NYTimes Reports on Parents Fed Up with Testing Hysteria

Good story!  My comment at the New York Times:

It is refreshing to see this kind of coverage in the NYTimes news pages. This portrayal of reality, however, remains so at odds with the antiquarian ideas of the Times Editorial Board, which continues to pay homage to the corporate reform school initiatives that have had 30 years now to prove themselves as sure failures. 

Parents, teachers, and students have signaled that TIME IS UP for profiteering, privatizing, punishing, and deprofessionalizing of teaching, learning, and schooling. If you are not a part of the national Opt Out movement already, you should be--or you risk being run over as the public rushes in to reclaim public education from Wall Street and the billionaires. It's really way past due.

Florida Preparing Thousands of New Tests

Will students, parents, school boards, and teachers finally say ENOUGH?

Florida school district officials are writing thousands of new exams to administer to students this school year. The effort to create end-of-course tests in subjects not evaluated at the state level, is causing more parents, and local education officials to call for a time out on testing.

Tallahassee mom Elizabeth Overholt is fed up.

“It’s a complete mess to start with," she says about the current state of Florida's school accountability system.

Overholt is part of a growing movement of parents across the state pushing back against standardized testing. She heads the facebook group Opt Out Leon County, and is part of the district’s advisory board. This year, she’s trying to opt her three children out of all exams administered or mandated by the state. That includes the new Florida Assessment Test which has replaced the FCAT. Overholt also doesn’t want her kids taking the end-of-course exams districts now have to administer in all grades and in all subjects. One of her high-school-aged daughters will end up being tested twice in one class as a result of the exam mandates:

“Why? Why test her twice on the same information? That doesn’t benefit her, and it doesn’t inform instruction.  If a test informs instruction, I’m okay with it. But an end-of-course exam is not going to inform instruction for my daughter," Overholt says.

That could be happening because the Advanced Placement scores won’t be back until the fall and the district would still need a way to measure how well a teacher performed. The AP U.S. history class comes with an exam that can be taken to earn college credit, but history is also one of classes the state has created a standardized test for. But there are subjects not tested by the state that districts have to come up with, as mandated by a 2011 teacher merit pay law, which bases part of teacher evaluations on student learning data. The push for more exams has led districts to start creating THOUSANDS of new, additional tests that are going into effect this school year. And in Leon County  the number of new end-of-course exams is between 1200 and 1300. . . .

The rest here.

By Any Means Necessary: Stop Sanctioned Child Abuse in Schools

The testing hysteria has reached levels in schools that require parents and teachers to take action to protect children from further harm.  Teachers, parents, and children should feel justified to take whatever nonviolent actions are necessary to promote healthy learning environments and healthy children and to stop the testing abuse that is destroying the capacity of children to grow and learn.

From Zahra Lightway:

As you are getting ready to go back to school, you may be feeling pleased that your child is going to a school with high test ratings. Before you decide if that's a good thing or not, read this story. You may be shocked at the lengths many schools and districts will go to, to raise their test scores.  After reading, go to your child's school and start asking some hard questions. Need help with the questions. Contact me.

My last assignment in a public school was in Houston, TX where I worked at the Aldine Independent School District.  I worked on a 5th/6th grade campus.  The children began the school year by spending their first two days of school taking practice tests in all the tested subjects under test conditions.  Welcome back to school kids.

Then throughout the year, every three weeks, the children take short practice tests in math, reading (which no one is even pretending to call English or language anymore), science and social studies.  Teachers are then to take those results and aggregate, disaggregate, vomigate them and submit them to the administration on the school level.  This alone takes their "planning" time for that week. If students do not score well, teachers are threatened immediately by the principal.

So with one day used for the practice test questions, one day used for going over the test questions and really all the other days used to prepare the kids for the practice tests, there are 0 days from August to the end of April, when children are not preparing for tests.

Then come the tests. Children arrive at school and are given snacks (only on test days) so they can think better...these are snacks that contain food colorings and preservatives etc..a whole other topic. Then the grueling day begins.  In Texas the test is untimed. All students must sit all day long.  If a child finishes early, they must sit at a desk in silence with nothing to do for up to the next 5 hours.  They cannot read a book or otherwise engage in activity. They can put their heads on their desks. Period. There is one break for lunch.  Children are not allowed to speak at lunch for test security purposes.

If I asked a parent what they would do if they discovered that their babysitter had forced their child to sit at a desk in silence for six hours with one short break, they would fire the babysitter and possibly press charges for child abuse. Let us not kid ourselves. What is being perpetrated on children in the name of "excellence" and "high standards" is nothing short of child abuse.

And it gets worse.

If a child fails a test, the school has one month to prepare the child for the "re-take". In that time, the child is removed from physical education and their elective classes and instead spends three hours a day preparing for that next test.  On top of preparing for upcoming tests in the other subjects.

If the child fails again...the same is repeated for another month.

Another failure results in summer school which is again spent preparing for the test.  By the time a child is held back, they have been totally demoralized and probably pretty much destroyed psychically, emotionally and mentally.

Of course that’s in Texas.  The truth is though that the testing movement is a political rather than an educational move in every state. It sounds good on the surface, but the reality is that it’s destroying your children’s chance at a real education.  When local Colorado school district staff at the top levels agree that the system is broken and that testing is not working…it’s time for Coloradoans to pay attention too.

NY Parents Crazed to Land Gifted Kindergarten Seats

If you thought high-stakes tests were just for keeping poor high schoolers from graduating or to guarantee failure at an early age for the children of the poor, then think again. In New York City where the Bankster heist has increased the number of parents who can no longer afford the private kindergartens, competition is cut-throat to earn a seat in one of the high flying gifted public kindergarten programs. And parents who can afford it are hiring tutors to grill babies in strategies for passing the tests to get in--to kindergarten. Meanwhile, the poorer "gifted" little ones must settle for second best. If there could be a sadder commentary about our lives, I cannot imagine it. From NYTimes, a clip:

. . . .Already, the bar for admission to at least one of the citywide programs, the Anderson School on the Upper West Side, has been raised to the 99th percentile for most of its 50 seats. Almost 300 parents whose children scored that high attended recent daytime tours.

Anna Lewiston of the Upper East Side was determined to send her daughter, Lena, to Anderson but was told that the girl’s 97th-percentile score would not make the cut. Lena will go to a private school. “It’s really too much pressure for preschoolers,” Ms. Lewiston said of the test.

Another citywide program, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry in Gravesend, allowed 540 parents on tours before turning others away. The principal, Donna Taylor, said she noticed growing anxiety among them when they saw the odds of getting one of her 56 slots.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. Children who are not selected for citywide programs are eligible for district-based gifted programs; students may also enroll in regular kindergarten classes at their neighborhood schools.

The cause of the higher passing rates was not clear, but increased preparation might have been a factor. Hundreds of parents hired tutors or bought commercial test preparation materials before taking this year’s test, a mixture of the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, a reasoning exam, and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment.

At the Perry School, a preschool in the West Village, children spent an hour a day in a “think tank program” designed to expose them to the reasoning and materials they would see during the test. They also had professional tutoring. Of the five students who took the gifted exam, “we got two 99s, a 98, and two 97s,” said Dawn Ifrah, the founder.

Bright Kids NYC, the tutoring company that worked with those children, reported that 80 percent of the 120 children for whom it had results had scored over the 90th percentile, and 60 children had scored in the 99th.

Department of Education officials acknowledged that preparation may have played a role but said they were confident that most children who passed belonged in accelerated classes. They added that the city was trying to increase the number of full-day preschools in poor, black and Hispanic neighborhoods, which are underrepresented in the gifted programs.

Anna Commitante, who heads the gifted and talented program, said the city “may very well think about something different” after next year, when its contract with testing companies expires. But officials later said no policy change was under consideration.

Susan K. Johnsen, the president of the Association for the Gifted, a division of the Council for Exceptional Children, recommends the use of many measures to assess giftedness, like observation, recommendations and student work, not simply tests. “Any test is susceptible to test preparation, and that’s why you start to invalidate those assessments,” Dr. Johnsen said.

The increase in high-scoring students was concentrated in the middle- and upper-middle-class districts of Manhattan and Queens. In the Bronx, fewer students qualified this year.. . . .

Where Will Be the 1st Class Action to Challenge the Testing Abuse of Children?

Which group of child psychologists or pediatricians will get the ACLU interested in pursuing the first class action against a district, a state, and the U. S. Government? The courts will have to deal with this--the legislators are owned by the testing industry, and the one who aren't are too much the coward to stand up against the madness.

From Emax Health:

Submitted by hareyan on Mar 30th, 2009

Posted under:

• Child Health and Safety

Molly Holloway, a mother of twin kindergartners in Bowie, Maryland, can’t understand why her children must take standardized tests every month in math, reading, social studies, and science.

“One of the teachers has told me that the kindergarten curriculum is what used to be the first-grade curriculum,” Holloway wrote. “What evidence do we have that this pushing is beneficial? While some children can handle the pressure, others cannot. One of my daughters struggles to keep up and hates school.”[1]

A mother in Illinois writes, “In order to prepare kids ahead of time for the state tests, hard core curriculum must start in kindergarten. Our kids are not actually getting smarter. The scores are not increasing. And the rates of children with anxiety issues are increasing rapidly.”[2]

Recent studies in New York City and Los Angeles confirm what these and other parents have observed: standardized testing and test prep have become daily activities in many public kindergartens. Teachers say they are under pressure to get children ready for the third-grade tests. The 254 teachers surveyed in the studies said they spent an average of 20 to 30 minutes per day in test-related activity.

The findings are documented in a new report, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, released on March 20 by the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood (www.allianceforchildhood.org). The authors, Edward Miller and Joan Almon, say that kindergarten testing is “out of control.”

High-stakes testing and test preparation in kindergarten are proliferating, as schools increasingly are required to make decisions on promotion, retention, and placement in gifted programs or special education classes on the basis of test scores. In New York City, for example, kindergarten children take a standardized I.Q. test to determine whether they qualify for “gifted and talented” classes. The city is also implementing a plan to test kindergarten, first-, and second-grade children as part of schools’ performance evaluations. The test scores are used to assign letter grades, A to F, to all of the city’s public schools. The grades are then used to determine rewards and punishments, including cash bonuses for teachers and principals and whether principals will be fired and schools shut down.

“Rigid testing policies do not make sense in early childhood education,” states the Alliance for Childhood report. “Standardized testing of children under age eight, when used to make significant decisions about the child’s education, is in direct conflict with the professional standards of every educational testing organization.”

Young children are notoriously unreliable test takers. They can do well one day and poorly on the same test on another day.

“A major problem with kindergarten tests is that relatively few meet acceptable standards of reliability and validity,” says the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “The probability of a child being misplaced is fifty percent—the same odds as flipping a coin. … Flawed results lead to flawed decisions, wasted tax dollars, and misdiagnosed children.”

The National Association of School Psychologists agrees, saying that “evidence from research and practice in early childhood assessment indicates that issues of technical adequacy are more difficult to address with young children who have little test-taking experience, short attention spans, and whose development is rapid and variable.”

It’s not just parents who are up in arms over the tests for tots. Anthony Colannino, a Waltham, Massachusetts elementary school principal, is upset that his kindergartners are now required to take fill-in-the-right-bubble tests. “Now we’re all the way down to 5- and 6-year-olds taking a pencil and paper test,” he told his local newspaper. “My students and others across the state are being judged on reading material above their grade level.”[3]

Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor early childhood education at Lesley University, said,
“The vast majority of kindergarten teachers now spend some time each day on testing and test preparation, an activity that would have been considered irrelevant and even harmful in the past.”

In Las Vegas, Nevada, kindergarten teachers report that last year they lost more than 30 days of school to mandatory assessments. They have organized to lobby the county school authorities to reduce the number of tests and “return to the implementation of developmentally appropriate standards.”[4]

And a kindergarten teacher in Zanesville, Ohio, wrote to her local paper, “All we are doing is stealing childhood from innocent children. Shame on our government for making us be thieves. Shame on them for not listening to what children really need.”[5]

Crisis in the Kindergarten calls for the use of observational and curriculum-embedded performance assessments in kindergarten instead of standardized tests. The argument that standardized testing takes less time and is therefore more efficient is called into question, argues the report, by the new data suggesting that teachers are now spending time each day prepping children for standardized tests.

The combination of unrealistic kindergarten standards and inappropriate testing results in two to three hours per day being devoted to teaching literacy and math in many of the kindergartens in the N.Y. and L.A. studies. As one Los Angeles teacher said, ““Our students spend most of the time trying to learn what they need in order to pass standardized testing. There is hardly enough time for activities like P.E, science, art, playtime.”

These practices may produce higher scores in first and second grade, but at what cost? Long-term studies suggest that the early gains fade away by fourth grade and that by age 10 children in play-based kindergartens excel over others in reading, math, social and emotional learning, creativity, oral expression, industriousness, and imagination, write the authors of the report.

The report makes the following recommendations to educators, policymakers, and parents for ending the inappropriate use of tests in kindergarten:

1. Use alternatives to standardized assessments in kindergarten, such as teacher observations and assessment of children’s work. Educate teachers in the use of these alternatives and in the risks and limitations of standardized testing of young children.

2. Do not make important decisions about young children, their teachers, or their schools based solely or primarily on standardized test scores.

[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/03/extra_credit_dam...
[2] http://www.themotherhood.com/post.php?sid=339832
[3] http://www.dailynewstribune.com/news/x1537600536/Waltham-educators-not-h...
[4] http://uktlv.org/about.html
[5] http://www.journal-news.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/lakota...

The Joyless Club: The Changing Brains of Children in Kindergarten

HT to Monty Neill at ARN:

Kindergarten Playtime Disappears, Raising Alarm About Children's Learning and Health

College Park, MD, March 20, 2009-Time for play in most kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing, according to results of three new studies released today by the nonprofit Alliance for Childhood. Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared in the 268 kindergarten classrooms studied. The findings are documented in Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School.

Researchers from U.C.L.A. and Long Island University found that, on a typical day, children in all-day kindergartens in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as much time in literacy and math instruction and taking or preparing for tests (about two to three hours per day) as in free play or "choice time" (30 minutes or less). A third research team, at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, found that most of the activities available to children during choice time (a popular euphemism for playtime) are in fact teacher-directed and involve little or no free play, imagination, or creativity.

Child development experts have been raising alarms about the increasingly didactic, test-driven, and joyless course of early childhood education. "These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching," states the Alliance report. "It is increasingly clear that they are compromising both children's health and their long-term prospects for success in school."

The report summarizes recent studies and reports showing long-term gains from play and focused, playful learning in early education. It also critiques kindergarten standards, scripted teaching, and standardized testing and makes recommendations for change.

David Elkind, author of The Power of Play, calls the research findings "heartbreaking." In a foreword to the report, Elkind writes, "We have had a politically and commercially driven effort to make kindergarten a one-size-smaller first grade. Why in the world are we trying to teach the elementary curriculum at the early childhood level?"

The full text of Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School is available at www.allianceforchildhood.org.

Hands Tied or Brains Locked: More Testing Insanity

What happens at testing time to a top notch U. S. born high school student who lists her first language as Lao? The story from the Des Moines Register:

By STACI HUPP and GUNNAR OLSON
shupp@dmreg.com

A Storm Lake teenager was suspended from school this week because she refused to take a test for students who are not fluent in English.

Lori Phanachone, the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants from Laos, says she proved her grasp of English in other ways. The Storm Lake High School senior has a near-perfect grade-point average and acceptance letters from two Iowa colleges.

But because she listed Lao as her first language on a school registration form, Phanachone said administrators forced her to take a test for students who lack basic English skills.

"I'm all for help where it's needed, but for you to generalize everyone who speaks a second language, that's so degrading," said Phanachone, 18, who also might miss her school prom and track season.

Teachers have been suspended in other states for giving in to immigrant parents who refuse the tests on behalf of their children. But national officials say Phanachone's refusal is rare.

"It illustrates the fixation on testing in which school bureaucrats believe the test score is more important than real performance," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which opposes standardized testing.

Storm Lake school officials say their hands are tied. . . .

Two Seattle Special Ed Teachers Suspended for Honoring Parent Requests

Apparently in the Broad Foundation's administrative academies, where Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson earned her credentials, just following orders is more important than acting ethically in regards to the treatment of children and their parents. Never has there been a better display of the deep institutionalized psychosis in education that has replaced humane treatment and caring for children. From the Seattle Times:

By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter

The Seattle School District has suspended two special-education teachers for refusing to give required assessment tests to six students at Green Lake Elementary, despite orders from the principal to do so.

Lenora Stahl and Juli Griffith each were suspended for 10 days without pay for not following through with training and reports required for the Washington Alternative Assessment System (WAAS), a version of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning intended for students with special needs.

"I understand that you are taking this position as a matter of principle," says a March 2 letter to the teachers from Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. But because giving the test is a state requirement, "you as a member of our staff have a responsibility to do so."

The suspension runs through March 16.

The teachers say they merely followed the wishes of the parents, who exercised their rights — verbally at first, then in writing — to have their children "opt out" of the exam.

"They're sticking up for my kid and what I want for my child," parent Rachel McKean said. "They know what he can and can't do. They're not just going out on a limb."

Goodloe-Johnson's letter said the teachers didn't tell the district of the parents' involvement until disciplinary hearings had begun.

"With any students, but particularly those with special needs, and especially in instances when we have a federal and a state mandate to follow, documentation is essential," Seattle Schools spokeswoman Patti Spencer said.

Stahl and Griffith are teaching partners at Green Lake, with a class of 11 special-education students. Many are far below their various classifications as kindergarten through fifth-grade level. Some are prone to seizures or have respiratory issues.

McKean's son Jackson, 10, has hydrocephalus and uses a wheelchair. In four-plus years at Green Lake, he has learned to feed himself, hang up his jacket and not to scream when he hears loud noises. "My kid is basically the equivalent of a toddler," McKean said. "You wouldn't ask a toddler these questions when they can't do it. ... You wouldn't give a kid a test that is years beyond what they can do."

According to Nate Olson of the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the WAAS can be tailored to students' individual needs, but parents and teachers dispute that. Because the test is grade-level-based, they say, it's inappropriate for students with severe cognitive disabilities.

"It's really not a one-size-fits-all for kids," Stahl said. "It doesn't mean we don't have high expectations; we do. They're just not there yet."

She and Griffith first raised concerns about the test last fall, Stahl said, after parents told them they didn't want their children taking the exam. The two teachers wrote the district asking to work together to create a more appropriate test for their children, but received no response, she said.

Many of the children had taken the test the previous year, Stahl noted, and all received zeros. "They're automatically being set up for failure," she said.

When McKean's son was given the exam last year, she said, he just sat there. "He doesn't read or write," McKean said. "... He's just learning how to draw straight lines. But doing a two-plus-two math problem, he doesn't really understand."

When Principal Cheryl Grinager directed the teachers to complete the required exam preparation, they refused — again, Stahl said, in deference to parental wishes.

She said the "opt-out" process never was explained to them fully, so they didn't know until January, when they were called to a disciplinary hearing, that written parental requests were required. By mid-February, the teachers had collected written letters from the parents, but the disciplinary process continued. The two are appealing the suspension.

While the appeal may restore their lost pay, Stahl said, "we can't get back the time we lose in the classroom. The bottom line is, they're punishing the students."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com

To combat the testing insanity in Washington, please visit the Parent Empowerment Network and make a donation.

Evaluating State Superintendents Based on Test Scores in Previous Jobs?

If Arne Duncan and the Business Roundtable have their way, every principal, er, CEO who interviews a prospective teacher will have all of her test scores and all of her students' test score totals in front of him on his monitor during the interview. Can you hear it now: "Now Mrs. Battleweary, I see that during your previous tenure--if I may use that outmoded term--during your tenure at Alpha Elementary, your 4th graders had a big dip in their math scores in 2007. What was that all about?"

Well, test scores are not just for hiring and firing and berating teachers anymore. In North Carolina, the right-wingers of the Civitas Institute have an op-ed in the News & Observer attacking newly-appointed State Superintendent, Bill Harrison, for the mediocre test results at Cumberland County, an economically-depressed and, therefore, educationally depressed county from which Harrison was hired.

So now it becomes not only dangerous to your future career chances to teach among the people who need the most help, but it may obviously be used as a strike against you for any future leadership positions as well.

From the Civitas braintrust (isn't civitas a disease of the political conscience?):

While Harrison can be proud of his contributions to the Cumberland schools, his tenure lacks a record of progress and accomplishment in critical areas. For much of the last seven years, the system has been average or worse on state testing results, a little better than average on dropout rates and average or a little below on graduation rates. For a statewide public education system in need of significant improvement, average results simply aren't good enough.

Thirty-four years of service in public education, while laudable, doesn't necessarily qualify one to assume the state's top education position. If the new chief operating officer position is the "most important job in North Carolina," Perdue may want to explain why Harrison is the right person for the job.

Life in Florida's FCAT Factories

Just barely too old to have experienced Florida's testing work camps, here Brooke describes her sister's very different "educational" experiences in Florida schools today. From Purple States TV, a project of WaPo:

Making Pancake Brains

A nice opinion piece from the Seattle Times by Jesuit educator, Kent Hickey:

IN a very funny scene from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life," a pompous hospital administrator describes how ingeniously he has outfitted a delivery room. (He is especially proud of his favorite machine, the one that goes PING!) Only reluctantly does he look upon the actual procedure taking place: "What are you doing this morning?" A doctor explains that it is a birth. "And what sort of thing is that?"

Our classrooms are starting to look like that delivery room. Increasingly, we are ignoring the miracle of learning deep reading, thoughtful writing, analysis and reflection, and focusing our attention only on its trappings: inclusion on some lists (best of), exclusion from others (failing schools), and using technology as window dressing instead of as a tool to help learners.

Education? And what sort of thing is that? So enamored with the machine that goes PING!, we forget about the patient giving birth.

The drift toward superficiality is broader than misusing technology, but let's start there. Nicholas Carr's recent article, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?," describes a mind (his own) that is becoming less capable of prolonged and complex thought because of constant quick searches, skimming and e-mail exchanges.

Unfortunately, this is also the way our children's brains are being shaped in many schools. Technology is often used more as a toy than a tool. Seating kids in front of computers and keeping them busy with activities provides the appearance of learning, but that doesn't mean it's happening. Our kids are developing what Carr describes as "pancake" brains — wide with experience, but shallow. The mind once trained for deliberative, critical thought is being replaced by a spasmodic, twitching kin.

Our nation's infatuation with standardized testing also contributes to superficial education practices. Quantitative measurements can be helpful to learners and educators, but the pendulum has swung too far. The end result of a good education is not so easily reduced to test results. And the overemphasis on testing hasn't induced educational bureaucracies to innovate, only to retrench and adopt better survival skills.

One such skill is teaching to state-mandated year-end tests. Too much is at stake with a "failing school" designation dangling overhead. What these tests really measure, therefore, is how well students are primed for a test, not how well they think. That is learning of a sort, but is the really good standardized test-taker the kind of thinker we need in the voting booth and workplace?

And what happens if test scores remain low? The solution has been to reduce expectations so that more will reach the (now lowered) bar. One national study of test results, for example, showed that scores were up in critical thinking but, strangely, tests lacked questions that actually required critical thought. Huh?

Finally, Advanced Placement (AP) courses provide an increasingly popular way to improve one's appearance. AP was created to give academically prepared upperclassmen the opportunity to master college-level work. It has devolved into something quite different. A high school's quality is now often measured simply by virtue of the raw number of AP courses offered, not the quality of instruction or what is learned by the students. So, if your school pines for inclusion on Newsweek's Top 100, you had better get those numbers up!

The results are predictable. More-brazen schools have been known to simply relabel courses as AP or insert an AP course where it doesn't fit. Lake Wobegon schools, aware that their parents require evidence that their children are above average, are more subtle.

A high school in Seattle, for example, recently decided that all sophomores would take AP Human Geography so that "all children can achieve to a higher standard." Assuming that these 15-year-olds don't magically morph into college-level students after freshman year, one of two things is happening: This course is college-level in name only or what passes for college rigor has greatly diminished. (I am reminded of a Midwestern school that touted its academic excellence by requiring its students to read the "Odyssey" in third grade. Wasn't even a pop-up edition.)

But these trends didn't develop in a vacuum. Our schools reflect society more than they shape it. Columnist Sarah Churchwell recently wrote, "We live in a culture of face value, a superficial world of skim-reading, snap-judgments, and thin-slicing, in which perception is all ... " We shouldn't be surprised, then, that our schools have embraced our cultural love affair with form over substance. They're meeting our expectations.

Kent Hickey is president of Seattle Preparatory School, a Catholic, Jesuit school founded in 1891.

Ripples from the Carl Chew Splash

This appeared on a discussion group today from a Washington teacher responding to Carl Chew's decision to refuse administering the WASL:

You know what's great about this...my students here in eastern Washington, as we take the WASL, asked, "why do we have to take this?" My lame response was, "because OSPI, the legislature, and the govt. want you to." But, as they began to ask more specific questions, "what happens if we don't?" "What are the effects on our chances in college?" "What are the effects on the schools?"

I decided to answer more honestly. I told them about federal funding, NCLB, the accountability movement. They looked at me, some laughed, and finally one stated (one of my brightest and hardest working students), "that's retarded (his words). Do you know how many of us don't care? Do they know how many of just fill in the bubbles?"

So began a conversation (taking time away from their WASL testing time) about why there are high stakes tests, what's really at stake and how they, as students, could change things. It was pretty cool, if I do say so myself. This happened last week. This week, today, on the first day of returning to the WASL, I brought up Mr. Chew. Some students had heard of it, others had not. I told them about his actions. Most students then began shouting that I should do the same. Then I told them to clear their desks to take the test.

What is interesting is that these students are more aware of the inaccuracy, in-authentic, high-stress, and overall uselessness of the test than I think most administrators and legislators are. They were able to articulate in so many ways, in their own voices, why high stakes testing is obsolete. Giving them the rest of the puzzle, they were able to understand the ridiculousness of this process. They can also recognize that their own education is impacted by it (a couple students stated that it sucked having to do so much prep work for the test, that they didn't get to do any "real" work [their words]).

But, I, as their good teacher, administered the test, and they, as the good obedient students they are, took the test. Who knows, maybe they did a little bit better because they now know what's really at stake. All I know is, I can't wait for that wonderful PowerPoint next year to tell us all how smart our kids are!

What am I talking about? I already know--I teach them everyday. I love my 7th graders!

RA

No Let Up in the NCLB Testocracy

What makes special education students special, besides dyslexia, emotional problems, learning disabilities, autism, neurological disorders? These different manifestations of specialness are irrelevant when it comes to NCLB test score demands--which are the same as for everyone else. It is what turns expecatations for all into failure for all.

This story is from California, but it is the same all across America:

Spring testing has arrived for area students, and a lot is riding on how well they perform — particularly for educators in Hayward and San Lorenzo.

The two are "program improvement" districts, meaning their students as a whole have failed to meet federal and state testing requirements that continue to rise. If the trend continues, the districts could face severe sanctions.

"The stakes are getting higher," said Katarin Jurich, director of assessment for San Lorenzo schools. "And the floor underneath us is cracking."

San Lorenzo Unified is one of three East Bay districts that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is keeping tabs on under a reform plan he announced earlier this year. The district, along with Oakland and Berkeley schools, has failed to meet all goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for five years in a row.

Statewide, 97 districts are in the same boat.

Last year, San Lorenzo students met all but one of the 42 testing requirements set forth by NCLB. Special-education students as a whole failed to meet federal benchmarks in standardized testing, which kept the district from being in the clear of any sanctions.Meanwhile, if Hayward Unified fails yet again to meet test-score benchmarks, it will move into year three of program improvement, meaning it could face even more penalties from the state.

. . . .

Some parents . . . said pressures to perform well in standardized testing is ruining classrooms.

"Teachers are so worried about the tests that they're not really able to teach the kids," said Robert Stranahan, a parent at Lorenzo Manor Elementary in San Lorenzo. "Kids in their developmental years shouldn't have to worry about tests. Let them grow and get used to going to school first. It's just sad."

Some educators also argue that NCLB's goal of getting all students up to proficient levels by 2013 sets schools and districts up for failure.

"No one student is the same, and they each learn and grow at different levels," Jurich said. "I guess if we fail again we'll go to purgatory. And there'll be plenty of company with us."

Five Years Hence

Britain began their testing orgy five years before us Yanks, under the leadership, by the way, of Sir Michael Barber, who now runs the Bloomberg-Klein little shop of testing horrors. From the Independent:

The first significant and independent study of Britain's primary schools since the 1967 Plowden Report has exposed just how widespread the culture of testing has become within our education system. The Primary Review, overseen by the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, found that primary school children in England were subjected to far more assessment than their peers in other developed countries. According to the report, external testing in England takes place more frequently, begins at a younger age, and covers more subjects than testing in schools overseas. It is also a more "high stakes" system than any other comparable educational system, which means that the fortunes of schools are heavily bound up with how pupils perform in their assessment tests.

This is unlikely to surprise parents, who have long been complaining that their school-age children seem to be on a never-ending treadmill of assessments and exams. There are nationwide statutory tests for children at ages seven and 11. At secondary school, this is followed by further tests at age 14, and then GCSEs and A-levels at 16-plus. It is little wonder that there has been a considerable backlash against compulsory testing.

Some national testing is, of course, necessary. And, as the report shows, all developed countries have some system for measuring attainment before pupils sit major public exams in their teens. Schools must be held to account. If pupils are not progressing as well as those elsewhere, this must be brought to light. Too often in the past, failure was concealed by insufficient assessment.

But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Many teachers find themselves doing little else than priming and preparing pupils for the next round of tests. This stifles creativity and is a terrible way to engender a love of learning among children. The system is also counter-productive from an educational perspective. Pupils are increasingly being "taught to the test". They become adept at jumping through hoops but not at thinking for themselves. As an Ofsted report on maths teaching in secondary schools put it: "Although students are able to pass the examinations, they are not able to apply their knowledge independently to new contexts, and they are not well prepared for further study."

At the heart of the problem is the fact that our testing culture appears to be politically, rather than educationally, driven. Government ministers like tests and the constant stream of results they produce because it enables them, in their dealings with the media, to point to rising educational standards. The publishing of school "league tables" is another political, rather than educational, tool. These exist so that ministers can claim credit for schools "moving up" the tables. But these ranking tables merely force teachers and headteachers to concentrate on tests to the detriment of other aspects of school life. The testing culture is thus a product of two of this Government's greatest vices: an obsession with presentation and an instinct towards top-down control.

Just because other countries do things differently does not make it right that we should emulate them. But the evidence suggests many other nations are doing a better job of educating young people than us. According to latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Britain has been slipping down the international table for quality of learning in maths and reading. Complacency is entirely inappropriate.

Teachers are against constant testing. Parents are dissatisfied with the pressure it puts on pupils. Examiners are also unhappy. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, has suggested moving towards a sampling system. The only players still clinging to the wreckage of the present testing arrangements are ministers. It is time for them to let go.

Op Ed on Exit Exams and SC Teacher Response

By Neill/Guisbond from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Across the nation, tens of thousands of students are denied diplomas each year simply because they did not pass a standardized state test. After 12 years of playing by the rules, working hard, and completing all other graduation requirements, students can find that their future hinges on just one or two points.

Misguided exit-exam mandates have increased dropout rates, especially among minority groups, and have focused classroom teaching on test preparation rather than 21st century skills. The full record in states like Texas and Massachusetts shows that high-stakes tests are the wrong prescription for what ails public education. That's why Pennsylvania civil rights and disability advocates, teachers, administrators, school board members, public school parents, and others have expressed serious concerns about Gov. Rendell's high-stakes testing plan.

A poll from the respected Susquehanna Institute shows they are not alone. By a landslide 62 percent to 31 percent, Pennsylvanians responding to a recent survey opposed denying diplomas to students if they fail a statewide test but have passed all their classes.

The problems exit exams are meant to solve are certainly real. Pennsylvania, like most states, has gaps in educational access, quality and outcomes. But exit exams won't cure these ills. For too many students, the cure is worse than the disease. Rather than provide better education and expanded opportunities, graduation tests add punishment - denial of a diploma - to those who most need help.

Proponents incorrectly claim that exit exams will narrow achievement gaps. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports no narrowing of achievement gaps at the high school level among racial groups. Nor have average high school scores increased.

Real progress has been elusive because high-stakes testing, including No Child Left Behind, undermines rather than improves education. Untested subjects are ignored, while tested topics narrow to test-coaching programs. Test prep is like holding a match to a thermostat and believing the room is warmer: Scores rise on that test; real learning does not.

The most thorough independent national research also confirms a link between graduation tests and higher dropout rates. Texas introduced exit exams in 1992. Fifteen years later, Texas used test results to deny diplomas to a record 40,200 students in the Class of 2007. In 2006, Boston's annual dropout rate rose sharply, from 7.7 percent to 9.9 percent. At the same time, the city suffered a wave of youth violence. Boston City Council issued a report stating, "Students . . . expressed massive frustration and boredom with the endless drilling and practice of the MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, a statewide standardized test] . . . and test preparation. . . . Far too many students describe their school experience as an MCAS-centric environment. . . . [As a result,] the incentive for students to remain in school is tenuous."

Tests have "measurement error," which means some children will fail even though they know the subject. Being able to take the test more than once helps, but does not solve this problem. There is also the well-documented problem of test anxiety: An accomplished student may freeze, not do well on the test, and be denied a diploma.

No one wants to see youth leave school without the skills needed for success. Exam supporters say students shouldn't get meaningless diplomas if they can't pass the tests. But it's a student's overall transcript that makes a diploma truly meaningful. For example, high school grades are better predictors of college success than the SAT. A standardized test is not a solid foundation for establishing meaning.

The individual and societal costs of denying a diploma based on a state test score are high. Students without diplomas earn much less, are far less likely to maintain stable families, and are far more likely to end up in prison.

Pennsylvania must take strong action to address the problems of unequal schools and inadequate outcomes, from providing funding equity among rich and poor towns to stronger staff development and high-quality assessments. That means ensuring all children experience a well-rounded education and avoiding the magic-bullet false solution of a high-stakes graduation test.

---

Monty Neill is co-executive director of FairTest, and Lisa Guisbond is testing reform analyst. E-mail Neill at monty@fairtest.org.

And here is a response to Monty Neill that the author gave permission to print:

Monty Neill,

I read your article in the Inquirer and couldn't agree more. I went to St. Joe's Prep (a long time ago) and now teach 9th graders in a public high school in South Carolina. Needless to say, I speak as a veteran teacher.

The End-of-Course tests in this state--as in others--are beyond merely a negative factor in the ways you mention, they are outright MADNESS. I refuse to let EOC pressure wear on my mind like other teachers, but then again, I'm 56 and will be out of this madness soon. I feel sympathy for young teachers walking into the horror of having this millstone of politically-mandated crap hanging over them, and that is why I'm writing to you.

For, here's the biggest reason against exit testing that's left out of these discussions: good, new, dedicated teachers will leave the profession instantly when they go through even one year of this insanity. I know of two examples right off the top of my head, who would have been excellent teachers. I was in a "curriculum standards" teacher's meeting Tuesday of this week, and thinking exactly that.

The politicians drive administrators to walk into these meetings and say, "Now, we don't want you to teach to the tests, but . . ." And teachers are sitting there knowing full well that's a load of nonsense. OF COURSE, they want us not only to teach to the test, they want us to gear the entire curriculum in lockstep to it. No new teacher worth a grain of salt will want to kiss up to that kind of phony approach. Good luck to schools of education finding the saps who want to go through the robotic, insipid teaching routine embodied in that concept. In the meantime, the politicians are not "accountable"--their favorite word--and are on their merry way making up another soundbite about their deep concern with education. Spare me. It's absolute madness.

Bob Strauss, Jr.
Greenwood, SC

NC Declares Too Much Testing

Do you think? Huh.

RALEIGH - A state commission agreed today on a draft report saying “there is too much time spent on testing” and that several exams should be eliminated or no longer counted in the state’s testing program.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability agreed to recommend to the state Board of Education that the fourth-, seventh- and 10th-grade writing tests and the eighth-grade computer skills tests be eliminated. . . .

Yes! Reauthorization of Head Start Without the NRS Test

Now will the humanity and common sense of the Congress hold long enough to strip the high-stakes testing from NCLB? From UPI:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- U.S. lawmakers approved a five-year Head Start bill that will boost teacher qualifications and expand access to the preschool program.

After handily passing the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, the proposal moved to the White House, where U.S. President George Bush was expected to sign it, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

About 909,000 disadvantaged children are enrolled in the program designed to help prepare them for school academically and socially.

The legislation would allow eligibility for the 42-year-old program to expand to families slightly above the federal poverty level. The proposal also set a goal that by 2013 all Head Start teachers will have at least a two-year associate's degree.

"Head Start teachers and staff are the heart and future of the program," U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. "They help children learn to identify letters and arrange the pieces of a puzzle. They teach them to brush their teeth, wash their hands, make friends and follow rules."

The bill, however, would jettison a controversial system for testing 4-year-olds' math and verbal skills and doesn't have a provision sought by the White House to allow to allow religious groups participating in Head Start to hire and fire staff members based on religious affiliation, the Post said.

British Testocracy Fails the Test That Matters

New research from Lancaster University and reported in The Guardian shows that Blair testocracy in Britain has, for the most part, been a hugely-expensive bust that has disabled learners, rather than making them better thinkers. Maybe there is something here in these findings for our own clueless Congress as they consider ways to get free of the NCLB millstone:

. . . . The review is also highly critical of the narrow basis on which children's ability is measured. It points out that the pressure on schools and children to deliver the right answers to tests means teachers don't develop children's abilities to think and talk. Teachers ask closed questions and children are expected to give short, prescribed answers. What the report calls "higher-order learning", ie the ability to connect different ideas and draw conclusions from evidence, is neither encouraged nor measured. Here the report echoes a child I heard on the radio last week, who said: "I know the right thing to do to pass the tests, but I don't know what I'm doing."

But perhaps the most important parts of the report are to be found in its recommendations for the future. It points out, drily, that "massive efforts to bring about change have had a relatively small impact". Education policies have cost hundreds of millions, but they have generally had neither a sound basis in research nor a systematic evaluation thereafter. As the review says, what is clear is our ignorance. It wants to see policies tied much more closely to evidence, and trials of any new initiatives before they become national practice.

In its response the DCSF appears to be imprisoned by its political inability to admit that the thrust of this policy could have been a mistake. Indeed, ministers are planning to press ahead with new tests for primary school children which can be taken at any point during the school year - something critics believe will only add to pupils' stress, while adding nothing to their learning.

Perhaps the only hope lies in the possibility that the new secretary of state will have the courage to look at the evidence anew. Meanwhile, it is ironic to reflect that, 10 years after coming into office and promising to govern on the basis of "what works", the government should still have so little idea of what really does.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --A. Einstein

The Beginning of the End for the Last Bastion of Free Thought

It is interesting to see how higher education has quickly knee-jerked into voluntarily accepting the test-label-punish agenda of the K-16 advocates on the Spellings-Miller Commission that sputtered out before any of its grand scheme of mandated "accountability" for colleges could even come close to approved policy.

With show-me-the-way-over-the-cliff leaders in charge at public universities and ready leap into the testing void, who needs a bare-knuckled bully hired by ED to impose the extension of an educational caste system that is now in full operation in K-12, where the poor waste their time in test-prep drudgery to avoid school closure or individual retention, where the middling suburban school students focus on test prep drudgery (called AP) for college credit, and where the well-off, who don't know what all the fuss is about, continue to make their quilts for the poor, put on their stage plays, and "construct their meaning" in the best private schools.

Of course, the best private colleges and universities will tell these Kool-Aid drinkers to go to hell, which plays nicely into the democracy-by-a-few model that became so popular at about the same point in the previous century, when eugenics was offered for college credit and when social darwinists argued against public assistance to the poor for fear of upsetting the natural law sanctioned by God to eliminate the weak.

So in the end, the 10 percent or so of our best and richest will purchase their permanent Visas and their legacy Master cards in the colleges and universities with endowments big enough to continue the luxury of free and liberal thought. The rest of us will urge our children to walk up one another's backs to attain one of the few slots remaining for those of lesser worth who have shown that they can work harder and be nicer than the rest the "rubbish," as Jefferson would have it, in their KIPP chain gang schools.

Where this leaves the middling private universities is yet to be seen. Will they side with the preservation and expansion of our humanistic civilization, or will they trade in the question of the purpose of living and education for the all-encompassing answer of the GLOBAL ECONOMY, with its purse strings attached to the corporations that can guarantee access to the government grants. I wonder.

From the Baltimore Sun today:

November 11, 2007

College students in Maryland and across the country might soon be taking standardized tests to determine how much they've learned on campus - part of a national effort to hold universities accountable for student achievement.

An association representing more than 200 large public universities is expected to vote today to recommend that its member colleges adopt standardized tests and within four years begin to publish the results. A group representing another 400 colleges will take a similar vote this month.

The tests would measure students' critical thinking, reasoning and written communication. They would likely be given to representative samples of freshmen and seniors, allowing schools - and the public- to measure the improvement in scores.

The assessments are part of a broader initiative called the Voluntary Accountability System, which was developed in part to reassure Washington that publicly funded higher education does not need a No Child Left Behind law with uniform exit exams given to art history and engineering majors alike.

"There was concern that they would start trying to do these grade-by-grade assessments, which I think all of us feel would be inappropriate in higher education," said University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan, who chaired development of the project with input from more than 80 public college administrators nationally. "So it's time for us to come together as a community and develop a system of accountability."

But other educators have profound misgivings about the notion that any generic tests can capture the learning produced by a college education.

"How do you measure citizenship?" said Goucher College President Sanford J. Ungar, who called the initiative "a very unfortunate" development. "How do you measure values? How do you measure inspiring a spirit of lifelong learning?"

The proposed system is a joint effort of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. The governing board of the first group is scheduled to take up the initiative at a meeting this morning in New York City.

Kirwan said he expects "most, if not all" of Maryland's public colleges to sign up.

Essentially, the Voluntary System of Accountability is a publishing project. Participating campuses would start by posting on the Internet a wide array of institutional data - such as graduation rates, student demographics and cost calculators - in a common format so students and parents could compare institutions.

Within two years, the schools also would publish the results of standardized surveys that measure student perceptions of their college experience.

The third phase of the project would require all campuses within four years to publish the results of one of three commercially available tests designed to measure student learning. . . .

The Heroism of Ellen Foote vs. the Duplicity of Bloomberg and Klein

Bloomberg and Klein have given contractors $80 million so far to come up with a not-ready-for prime-time instrument intended to solidify their reform agenda of test, punish, and stupidify public school children across the city of New York.

They did not count on one brave voice like Ellen Foote among the principals and teachers who are, otherwise, cowering under orders to keep their mouths shut--or in modern corporate parlance based on the sunny-side brainwashing of positive psychology, "accept, adapt, and move on."

Now we find that the glue that was borrowed from Jeb Bush to hold together the Bloomberg-Klein charter conversion agenda was already failing when they authorized its use. Parents and teachers are fed up with "report cards" designed to blame the schools, blame the teachers, blame the parents, and blame the children, while the great reformers like Bloomberg and Klein offer a less-than-basics education plan for the working poor in order to prepare a new permanent underclass of stupid, if submissive, human capital trained not to think.

From the Times:

. . . . In Mr. Klein’s view, the report cards will hold high-achieving schools accountable, requiring improvement for even the very best. But educators are deeply divided over whether the grades will be an accurate measure of school quality, or overly reductive and misleading. Some say the enterprise simply calculates and recalculates test scores at the expense of teaching and learning.

Thirty percent of the grade is based on overall student achievement on state tests. An additional 15 percent is based on the school’s environment, measured by attendance and surveys. The largest portion, 55 percent, is based on student improvement on state tests from one year to the next, a “growth model” analysis.

Typically, rating systems compare, say, this year’s fourth graders with last year’s, the approach used by No Child Left Behind in most cases. The first time, the city’s report cards will examine 2006 and 2007; later it will look at scores over several years.

The final grade will also reflect a comparison of schools with similar student populations. Elementary school populations will be grouped mainly by racial and socioeconomic background; middle and high schools will be grouped by test scores.

The entire analysis hinges on the accuracy of the data. As recently as last week, some principals throughout the city, particularly in high schools, were panicked that the data was inaccurate. Department officials said they expected to fix most of the errors and would delay the grades for a few high schools because of inaccuracies.

Ms. Foote does not dispute any numbers used to calculate her school’s grade on the draft, which she expects will be final. According to the city’s formula, a primary explanation for the grade is a dip in student performance on state tests. For example, in 2006, 90.7 percent of sixth graders met state standards in reading. The next year, 84.2 percent of seventh graders met those standards. In the same period, the citywide percentage of students in all grades meeting state reading standards rose to 50 percent, from 47 percent.

But Ms. Foote said it was unfair to judge a school on just one year of test scores and ignore gains over the last several years. She said that the percentage of students reading at grade level in her school had increased steadily since 2003, when it was 65 percent. She also said she was surprised to see her school compared to middle schools that required a standardized test for admission, like the Lab School and East Side Middle School.

“I do not want to devote more time to teaching to the tests,” she said, adding that she would have to sacrifice art, music and individualized instruction. “Is that what’s required now to get a good grade on this progress report? That’s a compromise that I don’t think I am willing to make.”

Mr. Klein acknowledges that the grades will be more sophisticated when more data is used.

“This is the first year; the grade is a starting point,” Mr. Klein said. “What it says is students similarly situated in other schools are getting different results, and you’ve got an expectation to anticipate that your kids’ results will go up.” He added, “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

Principals started receiving copies of their report cards, called progress reports, about a month ago, but were warned in a letter that speaking about them to the public or the news media before their formal release was “subject to disciplinary action.”

Ms. Foote said she was willing to speak about her grade because she felt strongly that it overemphasized testing and did not accurately reflect the learning that goes on in her school. . . .