Huge Happenings In Public Ed Throughout the U.S.
First up, Testing
It appears that most people are in agreement - there is too much testing in this country. (Sorry, except for Arne Duncan.) Going to the press conference at the Senator Patty Murray event at Madrona certainly made that clear. Senator Murray says there needs to be work to reduce the "redundant and unnecessary testing" in our schools. (No, she wouldn't be more specific than that.) She also said she had heard from many parents and educators that the current testing does not meet the needs of students especially around progress.
She could not have been more clear, "NCLB is broken" and it's "no secret" that it is not working. She said there was no disagreement about this in Congress.
But she did say a couple of disturbing things. One, they need "data." Data is what is going to tell us everything we need to know about student progress. Two, I asked her about student data privacy being included in any reworking of NCLB and she said, yes, there were many issues in education and this is one of them. She said it is a growing concern but only seemed concerned in a general way.
Stories about the rising up against testing.
PoliticoPro - Testing Under Fire
Huffington Post - About kindergarten teachers in Tulsa who refuse to give MAP testing to their students.
From the Lace to the Top blog, an excellent piece about testing.
It appears that most people are in agreement - there is too much testing in this country. (Sorry, except for Arne Duncan.) Going to the press conference at the Senator Patty Murray event at Madrona certainly made that clear. Senator Murray says there needs to be work to reduce the "redundant and unnecessary testing" in our schools. (No, she wouldn't be more specific than that.) She also said she had heard from many parents and educators that the current testing does not meet the needs of students especially around progress.
She could not have been more clear, "NCLB is broken" and it's "no secret" that it is not working. She said there was no disagreement about this in Congress.
But she did say a couple of disturbing things. One, they need "data." Data is what is going to tell us everything we need to know about student progress. Two, I asked her about student data privacy being included in any reworking of NCLB and she said, yes, there were many issues in education and this is one of them. She said it is a growing concern but only seemed concerned in a general way.
Stories about the rising up against testing.
PoliticoPro - Testing Under Fire
Huffington Post - About kindergarten teachers in Tulsa who refuse to give MAP testing to their students.
From the Lace to the Top blog, an excellent piece about testing.
If my child is going to sit for 500 minutes to take a test there better be a good reason. To date, I have not heard of any.Washington Post - Chicago School district is refusing to give the Common Core PARCC test.
Comments
Essentially, Sen. Murray echoes the Secretary's position on testing --- that annual state summative testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school should remain ala NCLB should remain in place. It's the additional testing piled on by the state and districts that has led to over-testing according to Sen. Murray, Sec. Duncan, and many others.
--- swk
"In a speech on Monday to outline the administration’s priorities for a revision of No Child Left Behind, the signature Bush-era education law, Mr. Duncan said that “parents, teachers and students have both the right and the absolute need to know how much progress all students are making each year towards college- and career-readiness.”
Here's the problem:
- how much testing? Is he talking one annual test? What about states and districts?
- how much of this is driven NOT just solely around student outcomes but tying it to teacher evaluations? Those seemingly go hand in hand and I'm not sure they should.
My issue - and maybe you can help, SWK - is the difference between "testing" and "assessments." Are they the same? What is the difference? And how much is too much assessment? Who decides?
If Duncan truly cared, he'd have a loud public opinion on this issue of overtesting and help parents.
Instead, like Murray, it's a lot of yada, yada, yada.
I do agree with SWK that we have too many levels of government impacting our classrooms, and this results in excessive testing. That said, I don't see the feds, state, district or schools really wanting to change.
Murray wants to identify areas of need. Well, with 50% of students living in poverty...this is not a monumental task....:)
However, I could argue that the use of the term "testing" could refer more generally to the practice of providing assessments while the term "assessments" is a more technical term that refers to specific assessments being provided, e.g., MAP, SBAC ELA, ACT, Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), etc.
But generally, a test and an assessment are the same thing.
On a related note, I agree with you that the fairly recent explosion of testing/assessments is directly related to tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. Because this cannot (or should not) be done with summative scores, states and districts have mistakenly chosen to pile on additional diagnostic/formative/interim assessments on schools in order to accomplish this misguided policy. If we could get rid of the use of student test scores in teacher evaluation, we could see a decrease in student testing/assessments in our schools.
--- swk
I also believe a lot of this push for "assessments" is about data gathering (and not just to see how a student is progressing).
SBAC and ELA are tying federal funds to percentages of students tested in buildings; last year there was a bill put forth in our state trying to retain THIRD GRADERS who don't perform to a certain standard on SBAC. MAP is a gatekeeper to AP and Spectrum programs in Seattle. Passing the ELA is a graduation requirement right now. And the ACT has been recognized as being racist and classist in it's configuration.
And the WISC and it's background tied to eugenics shouldn't be overlooked.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/04/past-and-present-eugenics-standardized.html
opt out
Hope they don't mind losing in the future, because they are burning bridges with the people as they attempt to appease big money.
-nonamenocredit
Schools have to administer the tests, students however don't have to take them.
You need to dig deep to figure out what tests your student really needs to take.
HS parent
MAP, for instance, is used all around the country without any stakes whatsoever. Teachers use them to inform their own instruction and make decisions based on the results as they see fit. There are no stakes attached to the results at all. In other words, MAP is not a "high stakes standardized test" in these circumstances.
You act like it's the assessments driving all of this when, in fact, it's people.
--- swk
This year's 10th graders --- the graduating class of 2017 --- must pass the high school assessments in order to graduate. So, they need to take the Common Core to graduate in 2017.
The graduating class of 2015 will not be required to pass a Common Core assessment, although they will need to pass the high school assessment or one of the alternatives to graduate. If the high schools are telling this year's senior class that they must pass a Common Core assessment to graduate, that would be false.
--- swk
http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/StateTesting/default.aspx
Also, this year's middle school students can no longer bank a passing score on a math EOC for their graduation requirements (even if they've already taken and passed an EOC).
MS parent
Wait, do teachers actually use these? I've asked every year before opting my kids out, and never once have I had a teacher tell me that they'd prefer my kid take the MAP test so they could have additional data on which to base their instruction. Yes, I specifically ask. Who are these teachers who actually find MAP data valuable, and why are they more valuable than data they could easily get from in-class assessments pertaining to the actual curriculum?
HF
--enough already
Gen Ed Mom
Those teachers who authentically used MAP did so for essentially three reasons: (1) It was relatively quick and easy to use, (2) the results were fairly easily understood and could be shared with parents, and (3) they were able to share and discuss results with their peers working in Professional Learning Communities.
This survey did not include teachers in Seattle or Washington state.
--- swk
MAP was not easily understood and tests could not be shared with parents. It took me two weeks to find out what "algebra" meant for a second grader and the actual test was locked into the computer.
MAP is CR**
Those teachers who authentically used MAP did so for essentially three reasons...
@swk, was this research specific to MAP assessments, or other assessments? Formative and diagnostic assessments comprised of questions that remain a mystery to the teachers themselves, and that are not linked to the actual curriculum being taught, seem a lot less likely to be "authentically" used.
You neglected to mention what percentage of teachers said they DID in fact use the MAP. And really, with MAP results I sincerely doubt that any teachers who do share the results with parents do so in an "authentic," meaningful way. Saying your kid scored in the x percentile on math and y percentile on reading doesn't really count. We have statewide tests that give us the same big picture info already. Did teachers indicate that they provide meaningful differentiation and curriculum adjustment based on MAP results?
HF
The reasons they provided were open-ended, meaning the survey did not provide a list of reasons from which to choose. The survey results were then compiled to provide an analysis.
FYI - The reason most often provided for lack of usefulness was the lack of alignment to their own curriculum.
While I can't recall the percentage of teachers using MAP who were using any standardized formative/diagnostic assessment at all, I do recall that MAP was the most common by far.
Finally, the survey was not about instruction or curriculum. It was simply a survey of formative/diagnostic assessment usage and pros/cons of their usage.
[Oh, Please. I do not share this information to promote the usefulness or otherwise of MAP or any other assessment. If you found MAP to be crap, that is your perspective and one that was not uncommon among those I surveyed.]
--- swk
HF
I didn't mean to infer that everywhere except Seattle teachers are using MAP as I described, HF. If you look at my original point in this vein, you will see that I was making the point that standardized tests in and of themselves are not high stakes but rather the policy attached to them can make them high stakes. I used MAP merely as an example, intending to make the point that there are teachers all over the country who are using MAP as intended and that no stakes are attached to the results.
--- swk
Many teachers knew when MAP was brought into Seattle that it would be used to evaluate teachers, even though we were assured (lied to) that it wouldn't be. We long-timers knew better from the start.
When swk stated that "MAP..is used all over the country with no stakes whatsoever" that should instead have read: "When MAP is not being used as a high stakes test for teachers' evaluations, then there are no stakes whatsoever."
--enough already
--- swk
If assessments/tests are used for ANY other reason than the one they were created for, they are being wrongly used.
Tired, tired, tired of this obfuscating BS on assessments and testing.
Nothing like this was going on when we were kids.
--- swk