientists may talk of genes and as-yet-undiscovered-and-hence-uncontrollable environmental factors that affect the developing fetus, social scientists may talk of socioeconomic background and the predictive power of parents’ level of education — the rest of us keep hope alive that parental actions, each and every moment of each and every better-lived day, have the ultimate ability to shape a child’s life outcome.
That, my friends, is the source of so much frustration here in Ridgewood (and undoubtedly elsewhere in other so-called affluent communities). We are in a strange time, as we parents start to acknowledge how our children are under so much pressure to succeed, that the college acceptance merry-go-round and the AP course race might be out of control, that the childhood resume-building could be unhealthy (you think?). Parents at our high school and middle school HSAs have been captivated by the movie Race to Nowhere, and have begun questioning the amount of homework kids receive or how many AP classes they really need to take.
At the same time, sometimes even in the same room (at the high school HSA meeting, for example), parents are strategizing and looking for the magic combination of courses and GPA and AP scores that will make their child most attractive to colleges. I’m still trying to understand the parents who commented in the District’s recent parent survey that they wished their 1st grade child had more homework, or wished that there were more history and science tests in 2nd grade. I have often commented and attributed some Ridgewood parents’ drive to this phenomenon described by Ms. Warner – the belief that every little decision parents make for their children, every teacher assignment, every single activity or project or sports team, etc. – will actually determine their child’s future success (and, presumably, earning power). It's crazy, if you ask me, but it's there all the time: If I do everything right, then everything for my child will work out OK. Don't you think that's just a bit conceited of us? And isn't history riddled with stories of perfectly good people who did all the right things and yet life doesn't work out so well for them?
We parents have got to reconcile this dichotomy. We can’t simultaneously decry the stress our kids are under while maneuvering to get the “right” extracurriculars onto their resume. We can’t say “give them less homework and fewer tests” and then turn around and complain that RHS is not ranked high enough in New Jersey Monthly magazine.
One thing this "tiger mother" story is bringing to light for Ridgewood parents is that we are all part of the problem and, thus, we all need to be part of the solution.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Are we willing to re-think the "Race?"
A few of my thoughts in advance of the third Ridgewood showing of Race to Nowhere, tomorrow (Monday) night at the Ridgewood Public Library Auditorium (7:00 p.m.).
When I watched the movie the week before last, I noticed what I felt was a moment of irony. A parent in the film said that she has always wanted her kids to do better, to succeed, so that they will have "more choices in life." But when I listened to these pressured kids talk, it was clear to me clear that they actually end up having fewer choices. Or no choices. No real choice about where they go to college, or what they're going to study, or where they will find their passion. They are on a track and there is no getting off that track.
On the topic of homework, the film cited research that looked at the correlation between the amount of homework kids have and how they perform academically. (To be honest, I don't remember what they used to measure that performance...I think it may have been standardized test scores.)
According to the research cited in the film, in the elementary school years, there is no correlation between the amount of homework and achievement. In middle school, there is some correlation, but it falls off after one year. And in high school, there is some correlation, but not after an average of two hours of nightly homework. Any more than two hours of homework has no effect of achievement.
This actually dovetails nicely with the Parent/Guardian Survey results, which I wrote about earlier today. In some of the parent comments for elementary schools, parents wrote that they wanted more homework and more rigor in their children's education. There were parents who want more tests in kindergarten and first grade, to "prove" that kids are learning! Here's a little snapshot of the problem, right here in Ridgewood: how do we balance these parents' wish for "academic success" with these emerging conversations about the so-called "race to nowhere?" Are we really willing to make a change?
And on another related note, the principal of Ridgewood High School announced that this upcoming Winter Break will be "homework free." The high school administration wants to see what it's like -- for students and for teachers -- if kids are allowed to simply rest over the break. Of course, in our house, this has already created some confusion. My son has a large research/writing project that's currently underway. My son is wondering how he can just take a week off without falling behind on the project overall. My natural response is to hope he can get enough work done this week so that he can enjoy the experience of the "no homework break" next week. But something doesn't feel right to be "rushing" now in order to "rest" later. Jumping off the merry-go-round is a little scary. Sort of like...jumping off a merry-go-round.
What are your thoughts on the concept of a "race to nowhere?"
When I watched the movie the week before last, I noticed what I felt was a moment of irony. A parent in the film said that she has always wanted her kids to do better, to succeed, so that they will have "more choices in life." But when I listened to these pressured kids talk, it was clear to me clear that they actually end up having fewer choices. Or no choices. No real choice about where they go to college, or what they're going to study, or where they will find their passion. They are on a track and there is no getting off that track.
On the topic of homework, the film cited research that looked at the correlation between the amount of homework kids have and how they perform academically. (To be honest, I don't remember what they used to measure that performance...I think it may have been standardized test scores.)
According to the research cited in the film, in the elementary school years, there is no correlation between the amount of homework and achievement. In middle school, there is some correlation, but it falls off after one year. And in high school, there is some correlation, but not after an average of two hours of nightly homework. Any more than two hours of homework has no effect of achievement.
This actually dovetails nicely with the Parent/Guardian Survey results, which I wrote about earlier today. In some of the parent comments for elementary schools, parents wrote that they wanted more homework and more rigor in their children's education. There were parents who want more tests in kindergarten and first grade, to "prove" that kids are learning! Here's a little snapshot of the problem, right here in Ridgewood: how do we balance these parents' wish for "academic success" with these emerging conversations about the so-called "race to nowhere?" Are we really willing to make a change?
And on another related note, the principal of Ridgewood High School announced that this upcoming Winter Break will be "homework free." The high school administration wants to see what it's like -- for students and for teachers -- if kids are allowed to simply rest over the break. Of course, in our house, this has already created some confusion. My son has a large research/writing project that's currently underway. My son is wondering how he can just take a week off without falling behind on the project overall. My natural response is to hope he can get enough work done this week so that he can enjoy the experience of the "no homework break" next week. But something doesn't feel right to be "rushing" now in order to "rest" later. Jumping off the merry-go-round is a little scary. Sort of like...jumping off a merry-go-round.
What are your thoughts on the concept of a "race to nowhere?"
Sunday, December 5, 2010
On my BOE radar this week.
Sorry I’ve been posting a little less frequently than normal…it’s been a busy time around Thanksgiving, I had my mother and her husband visiting for 10 days, and my workload for clients has been extremely heavy. But just because I haven’t been blogging much, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been consumed by Board of Ed business as well. There’s always plenty to do in that area!
Tomorrow night the Board will have a regular public meeting (7:30 p.m., Ed Center, 3rd floor; streaming live click here). A few highlights from the agenda:
• Sheila Brogan and I will present a report on the Facilities Committee meeting which we held last Monday at Ridgewood High School, to listen to concerns from the RHS neighbors regarding the fields and lights. The Board will discuss neighborhood concerns and consider next steps.
• Asst. Superintendent Regina Botsford will present the Districtwide Testing Report for 09-10.
• Dr. Fishbein will give us an update on referendum construction projects
• We’ll get an update on meetings to develop the 11-12 district budget
• The Board will review and approve some course changes at RHS.
• As always, there will be two opportunities for public comment.
Other than tomorrow’s BOE meeting, I have some other Board business I’ll be taking care of this week:
• Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be watching the film Race to Nowhere along with the RHS faculty. The movie, sponsored by the RHS Home & School Association, is being presented to Ridgewood parents at 7:00 p.m. at GW Middle School, but since we have a BOE meeting, some of us will be watching with the faculty. I wonder if it will be a different experience to watch with teachers vs. parents?
• Tuesday night I will join a couple of other Board members and Human Resources Manager Gary Hall at a presentation of the New Jersey School Boards Association, titled “Negotiations and the Toolkit.” This is a roundtable discussion about “negotiations, superintendent contracts, and other employee relations issues in this changing legislative environment.” Supposedly, we’ll learn how the governor’s proposed "toolkit" of bills can affect our negotiations efforts with the REA.
• Wednesday morning I’ll be at the Fields Committee at 7:00 AM – I suffer through these early morning meetings but I have to admit – it’s kind of cool how much time I still have left in the day to get things accomplished.
• Thursday I’ll be at the “You Make a Difference” Breakfast at RHS at 7:15 (another early day!). This breakfast is hosted by Principal Jack Lorenz to recognize students who normally may not receive accolades but who have accomplished small victories at school. After the breakfast I’ll attend the Federated HSA meeting with the presidents of all the schools’ Home & School Associations. Then after that I’ll go to the Somerville Holiday House Tour fundraiser. Whew…busy day Thursday!
I’m telling you my BOE schedule this week just to report on what I’m doing. I’m sure some of you wonder…what does she do anyway, besides attend those boring meetings twice a month? Now you know. As a BOE member, there’s a lot more to do than I originally understood. I truly love being around the schools, though, so when I can, I’m eager to take part in activities that get me into school buildings and that give me a good view of what goes on every day. (My clients aren't quite so enthusiastic about our schools, so sometimes I have to play a little hooky...fortunately as a freelancer I have the flexibility to catch up on work later...sometimes much later...like a few minutes from now.)
After tomorrow night’s BOE meeting – maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday – I’ll write something about the Board’s discussion about the fields and lights (one of the more popular topics in my inbox lately!). Have a great week!
Tomorrow night the Board will have a regular public meeting (7:30 p.m., Ed Center, 3rd floor; streaming live click here). A few highlights from the agenda:
• Sheila Brogan and I will present a report on the Facilities Committee meeting which we held last Monday at Ridgewood High School, to listen to concerns from the RHS neighbors regarding the fields and lights. The Board will discuss neighborhood concerns and consider next steps.
• Asst. Superintendent Regina Botsford will present the Districtwide Testing Report for 09-10.
• Dr. Fishbein will give us an update on referendum construction projects
• We’ll get an update on meetings to develop the 11-12 district budget
• The Board will review and approve some course changes at RHS.
• As always, there will be two opportunities for public comment.
Other than tomorrow’s BOE meeting, I have some other Board business I’ll be taking care of this week:
• Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be watching the film Race to Nowhere along with the RHS faculty. The movie, sponsored by the RHS Home & School Association, is being presented to Ridgewood parents at 7:00 p.m. at GW Middle School, but since we have a BOE meeting, some of us will be watching with the faculty. I wonder if it will be a different experience to watch with teachers vs. parents?
• Tuesday night I will join a couple of other Board members and Human Resources Manager Gary Hall at a presentation of the New Jersey School Boards Association, titled “Negotiations and the Toolkit.” This is a roundtable discussion about “negotiations, superintendent contracts, and other employee relations issues in this changing legislative environment.” Supposedly, we’ll learn how the governor’s proposed "toolkit" of bills can affect our negotiations efforts with the REA.
• Wednesday morning I’ll be at the Fields Committee at 7:00 AM – I suffer through these early morning meetings but I have to admit – it’s kind of cool how much time I still have left in the day to get things accomplished.
• Thursday I’ll be at the “You Make a Difference” Breakfast at RHS at 7:15 (another early day!). This breakfast is hosted by Principal Jack Lorenz to recognize students who normally may not receive accolades but who have accomplished small victories at school. After the breakfast I’ll attend the Federated HSA meeting with the presidents of all the schools’ Home & School Associations. Then after that I’ll go to the Somerville Holiday House Tour fundraiser. Whew…busy day Thursday!
I’m telling you my BOE schedule this week just to report on what I’m doing. I’m sure some of you wonder…what does she do anyway, besides attend those boring meetings twice a month? Now you know. As a BOE member, there’s a lot more to do than I originally understood. I truly love being around the schools, though, so when I can, I’m eager to take part in activities that get me into school buildings and that give me a good view of what goes on every day. (My clients aren't quite so enthusiastic about our schools, so sometimes I have to play a little hooky...fortunately as a freelancer I have the flexibility to catch up on work later...sometimes much later...like a few minutes from now.)
After tomorrow night’s BOE meeting – maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday – I’ll write something about the Board’s discussion about the fields and lights (one of the more popular topics in my inbox lately!). Have a great week!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Reinventing standardized tests.
Apparently U.S Education Secretary Arne Duncan is publicly acknowledging the severe limitations of conventional standardized testing. In a recent speech, Duncan said, “Students, parents, and educators know there is more to a sound education than picking the right selection for a multiple choice question." I'm glad to hear him talking about "Assessment 2.0" or "next-generation assessments." (Click here for the New York Times article about the speech.)
Jonathan Martin, Principal of St. Gregory College Prep in Tucson, Arizona, wrote on the blog Connected Principals, "I want us to be held accountable for educational excellence, and I believe that by using external measurements, we are able to demonstrate that accountability. I think too that we can use this data for marketing our school as we seek to grow it. But most of all, I want to know how well our school is doing compared to others so I can receive the hard truth about where we are not doing well enough, and I can know where to focus for improvement."
Martin continues, "I do think we should evaluate ourselves by our school’s own standards, but not only by them; it is too easy for us to be seduced by our own biases. We know our schools, and we love our schools, and sometimes it is hard to see our blind spots or fully appreciate where we may be under-achieving. But that I seek and appreciate external measurements doesn’t mean I love or like scantron multiple choice bubble tests of basic skills that are administered once a year to “grade” a teacher or school. I don’t."
Mr. Martin says what he likes in “next-gen” assessments is, first, "that we can now evaluate higher order thinking skill development in tests that are not multiple choice, but authentic assessments where students write essays reviewing and responding critically to documents and offering thoughtful solutions to complex problems."
Second, Mr. Martin appreciates "new assessments which are computer adaptive, able to shape themselves to individual student proficiency levels, give immediate feedback to students, teachers and parents, and provide the information we need to better personalize instruction."
These “2.0″ approaches are what Secretary Duncan called for in his speech. As for the first, he says:
New assessments will better measure the higher-order thinking skills so vital to success in the global economy of the 21st century… To be on track today for college and careers, students need to show that they can analyze and solve complex problems, communicate clearly, synthesize information, apply knowledge, and generalize learning to other settings.
The PARCC consortium will test students’ ability to read complex text, complete research projects, excel at classroom speaking and listening assignments, and work with digital media. Problems can be situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays.
As for the second approach, Mr. Duncan said:
Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact and designed to indicate only whether students have learned. Not enough is being done to assess students’ thinking as they learn to boost and enrich learning, and track student growth. [new] assessments will make widespread use of smart technology. They will provide students immediate feedback, computer adaptive testing, and incorporate accommodations for a range of students.
The SMARTER consortium will test students by using computer adaptive technology that will ask students questions pitched to their skill level, based on their previous answers. And a series of interim evaluations during the school year will inform students, parents, and teachers about whether students are on track.
Better assessments, given earlier in the school year, can better measure what matters—growth in student learning. And teachers will be empowered to differentiate instruction in the classroom, propelling the continuous cycle of improvement in student learning that teachers treasure.
I agree with Principal Martin that no single assessment will ever be perfect. We need multiple approaches and multiple ways to assess how our students are learning and how well our teachers are performing. This fact, which seems so obvious, is what makes me worry when I hear about school rankings based on state tests, or teacher hiring or pay decisions based on value-added assessments (which use test scores to judge "value added").
I agree with Mr. Martin:
"We must not ever substitute data and “evidence” for an educator’s judgement. Data inform judgement, but data must never replace discretion and wise judgment."
On the other hand, "let’s not refuse to improve data collection because of the inappropriate abuse of poor data; let’s seek to improve it and use it appropriately."
As our students in Ridgewood continue to take the NJASK year after year, it's encouraging to think that the "powers that be" may be (quietly) acknowledging that we need a better way. Two that I am interested to check out are the College & Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA) and the NWEA’s Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP). Both of these offer hope that maybe we can finally move on from outdated techniques and use creative new tools to truly measure and improve learning.
Jonathan Martin, Principal of St. Gregory College Prep in Tucson, Arizona, wrote on the blog Connected Principals, "I want us to be held accountable for educational excellence, and I believe that by using external measurements, we are able to demonstrate that accountability. I think too that we can use this data for marketing our school as we seek to grow it. But most of all, I want to know how well our school is doing compared to others so I can receive the hard truth about where we are not doing well enough, and I can know where to focus for improvement."
Martin continues, "I do think we should evaluate ourselves by our school’s own standards, but not only by them; it is too easy for us to be seduced by our own biases. We know our schools, and we love our schools, and sometimes it is hard to see our blind spots or fully appreciate where we may be under-achieving. But that I seek and appreciate external measurements doesn’t mean I love or like scantron multiple choice bubble tests of basic skills that are administered once a year to “grade” a teacher or school. I don’t."
Mr. Martin says what he likes in “next-gen” assessments is, first, "that we can now evaluate higher order thinking skill development in tests that are not multiple choice, but authentic assessments where students write essays reviewing and responding critically to documents and offering thoughtful solutions to complex problems."
Second, Mr. Martin appreciates "new assessments which are computer adaptive, able to shape themselves to individual student proficiency levels, give immediate feedback to students, teachers and parents, and provide the information we need to better personalize instruction."
These “2.0″ approaches are what Secretary Duncan called for in his speech. As for the first, he says:
New assessments will better measure the higher-order thinking skills so vital to success in the global economy of the 21st century… To be on track today for college and careers, students need to show that they can analyze and solve complex problems, communicate clearly, synthesize information, apply knowledge, and generalize learning to other settings.
The PARCC consortium will test students’ ability to read complex text, complete research projects, excel at classroom speaking and listening assignments, and work with digital media. Problems can be situated in real-world environments, where students perform tasks or include multi-stage scenarios and extended essays.
As for the second approach, Mr. Duncan said:
Most of the assessment done in schools today is after the fact and designed to indicate only whether students have learned. Not enough is being done to assess students’ thinking as they learn to boost and enrich learning, and track student growth. [new] assessments will make widespread use of smart technology. They will provide students immediate feedback, computer adaptive testing, and incorporate accommodations for a range of students.
The SMARTER consortium will test students by using computer adaptive technology that will ask students questions pitched to their skill level, based on their previous answers. And a series of interim evaluations during the school year will inform students, parents, and teachers about whether students are on track.
Better assessments, given earlier in the school year, can better measure what matters—growth in student learning. And teachers will be empowered to differentiate instruction in the classroom, propelling the continuous cycle of improvement in student learning that teachers treasure.
I agree with Principal Martin that no single assessment will ever be perfect. We need multiple approaches and multiple ways to assess how our students are learning and how well our teachers are performing. This fact, which seems so obvious, is what makes me worry when I hear about school rankings based on state tests, or teacher hiring or pay decisions based on value-added assessments (which use test scores to judge "value added").
I agree with Mr. Martin:
"We must not ever substitute data and “evidence” for an educator’s judgement. Data inform judgement, but data must never replace discretion and wise judgment."
On the other hand, "let’s not refuse to improve data collection because of the inappropriate abuse of poor data; let’s seek to improve it and use it appropriately."
As our students in Ridgewood continue to take the NJASK year after year, it's encouraging to think that the "powers that be" may be (quietly) acknowledging that we need a better way. Two that I am interested to check out are the College & Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA) and the NWEA’s Measurement of Academic Progress (MAP). Both of these offer hope that maybe we can finally move on from outdated techniques and use creative new tools to truly measure and improve learning.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Count on this: no easy solutions in the effort to evaluate teachers.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
This quote is usually attributed to Albert Einstein (although I couldn’t find any proof of his writing or saying it). It’s an interesting and valid thought. And it’s often mentioned in the nationwide conversation about teacher performance and test scores.
Last Wednesday’s New York Times contained the story, “When Does Holding Teachers Accountable Go Too Far?” I found it to be a good review of some of the challenges faced by educators who, with budget-driven urgency, are trying anew to determine the best way to evaluate teachers (and, it follows, to better connect performance with compensation). The story’s main focus was the concept of measuring “value-added data” for teachers. This is a statistical technique where student test scores are analyzed, measuring improvement from when a teacher started teaching the student to when he/she completed the year. According to the theory, the change in test scores is a measure of the “value” added by the teacher: more increase = more value added and, it follows, better teaching.
The Los Angeles Times recently analyzed seven years of elementary school test scores and created a ranking of 6,000 teachers. “The newspaper named a few teachers — both stars and laggards — and announced that it would release the approximate rankings for all teachers, along with their names.”
The Los Angeles Times articles got teachers riled up, the union called for a boycott of the paper, but...the union also said, more calmly, that they’re willing to discuss making such scores at least a part of teachers’ evaluations. That’s encouraging.
The critics of value-added data point to some real limitations. According to the NY Times, “scores can bounce around from year to year for any one teacher...so a single year of scores — which some states may use for evaluation — can be misleading. In addition, students are not randomly assigned to teachers; indeed, principals may deliberately assign slow learners to certain teachers, unfairly lowering their scores. As for the tests themselves, most do not even try to measure the social skills that are crucial to early learning.” And, thinking about Ridgewood, what about teachers who are already very successful or whose students begin at fairly high-achieving levels? If your students already score very high, and there’s not much higher for them to go, is it fair to judge that teacher as not “adding value?” This is exactly what happened to Ridgewood in last year’s state QSAC evaluation – the District received a lower score in student achievement because our test scores didn’t improve enough. But it was physically impossible for our scores to improve that much – they would have had to have been higher than 100% perfect.
Some educators feel that value-added data can probably help identify the best and the worst teachers, but probably won’t help much in truly evaluating teachers in the middle. Other educators have suggested using the value-added data on the school level, without tying the scores to individual teachers' names. I agree with the NY Times’ writer’s feeling that an important first step would be for us all to agree that no system will ever be perfect. No system can do it all. And, personally, I will never feel good about placing too much emphasis on standardized tests, especially when the tests we have are so imperfect.
The New Jersey Department of Education recently announced a special committee that will be working on teacher evaluation. The big deal, according to them, is that the committee contains teachers, administrators, school board members, legislators, "experts," etc. An apparently inclusive group that will calmly and rationally research and develop some solutions. When I heard they wanted school board members, I immediately tried to volunteer. Turns out, their idea of school board representation was that a staffer from the New Jersey School Board Association will participate. Darn.
Clearly, parents and communities want their schools to be accountable. I believe teachers want to be accountable. It’s in our human nature to rank things, to create order, to understand the value (relative or intrinsic) in everything we do. Test scores are such a seemingly easy solution – what could be more cut and dried than numbers? “The scores don’t lie,” sounds so simple. But aren’t there more things that “count?” Can’t we find a way to wrap our human brains around the concept of things that can’t be counted?
Something to think about as we begin the new school year – a school year in which a new contract will be negotiated with our Ridgewood teachers.
Have a great first day of school tomorrow!
This quote is usually attributed to Albert Einstein (although I couldn’t find any proof of his writing or saying it). It’s an interesting and valid thought. And it’s often mentioned in the nationwide conversation about teacher performance and test scores.
Last Wednesday’s New York Times contained the story, “When Does Holding Teachers Accountable Go Too Far?” I found it to be a good review of some of the challenges faced by educators who, with budget-driven urgency, are trying anew to determine the best way to evaluate teachers (and, it follows, to better connect performance with compensation). The story’s main focus was the concept of measuring “value-added data” for teachers. This is a statistical technique where student test scores are analyzed, measuring improvement from when a teacher started teaching the student to when he/she completed the year. According to the theory, the change in test scores is a measure of the “value” added by the teacher: more increase = more value added and, it follows, better teaching.
The Los Angeles Times recently analyzed seven years of elementary school test scores and created a ranking of 6,000 teachers. “The newspaper named a few teachers — both stars and laggards — and announced that it would release the approximate rankings for all teachers, along with their names.”
The Los Angeles Times articles got teachers riled up, the union called for a boycott of the paper, but...the union also said, more calmly, that they’re willing to discuss making such scores at least a part of teachers’ evaluations. That’s encouraging.
The critics of value-added data point to some real limitations. According to the NY Times, “scores can bounce around from year to year for any one teacher...so a single year of scores — which some states may use for evaluation — can be misleading. In addition, students are not randomly assigned to teachers; indeed, principals may deliberately assign slow learners to certain teachers, unfairly lowering their scores. As for the tests themselves, most do not even try to measure the social skills that are crucial to early learning.” And, thinking about Ridgewood, what about teachers who are already very successful or whose students begin at fairly high-achieving levels? If your students already score very high, and there’s not much higher for them to go, is it fair to judge that teacher as not “adding value?” This is exactly what happened to Ridgewood in last year’s state QSAC evaluation – the District received a lower score in student achievement because our test scores didn’t improve enough. But it was physically impossible for our scores to improve that much – they would have had to have been higher than 100% perfect.
Some educators feel that value-added data can probably help identify the best and the worst teachers, but probably won’t help much in truly evaluating teachers in the middle. Other educators have suggested using the value-added data on the school level, without tying the scores to individual teachers' names. I agree with the NY Times’ writer’s feeling that an important first step would be for us all to agree that no system will ever be perfect. No system can do it all. And, personally, I will never feel good about placing too much emphasis on standardized tests, especially when the tests we have are so imperfect.
The New Jersey Department of Education recently announced a special committee that will be working on teacher evaluation. The big deal, according to them, is that the committee contains teachers, administrators, school board members, legislators, "experts," etc. An apparently inclusive group that will calmly and rationally research and develop some solutions. When I heard they wanted school board members, I immediately tried to volunteer. Turns out, their idea of school board representation was that a staffer from the New Jersey School Board Association will participate. Darn.
Clearly, parents and communities want their schools to be accountable. I believe teachers want to be accountable. It’s in our human nature to rank things, to create order, to understand the value (relative or intrinsic) in everything we do. Test scores are such a seemingly easy solution – what could be more cut and dried than numbers? “The scores don’t lie,” sounds so simple. But aren’t there more things that “count?” Can’t we find a way to wrap our human brains around the concept of things that can’t be counted?
Something to think about as we begin the new school year – a school year in which a new contract will be negotiated with our Ridgewood teachers.
Have a great first day of school tomorrow!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Teaching teachers
I heard an interesting story on NPR's All Things Considered today (yes, I suppose you can tell a lot about a person by the radio she listens to, haha), about teacher training programs. It was titled, "Study Tries To Track Louisiana Teachers' Success" (click here to listen or read the transcript). Apparently, the study tracked student test scores and linked them to where those students' teachers had been educated. There were some interesting findings -- some teacher training programs appeared to result in higher test scores. But one of the problems was that when the teacher education was linked to lower test scores, there was no way to know WHY. There was no way to understand just what aspect of a college's teacher education program was lacking or might have contributed to the lower student achievement. In addition, while the results gave general info about teacher performance overall, the results were not tied to specific teachers -- there was no way to know which teachers needed some sort of intervention or remedial training.
Hmmmm, these are the same challenges that result from standardized testing of students...generalized scores vs. specific assessment of specific students, etc. Rather than improve our ways of assessing student learning, we're just pushing the same semi-useful tools further up the chain, to teachers.
I found the comments -- many from teachers and teacher educators -- on the NPR story as interesting as the story itself.
Part Two of the story will air tomorrow. I'l check it out and try to report back with a little more thought (sorry it's late and one of my resolutions is to try and get a LITTLE more sleep).
Hmmmm, these are the same challenges that result from standardized testing of students...generalized scores vs. specific assessment of specific students, etc. Rather than improve our ways of assessing student learning, we're just pushing the same semi-useful tools further up the chain, to teachers.
I found the comments -- many from teachers and teacher educators -- on the NPR story as interesting as the story itself.
Part Two of the story will air tomorrow. I'l check it out and try to report back with a little more thought (sorry it's late and one of my resolutions is to try and get a LITTLE more sleep).
Friday, December 18, 2009
Standardized Tests and Referendum Recovery
So, I've been a little quiet over the past week...after the months of pre-Referendum activities (including 20+ meetings with the community), I guess I was a little burned out. I’ve been focusing on holiday stuff. And my “real” job, too, (for a change, haha).
Anyway, you can expect my posts to be a little less frequent through the end of this month. I wish everyone a happy, healthy, restful and peaceful holiday season and happy new year!
I’ve been meaning to write about the District-Wide State Testing Report, which Assistant Superintendent Regina Botsford presented at the December 7 meeting. But I’ve been dragging my feet a little because I don’t like the excessive and narrow focus on standardized tests, which I sometimes see. And then the other day I heard an interview with a man who wrote an insider’s “tell-all” book on the standardized test business. Definitely got me feeling even more ambivalent on the topic.
I understand why people can get excited about test results. It’s human nature. We need to order things in the world, and we need to “place” ourselves somewhere in that order. (Bear with me on my amateur psycho-evaluation...this is just my opinion.) And of course we want to place ourselves as high as possible in the food chain. Standardized test scores come out and we immediately want to see how our students compare.
The good news is, overall our scores look good. At the elementary level, the percentage of our students who are “advanced proficient” was better than our DFG* average in every category -- Language Arts, Math and Science. At the high school, same thing. We beat our DFG average in all subjects. At the middle school, our students are basically equal to our DFG in most categories – and just below our DFG in some. It’s important to note that the gap between our scores and the DFG average is narrowing over the past few years, so that’s a good trend. When we discussed the results at the Board meeting on December 8, the general feeling was that middle school presents special challenges and even though our scores dip in grades 6-8, they “catch up” again in high school. That is one way to look at it, but I wonder why our scores dip more than the average scores in our DFG. At a future meeting, the District will present goals for every grade/school, including the middle schools, so I’ll have a chance to ask about that. Again, it does look like our middle school scores are improving relative to the average scores in our DFG, and that’s a good thing.
I've written about standardized test issues in the past. I think there's a place for them, but they need to be part of a complete assessment program. You can read a little more about summative vs. formative assessment here.
(*DFG = District Factor Group. It's the group of districts the state puts us in, based primarily on population density and community affluence. We are a "J" district and other districts in this group are Glen Rock, HoHoKus, Northern Highlands, Saddle River, Upper Saddle River, Woodcliff Lake, Millburn, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Rumson, Chatham, Mountain Lakes.)
Now about that book I mentioned. It’s called Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, by Todd Farley. The author was really interesting on WNYC the other day. I’ve ordered the book and I’ll let you know what I find out. I can tell I’m not going to like it.
Anyway, you can expect my posts to be a little less frequent through the end of this month. I wish everyone a happy, healthy, restful and peaceful holiday season and happy new year!
I’ve been meaning to write about the District-Wide State Testing Report, which Assistant Superintendent Regina Botsford presented at the December 7 meeting. But I’ve been dragging my feet a little because I don’t like the excessive and narrow focus on standardized tests, which I sometimes see. And then the other day I heard an interview with a man who wrote an insider’s “tell-all” book on the standardized test business. Definitely got me feeling even more ambivalent on the topic.
I understand why people can get excited about test results. It’s human nature. We need to order things in the world, and we need to “place” ourselves somewhere in that order. (Bear with me on my amateur psycho-evaluation...this is just my opinion.) And of course we want to place ourselves as high as possible in the food chain. Standardized test scores come out and we immediately want to see how our students compare.
The good news is, overall our scores look good. At the elementary level, the percentage of our students who are “advanced proficient” was better than our DFG* average in every category -- Language Arts, Math and Science. At the high school, same thing. We beat our DFG average in all subjects. At the middle school, our students are basically equal to our DFG in most categories – and just below our DFG in some. It’s important to note that the gap between our scores and the DFG average is narrowing over the past few years, so that’s a good trend. When we discussed the results at the Board meeting on December 8, the general feeling was that middle school presents special challenges and even though our scores dip in grades 6-8, they “catch up” again in high school. That is one way to look at it, but I wonder why our scores dip more than the average scores in our DFG. At a future meeting, the District will present goals for every grade/school, including the middle schools, so I’ll have a chance to ask about that. Again, it does look like our middle school scores are improving relative to the average scores in our DFG, and that’s a good thing.
I've written about standardized test issues in the past. I think there's a place for them, but they need to be part of a complete assessment program. You can read a little more about summative vs. formative assessment here.
(*DFG = District Factor Group. It's the group of districts the state puts us in, based primarily on population density and community affluence. We are a "J" district and other districts in this group are Glen Rock, HoHoKus, Northern Highlands, Saddle River, Upper Saddle River, Woodcliff Lake, Millburn, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Rumson, Chatham, Mountain Lakes.)
Now about that book I mentioned. It’s called Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, by Todd Farley. The author was really interesting on WNYC the other day. I’ve ordered the book and I’ll let you know what I find out. I can tell I’m not going to like it.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Math scores: NJ up slightly, nation is flat.
(Revised 9:42 AM)
A news release from Governor Corzine today proudly proclaimed:
NEW JERSEY'S FOURTH AND EIGHTH GRADERS AMONG NATION'S LEADERS IN MATH
Fourth grade scores surpass national average by eight points; Eighth grade scores eleven points higher than national average
Isn't that great news? Sure it is, if you define "great" as "not bad" or "better than it could have been."
Another story (New York Times), states that, for the first time in 19 years, U.S. math scores nationwide are "flat." No increase whatsoever.
According to the Times story, "The latest results on the most important nationwide math test show that student achievement grew faster during the years before the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, when states were dominant in education policy, than over the years since, when the federal law has become a powerful force in classrooms."
NCLB requires schools to bring 100 percent of students to reading and math proficiency by 2014. Guess what, as a nation, we're not going to make it.
Sure, New Jersey's numbers are encouraging, in an inching-forward kind of way. According to the press release from the NJDOE: "New Jersey fourth graders continue to score higher on the NAEP math test than students in all but three other states, the report noted. The average math score of fourth graders in New Jersey was 247, while the average score for public school students across the nation was 239."
"This is good news for our kids, our families and our future," said Governor Corzine. "The average scale score for the grade eight students at 293 is four points higher that it was in 2007 and eleven points higher than the national average of 282. While there is still much more work to be done, the eighth grade results in particular show that the investments this administration is making in education is paying off, and that the efforts of our educators are yielding positive results."
Those are just a few excerpts from the press release. Click here to read the entire thing.
And click here to review the complete NAEP report card.
A news release from Governor Corzine today proudly proclaimed:
NEW JERSEY'S FOURTH AND EIGHTH GRADERS AMONG NATION'S LEADERS IN MATH
Fourth grade scores surpass national average by eight points; Eighth grade scores eleven points higher than national average
Isn't that great news? Sure it is, if you define "great" as "not bad" or "better than it could have been."
Another story (New York Times), states that, for the first time in 19 years, U.S. math scores nationwide are "flat." No increase whatsoever.
According to the Times story, "The latest results on the most important nationwide math test show that student achievement grew faster during the years before the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, when states were dominant in education policy, than over the years since, when the federal law has become a powerful force in classrooms."
NCLB requires schools to bring 100 percent of students to reading and math proficiency by 2014. Guess what, as a nation, we're not going to make it.
Sure, New Jersey's numbers are encouraging, in an inching-forward kind of way. According to the press release from the NJDOE: "New Jersey fourth graders continue to score higher on the NAEP math test than students in all but three other states, the report noted. The average math score of fourth graders in New Jersey was 247, while the average score for public school students across the nation was 239."
"This is good news for our kids, our families and our future," said Governor Corzine. "The average scale score for the grade eight students at 293 is four points higher that it was in 2007 and eleven points higher than the national average of 282. While there is still much more work to be done, the eighth grade results in particular show that the investments this administration is making in education is paying off, and that the efforts of our educators are yielding positive results."
Those are just a few excerpts from the press release. Click here to read the entire thing.
And click here to review the complete NAEP report card.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
What is Learnia and why are students taking more tests?
As you may know, I’m not a big fan of standardized tests as the be-all, end-all of determining success in education or learning. (Visit FairTest.org for more info on why.) So you may wonder why I support the use of Learnia in our schools, which at first glance looks like more testing.
First, all testing is a form of “assessment.” We assess what students have learned. Of course we do. Learnia is a type of “formative assessment.” What is that?
Two definitions, according to FairTest.org:
“Summative assessment is the attempt to summarize student learning at some point in time, say the end of a course. Most standardized tests are summative. They are not designed to provide the immediate, contextualized feedback useful for helping teacher and student during the learning process. High quality summative information can, of course, shape how teachers organize their courses or what schools offer their students.
By contrast, formative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process. If the primary purpose of assessment is to support high-quality learning, then formative assessment ought to be understood as the most important assessment practice.”
In simpler terms, Learnia allows teachers to see how students are doing during teaching/learning. It gives feedback on specific areas within subjects – showing what needs more attention and what is being mastered. And it shows this on an individual student basis, collecting learning data over time. So instead of just getting a score of 000 or “Proficient” on a test, the teacher can see that Johnny is doing better with decimals but not with fractions. (That’s a super-oversimplication -- in reality the results are much more precise and detailed.)
NJASK or those other summative assessments may be great for drawing lines in the sand and evaluating districts or schools from 30,000 feet, in order to assign funding or populate magazine rankings, but formative assessments such as Learnia are much more useful in terms of teaching and learning…which is what we’re here for, right?
First, all testing is a form of “assessment.” We assess what students have learned. Of course we do. Learnia is a type of “formative assessment.” What is that?
Two definitions, according to FairTest.org:
“Summative assessment is the attempt to summarize student learning at some point in time, say the end of a course. Most standardized tests are summative. They are not designed to provide the immediate, contextualized feedback useful for helping teacher and student during the learning process. High quality summative information can, of course, shape how teachers organize their courses or what schools offer their students.
By contrast, formative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process. If the primary purpose of assessment is to support high-quality learning, then formative assessment ought to be understood as the most important assessment practice.”
In simpler terms, Learnia allows teachers to see how students are doing during teaching/learning. It gives feedback on specific areas within subjects – showing what needs more attention and what is being mastered. And it shows this on an individual student basis, collecting learning data over time. So instead of just getting a score of 000 or “Proficient” on a test, the teacher can see that Johnny is doing better with decimals but not with fractions. (That’s a super-oversimplication -- in reality the results are much more precise and detailed.)
NJASK or those other summative assessments may be great for drawing lines in the sand and evaluating districts or schools from 30,000 feet, in order to assign funding or populate magazine rankings, but formative assessments such as Learnia are much more useful in terms of teaching and learning…which is what we’re here for, right?
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The value (or lack thereof) in testing
This morning, a reader wrote:
Test scores are the only thing that matter. They tell us what has been learned and retained by a student. All this nonsense ridiculing test scores is from the same folks who ridicule drills as "drill and kill." Laurie, you have bought into the liberal mindset of the educrats who we have hired to administrate our district. How unfortunate for our students that you abhor critical thinking.
My response:
Au contraire, mon frere!
(Sorry, I could not resist)
It is precisely because I do not abhor critical thinking that I can argue against your narrow belief that “test scores are the only thing that matter.” (I do, however, abhor the word abhor, and other such hyperbole, on my blog.)
First, let’s address the specific issue in question – whether test scores are the best (or “only”) way to judge a textbook’s value. My point was that the textbook alone is not the only variable influencing scores. Do you completely discount the influence of teachers? Do you not believe there are good teachers and bad teachers? Does it make no difference if students spend 20 minutes per day vs. 90 minutes per day on math? What about other materials, aka supplementation? What about tutoring? What about the students themselves? Don’t they play into this equation at all? The members of Ridgewood’s Math Planning Team listed student achievement (in other districts) as one of the criteria to consider when evaluating the textbooks, but they decided as a group that it would not be the #1 criterion. I think that makes sense, and this whole paragraph is an example of me using “critical thinking” on the topic.
As for the value of testing in general...well, I’ve sort of addressed it above, haven’t I? Standardized tests don’t measure much besides test-taking ability. They do not show how students are learning, what they are learning, what kinds of help they might need or the quality of teaching they are receiving. They don’t measure the ability to think or create or use the critical thinking of which you are so enamored.
The standardized tests that our children are subject to in 2009 are based on behaviorist psychological theories of the 19th century. In the past 100+ years, cognitive and developmental psychologists have come to understand that people learn by connecting what they already know with what they are trying to learn – not by recalling isolated facts and narrow skills.
Relying on standardized test scores is the easy way out, the lazy way, and the political way, via misguided efforts like No Child Left Behind. Standardized tests are also the dangerous way, dangerous to education in general. As schools feel more and more pressure to focus on test scores, we are pressured to narrow curriculum to match the tests. And if you're looking for a way to ensure accountability, the tests our kids take really make our schools accountable to one thing only: the test companies.
Want to hear something interesting? Singapore’s education officials have been studying U.S. schools, with a special interest in reducing their emphasis on standardized tests and increasing their use of authentic assessment. (More to come on this topic.)
Finally, I’m not going to take your bait on the “liberal mindset” criticism...politics should have no place in education. Why do you folks always fall back on that?
Test scores are the only thing that matter. They tell us what has been learned and retained by a student. All this nonsense ridiculing test scores is from the same folks who ridicule drills as "drill and kill." Laurie, you have bought into the liberal mindset of the educrats who we have hired to administrate our district. How unfortunate for our students that you abhor critical thinking.
My response:
Au contraire, mon frere!
(Sorry, I could not resist)
It is precisely because I do not abhor critical thinking that I can argue against your narrow belief that “test scores are the only thing that matter.” (I do, however, abhor the word abhor, and other such hyperbole, on my blog.)
First, let’s address the specific issue in question – whether test scores are the best (or “only”) way to judge a textbook’s value. My point was that the textbook alone is not the only variable influencing scores. Do you completely discount the influence of teachers? Do you not believe there are good teachers and bad teachers? Does it make no difference if students spend 20 minutes per day vs. 90 minutes per day on math? What about other materials, aka supplementation? What about tutoring? What about the students themselves? Don’t they play into this equation at all? The members of Ridgewood’s Math Planning Team listed student achievement (in other districts) as one of the criteria to consider when evaluating the textbooks, but they decided as a group that it would not be the #1 criterion. I think that makes sense, and this whole paragraph is an example of me using “critical thinking” on the topic.
As for the value of testing in general...well, I’ve sort of addressed it above, haven’t I? Standardized tests don’t measure much besides test-taking ability. They do not show how students are learning, what they are learning, what kinds of help they might need or the quality of teaching they are receiving. They don’t measure the ability to think or create or use the critical thinking of which you are so enamored.
The standardized tests that our children are subject to in 2009 are based on behaviorist psychological theories of the 19th century. In the past 100+ years, cognitive and developmental psychologists have come to understand that people learn by connecting what they already know with what they are trying to learn – not by recalling isolated facts and narrow skills.
Relying on standardized test scores is the easy way out, the lazy way, and the political way, via misguided efforts like No Child Left Behind. Standardized tests are also the dangerous way, dangerous to education in general. As schools feel more and more pressure to focus on test scores, we are pressured to narrow curriculum to match the tests. And if you're looking for a way to ensure accountability, the tests our kids take really make our schools accountable to one thing only: the test companies.
Want to hear something interesting? Singapore’s education officials have been studying U.S. schools, with a special interest in reducing their emphasis on standardized tests and increasing their use of authentic assessment. (More to come on this topic.)
Finally, I’m not going to take your bait on the “liberal mindset” criticism...politics should have no place in education. Why do you folks always fall back on that?
Friday, May 22, 2009
SAT tutors offer scant help, study finds
From today's Record...as the parent of someone whose SAT scores went DOWN after doing a weekly Kaplan test prep course, this does not surprise me!
BY KATHLEEN CARROLL
NorthJersey.com
Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.
Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.
Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.
"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."
Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.
Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.
Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.
"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."
BY KATHLEEN CARROLL
NorthJersey.com
Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.
Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.
Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.
"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."
Recession-minded families wondering if they should ditch that $100-an-hour SAT tutor got a murky answer this week from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
Coaching and prep classes for college-admissions exams are helpful, but don’t usually change students’ scores all that much. But any increase could be significant because some colleges use very small score differences to choose between similar candidates for admission, an NACAC report said.
Some test-prep providers promise score gains of up to 100 points on the SAT, but students usually gain about 30 points, according to the report. On the math section of the exam, average gains are between 10 and 20 points; on the reading section, students gain an average of 5-10 points after being coached, the report said.
Short-term preparation classes result in "very, very small gains," said Laurence Bunin, general manager of the SAT and senior vice president for operations at the College Board, which developed and administers the test.
"The test is testing what you learned in school, so unless students are learning more material, they are not going to do a lot better," he said. "There’s no trick. Tricks don’t work."
Monday, March 23, 2009
Better ways to test (and teach) reading/language arts
Thought-provoking op-ed by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in the online NY Times today. Here are some excerpts:
IN his recent education speech, President Obama asked the states to raise their standards and develop “assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test.” With the No Child Left Behind law up for reauthorization this year, the onus is now on lawmakers and educators to find a way to maintain accountability while mitigating the current tendency to reduce schooling to a joyless grind of practice exams and empty instruction in “reading strategies.”
Before we throw away bubble tests, though, we should institute a relatively simple change that would lessen the worst effects of the test-prep culture and improve education in the bargain.
These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.
Later, it continued:
Let’s imagine a different situation. Students now must take annual reading tests from third grade through eighth. If the reading passages on each test were culled from each grade’s specific curricular content in literature, science, history, geography and the arts, the tests would exhibit what researchers call “consequential validity” — meaning that the tests would actually help improve education. Test preparation would focus on the content of the tests, rather than continue the fruitless attempt to teach test taking.
A 1988 study indicated why this improvement in testing should be instituted. Experimenters separated seventh- and eighth-grade students into two groups — strong and weak readers as measured by standard reading tests. The students in each group were subdivided according to their baseball knowledge. Then they were all given a reading test with passages about baseball. Low-level readers with high baseball knowledge significantly outperformed strong readers with little background knowledge.
The experiment confirmed what language researchers have long maintained: the key to comprehension is familiarity with the relevant subject. For a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge.
And later he he wraps up:
Better-defined standards in history, science, literature and the arts combined with knowledge-based reading tests would encourage the schools to conceive the whole course of study as a reading curriculum — exactly what a good knowledge-based curriculum should be. Schools would also begin to use classroom time more productively, which is important for all students and critically so for disadvantaged ones.
Reform of standards and tests needs to begin in the earliest grades. Knowledge and vocabulary are plants of slow organic growth. By eighth grade, after the cumulative benefits of a more coherent curriculum and more productive tests, students would begin to score much better on all reading exams, including those that aren’t based on a school curriculum. More important, they would be prepared to be capable, productive citizens.
We do not need to abandon either the principle of accountability or the fill-in-the-bubble format. Rather we need to move from teaching to the test to tests that are worth teaching to.
As the parent of a student who is really smart yet freezes on standardized tests and performs horribly even though she knows the material cold, I find this extremely interesting. (Click here to read the entire article.)
IN his recent education speech, President Obama asked the states to raise their standards and develop “assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test.” With the No Child Left Behind law up for reauthorization this year, the onus is now on lawmakers and educators to find a way to maintain accountability while mitigating the current tendency to reduce schooling to a joyless grind of practice exams and empty instruction in “reading strategies.”
Before we throw away bubble tests, though, we should institute a relatively simple change that would lessen the worst effects of the test-prep culture and improve education in the bargain.
These much maligned, fill-in-the-bubble reading tests are technically among the most reliable and valid tests available. The problem is that the reading passages used in these tests are random. They are not aligned with explicit grade-by-grade content standards. Children are asked to read and then answer multiple-choice questions about such topics as taking a hike in the Appalachians even though they’ve never left the sidewalks of New York, nor studied the Appalachians in school.
Later, it continued:
Let’s imagine a different situation. Students now must take annual reading tests from third grade through eighth. If the reading passages on each test were culled from each grade’s specific curricular content in literature, science, history, geography and the arts, the tests would exhibit what researchers call “consequential validity” — meaning that the tests would actually help improve education. Test preparation would focus on the content of the tests, rather than continue the fruitless attempt to teach test taking.
A 1988 study indicated why this improvement in testing should be instituted. Experimenters separated seventh- and eighth-grade students into two groups — strong and weak readers as measured by standard reading tests. The students in each group were subdivided according to their baseball knowledge. Then they were all given a reading test with passages about baseball. Low-level readers with high baseball knowledge significantly outperformed strong readers with little background knowledge.
The experiment confirmed what language researchers have long maintained: the key to comprehension is familiarity with the relevant subject. For a student with a basic ability to decode print, a reading-comprehension test is not chiefly a test of formal techniques but a test of background knowledge.
And later he he wraps up:
Better-defined standards in history, science, literature and the arts combined with knowledge-based reading tests would encourage the schools to conceive the whole course of study as a reading curriculum — exactly what a good knowledge-based curriculum should be. Schools would also begin to use classroom time more productively, which is important for all students and critically so for disadvantaged ones.
Reform of standards and tests needs to begin in the earliest grades. Knowledge and vocabulary are plants of slow organic growth. By eighth grade, after the cumulative benefits of a more coherent curriculum and more productive tests, students would begin to score much better on all reading exams, including those that aren’t based on a school curriculum. More important, they would be prepared to be capable, productive citizens.
We do not need to abandon either the principle of accountability or the fill-in-the-bubble format. Rather we need to move from teaching to the test to tests that are worth teaching to.
As the parent of a student who is really smart yet freezes on standardized tests and performs horribly even though she knows the material cold, I find this extremely interesting. (Click here to read the entire article.)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
What is Left Behind
I stumbled on this interesting essay which was written in late 2007. I hope the Obama administration can inject some sense into this senseless situation.
What Is Left Behind
As NCLB’s reauthorization or expiration takes center stage in Washington, American citizens who care about the future of our public schools and our democracy must be heard. Our shared future is not an abstract political possibility but, rather, one that breathes in every son or daughter, every niece or nephew, every grandson or granddaughter, every neighbor’s child, and every one of our own students who enters the schoolhouse door.
While Secretary Spellings and legislators from both parties stubbornly proclaim that NCLB is working—despite of all the empirical evidence indicating otherwise—and as politicians boast that no child is being left behind, let us pause to consider what has been jettisoned. Let us take a moment to think about what has been left behind, what has been dumped, what has been pushed out the door because there is no longer space or time for it in the school day.
Now if your school still has some of these things, I say congratulations. At the same time, however, I say beware. Beware, because the unattainable goal of 100% proficiency that is the bedrock of NCLB makes it most likely that over the next seven years, your school will join the 30% of schools today where these crucial elements of school have already been left behind.
As American citizens deeply concerned about the health of our democratic republic, we are, of course, concerned and horrified that the social studies have been left behind. In Florida and other states, social studies teachers, afraid of losing their jobs, are lobbying for social studies to be tested, so that their work will survive.
The emphasis on math and reading tests has meant less geography, civics, and government, which leaves children ignorant of how public decisions are made or where their community fits into state, national, and global contexts—or even that there is a context beyond their street and TV screens. Children are left, in effect, stranded on lonely islands of ignorance, without the impetus or skills to have their voices heard in ways that make the world listen.
History, too, has been left behind, making it assured that this next generation will grow up more likely to be swayed by the mistakes and misdeeds of the past to which they remain clueless. What is a democratic republic and where did it come from? Sorry, that’s not on the test, either.
And economics? While children in wealthy communities, the ones without AYP worries yet, play stock market games and learn about hedge funds, the economic education of children in schools under the testing gun consists of collecting “Scholar Dollars” that they trade in for bags of Skittles, a pittance of pay for a meaningless labor whose significance remains a mystery to them.
Health and physical education have been left behind, too, leaving children out of shape and subject to diseases associated with obesity and inactivity. At the same time, children are left in the dark about the importance of healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, the kinds of foods that are scarce in the small stores of poor neighborhoods. And left behind, too, is information about the hazards of a never-ending diet of Taco Bell and McDonalds—because that's not on the test, either.
Art and music have been left behind, leaving in their crossing wakes an imagination gap, a creativity gap, and expression gap, an aesthetic gap, a souls gap. We can add these gaps to the achievement gap that parallels a widening economic gap – despite years and years of increased testing and accountability in those schools where the economic gaps are at their deepest points.
Diversity of thought has been left behind. What remains in failing schools and the ones teetering on the testing bubble are collections of remote and desiccated facts that represent not even a single culture, but rather, an anti-culture that has essentially eradicated cultural values as a discussable issue.
Science has been left behind, too, and thus the primary tool for understanding how the modern world is organized. Where science survives, it is where it is tested, and the kind of science that remains is the kind that can be fit into a multiple-choice format, not the kind that exercises children’s ability to think, solve problems, conduct experiments, and make good decisions.
Literature has been left behind, and with it the love of reading and books and the curiosity that is spawned and kept alive by the life of the imagination. Stories are now substituted by the measured mouthing of nonsense syllables and the framing of comprehension responses that the children who utter them do not understand.
Recess has been left behind in a third of all American elementary schools, and as the percentage of failing schools increases, we may expect that number to rise. Play, itself, then becomes left behind, and along with it one of the most useful skills of all—to think as if, what if, as in what if life were somehow different than, or what if there were a choice beyond a, b, c, or d?
Nap time has been left behind in kindergarten and even in pre-K, as teachers focus on replacing dream time with skill practice time for a future of testing.
Field trips, holidays, and assemblies have been left behind unless they can be used for test preparation, or unless they come after the test, those short precious weeks when smiles may be seen to return to teachers’ lips and to students’ eyes.
The love of the teacher for her craft has been left behind in so many schools, replaced by the burdensome regimen of the pacing guide and the production schedule and the script. And time for teacher-led discussion, exploration, reflection? There is only time for teachers to learn their lines, trying to become good actors in a very bad play where the audience is compelled to participate. And time to weigh the results of the practice tests in order to get ready for the real tests.
Left behind, too, are teacher autonomy and professional discretion. Now whole hallways of fourth grade classes are on the same page of the same scripted lesson at the same moment that any supervisor should walk by, supervisors who are identically trained to look for the same manifestations of sameness, from bulletin boards to hand signals to the distance that children are trained to maintain from one another as they march to lunch, with their arms holding together their imaginary straightjackets.
Most troubling, however, of all that has been left behind is the teacher’s nurturing care, the teacher whose advocacy for and sensitivity to every child’s fragile humanity has been a trademark of what it means to be the teacher of children. With the current laser focus on avoiding test failure, even as expectations become higher with each passing year, the child who cannot do more than a child can do now becomes viewed as the stumbling block to a success that is increasingly elusive.
Instead, then, of being viewed as the reasons we have schools to begin with, the needful child who is, indeed, behind, becomes the obstacle to a proficiency that becomes further and further out of reach. When this occurs, as it surely does every time teachers and principals fall prey to the pressure, children become the burden that must be reluctantly borne, obstacles to a success that their own disability, poverty, or language issues complicate— and that even the best teacher can never compensate for.
Students, then, come to be seen as complicit in creating the failure that, in fact, no one, teacher or student, can remedy, because there is a monstrous system that has made child failure and, thus, school failure inevitable, a monstrous system that has traded and treated this generation of children as a means to attain a political end—a political end that, in fact, threatens our future as a free people who are able to think, to solve problems, to care, to imagine, to understand, to have empathy, to participate, to grow, to live.
So as you listen to the growing debate this fall in Washington, please do not leave your political responsibility behind and your good sense with it. Go online tonight and order the Linda Perlstein book, Tested. . .. Read it and, as you do so, keep in mind that the horror that she so ably describes occurred in a school that is considered a success, a “lighthouse school.” Think, then, of what it must be like in the thirty percent of American schools that are now labeled failures.
Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."
Call and write and visit your school boards and your Congressional delegation. Remind them what you value and what you believe to be significant for now and for our future, and what you know that now and finally must to be left behind.
Jim Horn
Monmouth University
September 2007
What Is Left Behind
As NCLB’s reauthorization or expiration takes center stage in Washington, American citizens who care about the future of our public schools and our democracy must be heard. Our shared future is not an abstract political possibility but, rather, one that breathes in every son or daughter, every niece or nephew, every grandson or granddaughter, every neighbor’s child, and every one of our own students who enters the schoolhouse door.
While Secretary Spellings and legislators from both parties stubbornly proclaim that NCLB is working—despite of all the empirical evidence indicating otherwise—and as politicians boast that no child is being left behind, let us pause to consider what has been jettisoned. Let us take a moment to think about what has been left behind, what has been dumped, what has been pushed out the door because there is no longer space or time for it in the school day.
Now if your school still has some of these things, I say congratulations. At the same time, however, I say beware. Beware, because the unattainable goal of 100% proficiency that is the bedrock of NCLB makes it most likely that over the next seven years, your school will join the 30% of schools today where these crucial elements of school have already been left behind.
As American citizens deeply concerned about the health of our democratic republic, we are, of course, concerned and horrified that the social studies have been left behind. In Florida and other states, social studies teachers, afraid of losing their jobs, are lobbying for social studies to be tested, so that their work will survive.
The emphasis on math and reading tests has meant less geography, civics, and government, which leaves children ignorant of how public decisions are made or where their community fits into state, national, and global contexts—or even that there is a context beyond their street and TV screens. Children are left, in effect, stranded on lonely islands of ignorance, without the impetus or skills to have their voices heard in ways that make the world listen.
History, too, has been left behind, making it assured that this next generation will grow up more likely to be swayed by the mistakes and misdeeds of the past to which they remain clueless. What is a democratic republic and where did it come from? Sorry, that’s not on the test, either.
And economics? While children in wealthy communities, the ones without AYP worries yet, play stock market games and learn about hedge funds, the economic education of children in schools under the testing gun consists of collecting “Scholar Dollars” that they trade in for bags of Skittles, a pittance of pay for a meaningless labor whose significance remains a mystery to them.
Health and physical education have been left behind, too, leaving children out of shape and subject to diseases associated with obesity and inactivity. At the same time, children are left in the dark about the importance of healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, the kinds of foods that are scarce in the small stores of poor neighborhoods. And left behind, too, is information about the hazards of a never-ending diet of Taco Bell and McDonalds—because that's not on the test, either.
Art and music have been left behind, leaving in their crossing wakes an imagination gap, a creativity gap, and expression gap, an aesthetic gap, a souls gap. We can add these gaps to the achievement gap that parallels a widening economic gap – despite years and years of increased testing and accountability in those schools where the economic gaps are at their deepest points.
Diversity of thought has been left behind. What remains in failing schools and the ones teetering on the testing bubble are collections of remote and desiccated facts that represent not even a single culture, but rather, an anti-culture that has essentially eradicated cultural values as a discussable issue.
Science has been left behind, too, and thus the primary tool for understanding how the modern world is organized. Where science survives, it is where it is tested, and the kind of science that remains is the kind that can be fit into a multiple-choice format, not the kind that exercises children’s ability to think, solve problems, conduct experiments, and make good decisions.
Literature has been left behind, and with it the love of reading and books and the curiosity that is spawned and kept alive by the life of the imagination. Stories are now substituted by the measured mouthing of nonsense syllables and the framing of comprehension responses that the children who utter them do not understand.
Recess has been left behind in a third of all American elementary schools, and as the percentage of failing schools increases, we may expect that number to rise. Play, itself, then becomes left behind, and along with it one of the most useful skills of all—to think as if, what if, as in what if life were somehow different than, or what if there were a choice beyond a, b, c, or d?
Nap time has been left behind in kindergarten and even in pre-K, as teachers focus on replacing dream time with skill practice time for a future of testing.
Field trips, holidays, and assemblies have been left behind unless they can be used for test preparation, or unless they come after the test, those short precious weeks when smiles may be seen to return to teachers’ lips and to students’ eyes.
The love of the teacher for her craft has been left behind in so many schools, replaced by the burdensome regimen of the pacing guide and the production schedule and the script. And time for teacher-led discussion, exploration, reflection? There is only time for teachers to learn their lines, trying to become good actors in a very bad play where the audience is compelled to participate. And time to weigh the results of the practice tests in order to get ready for the real tests.
Left behind, too, are teacher autonomy and professional discretion. Now whole hallways of fourth grade classes are on the same page of the same scripted lesson at the same moment that any supervisor should walk by, supervisors who are identically trained to look for the same manifestations of sameness, from bulletin boards to hand signals to the distance that children are trained to maintain from one another as they march to lunch, with their arms holding together their imaginary straightjackets.
Most troubling, however, of all that has been left behind is the teacher’s nurturing care, the teacher whose advocacy for and sensitivity to every child’s fragile humanity has been a trademark of what it means to be the teacher of children. With the current laser focus on avoiding test failure, even as expectations become higher with each passing year, the child who cannot do more than a child can do now becomes viewed as the stumbling block to a success that is increasingly elusive.
Instead, then, of being viewed as the reasons we have schools to begin with, the needful child who is, indeed, behind, becomes the obstacle to a proficiency that becomes further and further out of reach. When this occurs, as it surely does every time teachers and principals fall prey to the pressure, children become the burden that must be reluctantly borne, obstacles to a success that their own disability, poverty, or language issues complicate— and that even the best teacher can never compensate for.
Students, then, come to be seen as complicit in creating the failure that, in fact, no one, teacher or student, can remedy, because there is a monstrous system that has made child failure and, thus, school failure inevitable, a monstrous system that has traded and treated this generation of children as a means to attain a political end—a political end that, in fact, threatens our future as a free people who are able to think, to solve problems, to care, to imagine, to understand, to have empathy, to participate, to grow, to live.
So as you listen to the growing debate this fall in Washington, please do not leave your political responsibility behind and your good sense with it. Go online tonight and order the Linda Perlstein book, Tested. . .. Read it and, as you do so, keep in mind that the horror that she so ably describes occurred in a school that is considered a success, a “lighthouse school.” Think, then, of what it must be like in the thirty percent of American schools that are now labeled failures.
Recently, a quote by Cal State professor, Art Costa showed up on one of internet discussion groups, a quote that is horribly relevant today: "What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value."
Call and write and visit your school boards and your Congressional delegation. Remind them what you value and what you believe to be significant for now and for our future, and what you know that now and finally must to be left behind.
Jim Horn
Monmouth University
September 2007
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Paying students for AP tests?
Well, I can't say I''m shocked that a controversial program in NYC to pay students $500-$1000 for passing AP tests is showing "mixed results." And by mixed results I think they mean it's a waste of money. Today they announced that in the first year of the program, they shelled out $2 million and -- guess what -- the number of kids passing AP tests actually went down slightly. Brilliant.
You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/education/20cash.html?ex=1376971200&en=63c3e37cfe6454af&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I was surprised to read how many of these cash-for-grades or cash-for-attendance programs are out there around the country. States and districts keep trying it, even though there is little evidence that it ever works.
Favorite quote is from Superintendent David Hire of Coshocton, OH, whose district gave out $62,000 in gift certificates to kids who passed state achievement tests: "I think it helps the kids take the test more seriously...It gives them something to look forward to, and it helps to keep them focused."
Does anyone else find this disturbing?
You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/education/20cash.html?ex=1376971200&en=63c3e37cfe6454af&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
I was surprised to read how many of these cash-for-grades or cash-for-attendance programs are out there around the country. States and districts keep trying it, even though there is little evidence that it ever works.
Favorite quote is from Superintendent David Hire of Coshocton, OH, whose district gave out $62,000 in gift certificates to kids who passed state achievement tests: "I think it helps the kids take the test more seriously...It gives them something to look forward to, and it helps to keep them focused."
Does anyone else find this disturbing?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Test Scores
The NJ state Board of Education recently changed the so-called "cut scores" for proficiency and advanced proficiency in grades 5-8, in language arts and math. Before the change, a score of 33%-46% was considered "proficient." The new cutoffs are:
6th Grade Language Arts: 53% = Proficient; 76% = Advanced Proficient
6th Grade Math: 50% = Proficient; 82% = Advanced Proficient
8th Grade Language Arts: 55% = Proficient; 74% = Advanced Proficient
8th Grade Math: 50% = Proficient; 77% = Advanced Proficient
These new cutoffs will be applied to the tests that were taken last spring.
So...I have several thoughts about this. The first one is surprise that a score of 33% on any test could be described as "proficient" in that subject. Really? So, following this logic, 47% was called "advanced proficient." And then what...does that mean, say, 60% would be considered "perfect?"
I don't know the history of how these scores and labels were developed, but it reminds me of Starbucks' marketing...you know, where "Tall" is the smallest drink?
It's frustrating for parents and community members (and this BOE member) to learn about the low cut-offs, and I have to say it does seem to be a good move to raise the cutoffs. Honestly, does it seem crazy to expect "proficient" to mean 50% or more? Not to me. I think it will help us have a much more realistic picture of how our students are doing, how well they are actually learning.
HOWEVER, you realize what this means, right? When Ridgewood gets its scores for grades 5-8 testing from last spring, many students who would have scored "proficient" under the previous system will now miss the cutoff. Same thing for Advanced Proficient. Bottom line, even though our students' numerical scores (and their actual performance) may have improved, our numbers of proficient and advanced proficient will go down. This will upset some people -- even though it should not. All of the first scores using the new system will be like re-setting the gauge. It makes it harder for us to compare this year's performance to last, but it doesn't affect our ability to compare our students' performance to that of other districts. Also (and this is the state's stated reason for the change), we should be able to better identify those students who need help. Perhaps any student who falls from Proficient to Partial Proficient should immediately be given some sort of remedial or special attention.
Statewide, there are concerns that some groups and some schools will not make AYP in the No Child Left Behind sweepstakes. I'm sure that will happen...and then those schools will be punished...even though students' actual performance may have improved. Maybe the NCLB police will take this into consideration. In any event, it will definitely add to the NCLB drama.
It's too bad the only scores the district gets are these "proficient" or "advanced proficient" numbers. I wonder if there is any way to get the actual numbers, the actual scores. That would allow us to track our own students more carefully. Even better, wouldn't it be great if we could get test scores broken down into smaller areas, for example, in addition to an overall "math" score, how about scores for geometry vs. algebra...or calculations vs. word problems? Then we'd REALLY know how our instructional programs are doing. I think I'm getting a little carried away and I can already guess the answer, but I'll see what I can find out about this.
In the meantime, we'll wait for our Grades 5-8 scores to come in and see where this new rating system gets us.
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