I want to share testimony that I gave during the Joint Committee on Education’s June 11th hearing regarding standardized tests. While I think we should look at how to reduce the burden of testing on students, I heard many calls during the hearing to get rid of accountability altogether. Here’s why I don’t think that should happen.
Throughout my life, I’ve lived in low-income neighborhoods. I’ve seen the effects poverty can have on a community, and I’ve seen how hard it is to overcome those effects. And, I know firsthand just how hard it is because I’m trying to overcome a childhood of poverty myself.
My family immigrated to this country a few years before I was born. I grew up with an extended family, including several cousins. From an early age, I could see that while I loved going to school, some of my cousins didn’t feel the same way.
Year after year, we went from grade to grade and school to school together. However, while I worked hard toward a goal of going to college, I saw some of my cousins drift further and further away from finishing high school. I don’t know exactly where our paths started to diverge, but I what I do know is that this fall I will be entering my senior year at Northeastern, and two of my cousins are in prison.
I have watched the school-to-prison pipeline claim members of my family, and I want to make sure Massachusetts doesn’t have schools feeding that very same pipeline.
A report by the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, a Boston-based non-profit, found that in the 2012-2013 school year Black students in Massachusetts received 43 percent of all out-of-school suspensions and 39 percent of expulsions, despite making up only 8.7 percent of students enrolled.
Students who are suspended once are twice as likely than their peers to drop out, and those who drop out are, in turn, 8 times more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than students who graduate. It’s a cliche, but, if something doesn’t change we seriously need to either build better schools or bigger prisons.
We need accountability in schools. I can only imagine where my cousins would be today if someone had caught on and intervened with them. Instead, their challenges were un-addressed and ignored until it was too late.
You can’t just take someone in the 10th grade who’s reading at a 5th grade level and make up for years of instruction. It’ll be expensive, time consuming, and difficult. You can, however, take a 4th grader reading at a 3rd grade level and help him or her catch up. To do that however, you have to catch the problem early, before it gets worse.
It’s cheaper, simpler and easier in the long run to do some version of annual testing.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. Many civil rights groups at the national level support Common Core, because they’ve seen what I’ve seen and they’ve lived my story. It’s no coincidence that major civil rights groups like the NAACP, The National Council on La Raza, The National Urban League, and the National Disability Rights Network are all working together to support Common Core.
They know what’s at stake, and they don’t want to stress people out, they just want a reasonable, objective way to make sure our kids are learning. We should look at how to make testing less burdensome, but let’s not sacrifice all of the progress we’ve made.
I hope that my story can provide at least one example of why we test and what purpose it serves. And, as a Democrat, I hope that my party stands on the side of accountability, so we can continue to be champions for students and fulfill our duty to give all students a high quality education.
sabutai says
This testimony works very hard to frame the current testing regime as a civil rights issue, and accountability. However, it embraces fallacies to do so.
“Common Core” is not an accountability system in any form. Rather, it is a list of what the private sector believes must be taught. And certainly, students in Mississippi, Idaho, and elsewhere should be taught the skills needed to compete in the 21st century. That does not mean, however, that students in Massachusetts should learn less because we lowered our standards to that of Common Core. The NAACP is speaking up for under-served students in other states — that doesn’t indicate that it wants Massachusetts students to have less success. It certainly doesn’t mean it wants students to receive more of the testing regime where disadvantaged students struggle more. Saying that groups backing a curriculum also back testing is a lie.
For good reason. Consider the schools where students test poorly — almost entirely in urban areas such as Lawrence and Holyoke. What happens in those schools is that local control is taken away, curriculum in the arts, citizenship, and science is downgraded, and private contractors who issue edicts about where students are supposed to look during a lesson are enforced. Students from more challenging background are forced into extra classes on how to beat the test (“strategies”) and drill and kill exercises. They receive a lower quality education in pursuit of higher scores. They are treated more harshly, and given less opportunity, because of their socioeconomic background.
I’m sorry this new poster feels that accountability only exists with test scores. Charter schools are famous for burning through teachers in the name of accountability, with few restraints on their personnel decisions — with no appreciably better results. The testing regime this poster favors has been in existence for 20 years, and Massachusetts scores on national assessments such as the SAT or NAEP haven’t gone up as a consequence. Most people would think a massive expenditure over two decades, with no results, needs ending, not continuation in the guise of “reform”.
True accountability would also hold everyone to a sensible standard. The testing regime this poster favors uses a system dismissed by the American Statistical Association. This poster favors a system that mixes norm-referenced and criterion-referenced grading, run by bureaucrats who just declared thousands of students were not longer poor — because they changed the formula.
Treat all students the right way. Give them an education they deserve, not one to beat the test. Give all students tests that are fair, valid, and mean something. Stop hurting them with testing, and start helping them learn.
Christopher says
Why do other countries seem to not wring hands over tests?
How is it that standards meant to be floors become ceilings in practice? In other words if Common Core lifts Mississippi up, great, but why is it pulling Massachusetts down? Any state that already exceeds standards should just keep doing what it’s doing since it would seem to work.
jconway says
Fully find their education system and set national standards in a nationalized system. Ours is a patchwork of states and localities committing different levels of resources under a largely impotent DOE, which when it sets at snares does so ham handedly as it did with Common Core. Tests are a means of assessment overseas, based in what students actually learn in school, not the for profit test sector and it’s largely white male authorship as it is here with very subjective tests that do a poor job of assessing then being used to determine graduation and school funding, with low performing schools losingn resources which is an absurdity of forcing business logic and outcomes into an intrinsically humanistic endeavor.
jconway says
Other countries fully fund their education system and set national standards in a nationalized system. Ours is a patchwork of states and localities committing different levels of resources under a largely impotent DOE, which when does bother to set standards does so in a way that actually harms rigorous districts and systems, as it did with Common Core (which states can still opt out of). Tests are a means of assessment overseas, based on what students actually learn in school, not the proclivities of the for profit test sector and it’s largely white male authorship as it is here with very subjective tests that do a poor job of assessing what students actually learn. Overseas that assessment is then used to determine how to modify curricula so that more students can meet the educational standards set by administrators. Here, these tests are then used to determine graduation rates and school funding, with low performing schools losing resources which is an absurdity of forcing quantitative business logic into what should be an intrinsically qualitative humanistic endeavor.
Christopher says
…as it is the way it is handled? I can certainly accept that. If what they are doing is better we should learn from that. I’m just tired of my country that more than has the ability to be the best in the world at whatever we put our mind to coming in embarrassingly behind other developed countries, and sometimes not-so-developed countries in student rankings.
jconway says
I recommend FairTest as an organization you may be interested in, it’s advocating for a fairer way of testing students. But no one is arguing that tests are a bad assessment or that testing should stop, simply that these tests as currently designed are bad and they should stop. And letting tests determine graduation rates or funding levels is absurd, and that should stop.
sabutai says
First of all other countries do focus excessively on tests. South Korea shuts down their air space during student testing engineer has been nationwide scandals in Indonesia in India. Europe is no better frankly.
Your second question asks students and adults to work hard on material they know will not count. It is the same as wondering why Tom Brady doesn’t spend practice time improving his free throw. Of course these are all across the approach to education that is driven by numbers and not learning, an approach that cannot simply be reformed since it is fundamentally based on the idea of converting things two numbers rather than improving them.
answers
Christopher says
…but I do hope he can do arithmetic without a calculator, knows how our government works, can write coherently according to grammatical and spelling standards, etc. There are certain things everyone should know and certain skills everyone should have. I could give you my own opinion as to what some of those are, but I understand that standards would result from a broader discussion with several opinions.
sabutai says
I believe you may have missed the intent of my analogy. Tom Brady doesn’t practice his free throw because he isn’t judged on it. The acceptable “floor” for his free throw shooting is very low because he isn’t judged on it. If we insist on making testing the raison d’etre of the education system, then the acceptable “floor” will abysmally low for anything not tested — which includes how our government works, by the way. People don’t often seek to improve something that doesn’t interest them if they won’t be asked to demonstrate it, so students and educators won’t seek to elevate skills the tests ignore. And since testing has overwhelmed education, that is all that will matter.
Christopher says
…is that we SHOULD teach and test mathematics, civics, and grammar inter alia because those are things everyone should know. A free throw is a specialized skill which you only need to know if you are planning to join the NBA.
sabutai says
And we have for centuries. As I said in my own testimony to the committee, I have the experience and training to write a test. And unlike the MCAS, I learn almost instantly how every single student did on every single question, at a tiny fraction of the price of the MCAS.
If privatized testing helped more students learn more, it would make sense. It has been two decades of failure in that regard, so why keep supporting it?
Christopher says
…but for me the operative word in standardized testing is “standardized”. I want to be sure that at least as a baseline, what you teach in your history class is the same thing being taught in history classes throughout the commonwealth. In the case of history there should also be flex time built in to cover local history. Testing was brought in because leaving it entirely to local communities didn’t seems to be working either, and as far as I know Massachusetts post ed reform was leading the rankings domestically and unlike the US as a whole compares favorably to international counterparts. Colleges and employers throughout the country shouldn’t have to guess at what it means to have a high school diploma from a Massachusetts public system.
centralmassdad says
Testing, in the abstract, seems like a good way to make sure that any specific school system meets at least certain minimum thresholds. And, maybe, as a way to measure School System A against School System B in order to figure out the meaning of an “A student” from either one.
But, students don’t give a damn about these things, and won’t give the test a second thought unless it has consequences for them. Then, it is a short trip from “some stakes” to “high stakes.”
Then, what do you do if a school doesn’t meet the minimum threshold? There has to be consequences, right? So, once you have high-stakes consequences for both school and students, you have the all-testing-all-the-time system we have now.
The problem is, how else can you fairly and objectively measure how schools, and the staff within them, are doing their jobs? Once you get away from the objectivity of standardized tests, you are back to purely subjective assessment, which has problems of its own. Once you embrace the objectivity of standardized tests, you sacrifice half of your academic time to testing or test prep.
Christopher says
Maybe we should add days for testing (Yes, we’ll have to pay for it.) rather than take those days out of the 180. We also need to have education and testing fit more neatly together rather than giving the sense of “We interrupt your regularly scheduled lessons to prepare for the test.” Somehow in my AP classes where everyone was expected to sit for the exam the teachers manage to simultaneously teach the material AND prepare us for the test.
centralmassdad says
But some don’t. I had a social studies teacher in High School whose lesson, every day of the entire year, was: read Chapter X and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Every day, we read silently and handed in written answers to the questions in the book. The teacher read the newspaper. The answers were never graded or returned.
Sometimes, to mix it up, we read aloud, going up and down the rows and each person taking a paragraph. I always got in trouble on these days, because the pace was so plodding that I would read ahead, and then not have the place when it came to be my turn, and would be chastised for not paying attention.
That was an awful, awful teacher. How do you get guys like that out of the public school system? You can’t do it with principal or supervisor evaluations, because those are subjective and might be unfair if the principal or supervisor is a jerk and has decided that he/she doesn’t like some particular teacher, or might be the result of illegal discrimination. So there has to be some objective measure of whether the teacher is awful. So, here come the tests.
The problem with the tests is that it can’t tell the difference between a teacher that reads the newspaper all day, and a teacher whose students spent most nights sleeping in a station wagon.
joeltpatterson says
Cheating in India, one of the countries that some people are always saying is going to beat us because they are better educated:
…and
China has been fudging the numbers for the PISA test.
...Japan has had a testing dominated system for a long time but they are not dominating America as we feared in the 1980s.
So other nations DO freak out about tests.
Mark L. Bail says
when it comes to wringing hands about testing.England is test crazy in similar ways to us. Most European countries use testing to ration free higher education with very high-stakes tests. On the other hand, we allow everyone to go to college, though we ration it somewhat through the cost.
shakeirg says
I’m definitely not in support of any type of testing regime, which is why I’m calling for testing reform as well. I agree that we should look at the amount of testing that we put kids through, but supporting accountability is hardly supporting a regime. If we want to talk about over-testing, we should have a conversation about where these required exams come from. The Federal Government only requires 17 testing days out of the entire academic career of a student, which is nearly 2,300 days. The vast majority of tests aren’t federally mandated, but instead come from state and local policies.
To some of your other points:
“Saying that groups backing a curriculum also back testing is a lie.”
No, they support yearly testing as well
(To your points on Receivership)
While Receivership is a tough road to take, that’s kind of what it’s meant to be – a “plan z” option for school districts that are severely and routinely under-performing. As I said in my post, it’s incredibly difficult to make up for multiple years of instruction that these kids missed out on. Receivership may be drastic, but it needs to be. Time is crucial here, as learning gaps only get worse as students go from grade to grade.
While extra time may be devoted to what kids missed on MCAS, these are real concepts that they’re learning, not just ‘multiple choice test-taking strategies’. MCAS signals where students are struggling in Math, Science, and English, and schools add class time to make sure students are actually understanding the things that they’ve missed. There’s no harsh treatment, just added time and more attention to struggling students. That hardly sounds like the bleak, dystopian regime you’re mentioning. Students aren’t getting punished for their socioeconomic status, they’re finally getting the time and attention they deserve despite it.
“The testing regime this poster favors has been in existence for 20 years, and Massachusetts scores on national assessments such as the SAT or NAEP haven’t gone up as a consequence.”
Mass is a national education leader, ranking highly on SAT and NAEP. On the latter we’re either #1 tied for best in the nation on reading and mathematics as of 2013. On the former, we’re the best in the nation per participation as of last year. Other states like North Dakota or Illinois may rank higher than us, but they have participation rates of 2.3% and 4.6% respectively. We’re at 84.1%. Our system of accountability, namely MCAS, is a part of our status as a national leader.
(MCAS vs PARCC)
The main problem with MCAS is not that it isn’t a rigorous assessment. The problem is that it’s outdated. MCAS is not a test that aligns with College standards, and it was put in place as a graduation requirement for High School. PARCC and Common Core were not created by the private sector, but in collaboration with Colleges and Universities who wanted to make sure that the students they accepted were meeting a basic minimum standard from which they could succeed. With PARCC we’re also moving away from simple recollection-based tests like plain multiple choice tests, and towards tests that assess how student arrived at their answers. This isn’t just asking to state a relationship, but these questions are asking students to understand why that relationship exists.
As a final note, tests can be improved. We’ve updated MCAS a multitude of times over the years, even adding a whole section. We can make adjustments to PARCC that can make it more ‘rigorous’ in your opinion as well.
sabutai says
You’re right that national headquarters of those groups you mention have supported privatized testing for public schools. I was wrong in saying otherwise, and can only excuse it by saying that many chapters who work much more closely with communities have gone against those statements by supporting actions that prioritize education over high-stakes testing (Seattle, Rhode Island NAACP chapters, for example). Kind of a fitting parallel between your preference for removing local democratic control over public education and my support of it. Sorry to get that wrong.
I do not share your believe in shibboleths that excuse the privatization of schools, the rewarding of contracts to well-connected corporations, and the elimination of democracy that is called “receivership”. The regime I’m mentioning on drill and kill and curriculum deprivation is not a “Dystopian regime” but a daily reality for students in those schools. Speak to a public educator in those schools.
Saying that MCAS is the reason Massachusetts is the national education leader confuses correlation with causality. That status existed regardless of the MCAS’s legal status, and Eric Hanushek’s work demonstrates pretty clearly the minimal impact standardized testing was on outcomes.
Please do not continue the line that “PARCC…was not created by the private sector”. Type PARCC into a search engine, and you get Pearson, Incorporated, which is private sector. They run the test. They own it. How is that not a private product?
Finally, I’m sorry our state blew millions of dollars on an “outdated” test that asks hard-hitting questions such as what gardening tools to use in a situation. You’re right that PARCC is different — it takes more days, requires the purchase of thousands of dollars of technological equipment for every school, sets an artificial time limit for testing, minimizes the role of educated persons in its scoring, employs poorly designed and unfamiliar technology that invalidates the test-taking procedure, and threatens students who think about talking about the test to anyone. It’s not an improvement for anything aside from the profit margin for the British corporation that makes it.
Now that the failure of the privatized testing regime is being clear, I don’t blame its supporters for trying to change the conversation into “reform” or “civil rights”. Nor am I surprised how few actual public school educators support this last-ditch effort to keep doing the wrong thing. Thousands of parents are opting their children out of this waste of their time. Those people who know best how this system works (and aren’t on the companies’ payroll) are doing the right thing by saying we need to stop and think.
scott12mass says
Shakeirg, thanks for sharing a difficult story for which you have a very unique perspective. Especially for a population which is becoming more and more mobile we need to have a high school diploma mean the same thing in Mass that it does in Alabama. One way standards are enforced is by testing. All high school graduates across the country should know who fought in the war of 1812 (and when it happened).
Christopher says
…what year was the War of 1812 again?:)
joeltpatterson says
I have been teaching in urban schools in Houston, Seattle, and now Cambridge since 1995. The school I taught at in Seattle (Cleveland HS) was less than 10% white, and with a very substantial impoverished student body. My observation is that children from families without a history of college education begin to think there is nothing more to education than THE TEST… and that is a de-motivator for many.
But I have to tell you that something bothers me when rich people who send their kids to prep schools that have classes where 15 kids have discussions around a table (the Harkness method) get into government and decide that poor kids must barked at, lined up, made to memorize, and always sit the same way. It is this harsh discipline, of detentions for shirttails being out, and no arts or music that is the real school to prison pipeline. (Consider these thoughts by an education professor in Nashville…)
On the Monday of MCAS science testing this year, I saw a 9th grade girl in the school office, shaking and about to cry because she was afraid she’d fail this test that was required for graduation. Is she going to see the beauty of science now? I don’t think so. For some kids, this test is a mere nuisance, but for others testing is a reason to quit learning.
Christopher says
There’s no inherent reason that girl should fear the MCAS more than a test her own teacher would give. Assuming her teachers have done their jobs if she relaxes and does her best she should do fine. Music and arts are essential. They can’t be tested the way more academic subjects can, which is fine, but when we are so obsessed with testing that we focus on nothing else we are doing it wrong. For the record, some memorization and discipline is necessary.
joeltpatterson says
there are inherent reasons that girl should fear the MCAS. If she does not understand the wording of a question on a test her teacher wrote for class, it is legal for the teacher to clarify the wording.
If a teacher in Massachusetts during the MCAS tells a student anything other than what is in the script we face sanctions and discipline from our administration.
Christopher says
….is exactly what I’m talking about regarding adults (by which I meant both local staff and state officials) making too much of it, though I understand the need to be careful about additional information in order to be fair to all.
joeltpatterson says
Certainly true, and if a bigger picture of the ideas is provided then the student sees the memorization as natural & purposeful. What we are trying to communicate to you, Christoper, and all the other non-teachers out there is state policy of telling kids at the end of their first year of high school “Pass this test or you will never get a diploma 3 years from now” is a powerful incentive that is skewing the system toward unbalanced memorization and overtesting (we make foreign exchange students take MCAS, for Pete’s sake!)
By analogy, when libertarian-ish thinkers like Justice Kennedy created the Citizens United ruling, they essentially argued that there is nothing inherently wrong with billionaires & corporations spending as much as they like to influence elections–and the consequence of that incentive is more politicians who ignore the common good in enforcing environmental regulations, enforcing workplace safety, and so on.
joeltpatterson says
and actually interfering with learning. That is our observation as teachers. We think the high stakes aspect of the testing is causing this. Not only high stakes for the kids, but high stakes for principals and teachers as the evaluation system is now designed to predominantly measure just test scores, not whether a teacher is dedicated, supportive, helpful, or kind.
Christopher, what in your mind would constitute clear & convincing evidence that high-stakes standardized testing is going too far?
Christopher says
….but I still believe in the concept that there are certain things everyone should be expected to know. Remember, as a substitute I am not entirely divorced from the school system. I see what teachers go through and principals being nervous nellies and have myself proctored practice, and occasionally even real, MCAS tests. These teachers ARE also dedicated, supportive, kind, etc. I want to say RELAX EVERYBODY! I had an AP History teacher who didn’t teach to the test (In fact, she failed miserably in her predictions about what would be on it despite bragging of her great track record in that regard.) but because she taught history thoroughly as was her job we all still passed with room to spare. There is way too much teaching to the test and not enough controlling for other circumstances. I am firmly in the mend it, don’t end it camp and largely agree with the original diarist of this thread.
petr says
… that this is the crux of the problem. “Accountability” is not for students. How are you going to hold students “accountable”?? You aren’t going to. You can’t. “Accountability” is for the teachers and the principals. To a very great degree the politicians don’t care to hold the students accountable, however much they say they want to, because their battle is with the teachers, and more precisely, with teachers unions.
‘Standardized testing” assumes that the teacher is the sole governing variable in in education. (this is strange, too, because one of the more deleterious practices of many a charter school is to cycle through un-trained teachers as though there was A) an unlimited supply of 2) completely interchangeable bots) I do not believe that teach is the sole governing variable. I’m sure, under perfect circumstances it would become true that teaching is the sole indicator of success, but, as I can see, the teacher can only succeed in the interstices and overlap of class size and parental involvement… and even ‘parental involvement’ is a loaded term encompassing everything from expectations to homework help to nutritional understanding and follow-through…
So, you see, I see ‘standardized testing’ as both institutional mistrust of teachers and hand-wavy attempts to appear busy about the problem without actually offering any help…
Christopher says
…pass this test now or you won’t get a diploma three years from now. It’s pass this test or you get a couple of chances to try again, which is why the so called graduation test is given in 10th grade. Several years ago, my state Senator hosted and opportunity for adults to take a sample 10th grade MCAS and then discuss what they thought of the test. I remember being able to identify which HS class I had learned the particular question with the only slight problem being a couple of them didn’t come until after 10th grade. My high school was Catholic and in NH and I believe I attended prior to MCAS anyway, so that showed me that the expectations for the test were reasonable even without there being a test. You do need to memorize math facts and maybe some historical dates, but actually there’s a lot of MCAS that memorization won’t get you very far too.
joeltpatterson says
at MCAS lose even more days of their learning to testing.
petr says
You sound like you are a very motivated person. You are capable and driven.
You are not the norm.
By this very admission that your cousins needed it more than you and that you probably would succeed whether there are standardized tests or not so let us dispense with the notion that standardized tests are the keys to the kingdom. They are not. Your cousins did indeed need someone to intervene yet it is entirely possible — probable even — that those inclined to intervene were pre-occupied with keeping their jobs by raising overall test scores. In this way, and because of standardized testing, your cousins fell through the cracks in a system designed not to care about them as individuals.
“Accountability in schools” means, to me, nothing more than to keep the teachers in a constant state of anxiety over their jobs. This is antithetical to the practices of teaching which involves patient nurturing over time. Can you imagine if we judged farmers on the speed with which they brought a commodity to market? We do not. We subsidize them instead and, in many cases, pay them not to grow more than they would make if they grew something… But teaching is a form of farming in that it involves similarly weighing and understanding a constantly shifting array of variables over time. Do we subsidize teaching? For the most part, no, we do not. We, instead, attack those who would be teachers and we attack them without any understanding of that constantly shifting array of variables…
Mark L. Bail says
the diarist on taking the brave step of giving testimony on Beacon Hill and posting here, which is potentially more brutal. I’ve read this post of a couple of times, but I’m not seeing a coherent argument.
As Petr aptly points out in his critique, the diarist doesn’t seem to know what accountability means. S/he certainly doesn’t define it. Does it mean test scores? Does it mean teacher and school evaluation?
Because that is the problem with standardized testing: the sanctions it can bring about lead, not to learning, but to gaming the system. When schools are punished like Lawrence and Holyoke, schools will do what they can to improve scores, though those scores are poor measures of learning. Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz writes about score inflation, the increase in test scores NOT due to learning. Test preparation displaces other important learning activities like art and music, activities middle-class kids enjoy.
We want to see all of our kids succeed–not just the white ones that aren’t poor. Unfortunately, no testing regime can accomplish this. There is no evidence that the Common Core leads to college or career readiness. There is no evidence that passing these tests every year, as the diarist suggests, will help in either of these regards. In fact, more testing can lead to more kids misbehaving and dropping out.
Mark L. Bail says
my hyperlink. It should be https://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/r655.pdf