The Globe’s lead editorial today recognizes the rising backlash against overuse and misuse of standardized testing. The editorial says that “resistance has grown louder, accompanied by some specific complaints: about schools overloading on diagnostic tests in bids to improve their MCAS scores, or posting students’ scores on public walls, as an attempt at motivation.”
Education Commissioner Chester has said that some complaints are “hyperbole,” and the Globe, while agreeing that the issue should be studied, concludes, “tests are not the enemy.”
My letter to the editor in response says:
We’ve gone overboard in our overuse and misuse of standardized tests. Now the cries of “enough is enough” are becoming impossible to ignore. Educators and researchers have long argued that high-stakes testing narrows curriculum and promotes teaching to the test (and cheating) instead of a whole child education.
Now national resistance to high-stakes testing is exploding, with tens of thousands of students, parents, teachers, school board members and superintendents speaking out. They’ve seen testing and test prep crowd out learning and create a destructive climate of fear in our schools.
In Massachusetts, our Less Testing, More Learning petition has rapidly gained thousands of signers and poignant testimony to the damage being done. Kathleen Thibodeau signed yesterday, writing, “Too much emphasis has been placed on standardized testing. It is no wonder we see so many children with anxiety. There is more to life than data and tests results.” Molly Senn-McNally wrote: “I strongly support a moratorium on high stakes testing, as a parent and as a pediatrician.”
We need to tally the true costs to our students and schools of testing overkill. We need reforms so our assessment practices support better teaching and learning to prepare our students for successful lives.
Do you agree? If so, please add your voice to the debate and your name to the Less Testing, More Learning petition, here.
Maybe the kids wouldn’t be quite so nervous if they didn’t pick up the vibe that the adults were. Just relax, everybody.
That said, I still think there are certain things that you must know before you move on and the only way to know that you know is to test you.
There are other ways to assess someone than a single high stakes exam.
There is this thing called a Report Card….
Also some people have different learning styles. There are other ways to demonstrate learning proficiency than a paper test. In science for instance, asking students to design a lab experiment provides a much broader assessment of a students skills than a paper exam ever can. In math, students can design a survey and interpret the results.
If they were how the heck do we end up with teenagers who can’t make change, which by the way is a basic subtraction skill that you just test and you need to know before you start designing surveys and doing other higher order things? Basic facts and figures must come before critical analysis – ditto for history and science.
As for learning styles, why are tests OK when a teacher gives them, but not when the state gives them. Yes, teachers modify their tests for some students, but there are modified circumstances for things like MCAS too. Procedurally filling in the correct bubble is just about the easiest thing one can do.
I strongly feel that teaching to the test degrades teachers ability to craft lessons their students find relevant and meaningful, that enrich students on the upper end of the bell curve while assisting students at the lower end, or that enable them to have the autonomy they need to be successful in the classroom. The real problem with modern education in America is not Finnish equity vs. Rhea style accountability, but rather, getting the middle men out. Getting the test makers, the textbook writers, charter managers, education consultants, and six figure salaried ‘curriculum advisors’-most of whom never taught a day in their life-out of the classroom and letting teachers teach. That may be the future teacher talking-but as a tutor for the past year and a half of a diverse body of learners, many of whom are ESL, I find interference even from my boss being in the classroom-significantly disruptive to my abilities as a tutor. When he took a hands off approach-the class started to dramatically change for the better. It became fun to teach, and the kids improved better, so long as I wrote up progress reports my boss was happy.
As a student, it was really annoying to have to deal with remedial work, or have history teachers try and teach MCAS Writing and Science during the hour that should’ve been devoted to history. History, civics instruction, enrichment elective courses, phys ed, and art classes all fell by the wayside as we got stuck with non stop MCAS prep for the month we took the test. And its also ridiculous to have such a high stakes stressful test be given in freshmen and sophmore year, when we have barely had time to adjust to high school. Junior year with SATs and college apps is stressful enough already, no need to make all the years that bad.
Obviously, we need standardized curriculum and standardized metrics for measuring student performance. Cambridge used to have different methods of report cards for all its elementary schools, and some programs within schools had different grading systems. In my own career, when I was in the MILES and Working Together programs at in K-6, we had numbered grading systems (1-5 with 5 being the best), and PC style lettered systems (E for excellent, g for good, f for fair, ni for needs improvement, and u for unsatisfactory). CRLS had an unweighted GPA, so a kid taking all CP (college prep) classes could get valedictorian with straight As over a good who took all honors or all AP classes.
Thanks in part to Joe Grassi on the elementary level, and yours truly working with Marc McGovern and Patty Nolan at the secondary level, we finally standardized it for all elementary schools. A, B, C, D, and F. And we weighted it at the high school level, since class rank is incredibly important for college admissions and since AP and Honors classes should count more if they are more difficult.
And those are the assessments I would use. Have every school in the Commonwealth use A,B,C,D and F and have that be the standard we use for graduation as it was for time memorial before MCAS. Entrust teachers who have decades of experience to evaluate their students, and use teacher to teacher evaluations so they can evaluate one another to ensure accountability, along with leadership from principals and assistant principals-themselves all hired and appointed from within the ranks of the teaching profession. All superintendents should have teaching and principal experience as well. That is how I would run it. Time to restore common sense and get the student and teachers perspectives-which should matter most-at the forefront of any effort for reform.
…I would submit your school was doing it wrong. Science class, not History, is intended to prepare for the Science MCAS. Standards are supposed to be a floor, not a ceiling.
Real education takes a back burner to test prep during that month. That is another period we could be devoting to STEM and Writing. We lost our accreditation in 2002 and had to make up a lot of ground with MCAS for 2003 when I took it. All we had was MCAS prep classes the month or two before the test. I might add this may no longer how it’s done, we’ve made great strides and CRLS is back in the top 50 list for scores, so I am not sure if the external pressure to get test results is still there. But it was a tough four year period in the schools history when I attended, I blame the bad Paula Evans reorganization but I also blame NCLB and MCAS.
That’s the rhetoric you hear, but in reality, the so called floor is pretty darn high. It doesn’t leave breathing room for much else.
…but my point in this context is that people get so worried about the subject tested that year that they ignore other subjects and I have a hard time believing that was the intent of the MCAS. Just because a Science test is most immediately on the horizon doesn’t make History suddenly unimportant. What I see here is an exercise in cramming for an exam, which we always tell students is a bad study habit, but here we see the schools collectively cramming. If you ignore History when it’s not the immediate concern all you will end up doing is cramming for that exam when it does come up.
are considering teaching! We need all the talented people we can get.
Toner and Patterson will be proud of you.
I’ll admit to having had extensive conversations with Joel (still think of him as Mr. Patterson in my head as the default) about this in the past few weeks, along with a few other former teachers of mine, along with a U Chicago friend in BPS and a CRLS friend at CPSD. I am looking to take the MTEL in the next few months and hope to get hired. Any advice or leads on openings would be appreciated.
I’d headline the editorial “Globe Reports, Promises to Minimize and Ignore Opposition to Cherished Globe Dogma”
Why do we need an advanced standardized curriculum that is designed for kids who are going to college? Might that not be a huge disincentive for kids who aren’t going to college?
Why can’t we specialize in vocations earlier? I don’t want to put down Chemistry as an important subject, but do students not bound for a STEM career need to master this subject?
Why isn’t it similarly important for college-bound kids to know welding, auto repair, soldering, and carpentry?
But CRLS did mandate on semester of a technical art in addition to a visual/performing art-so we did have to take one of those classes. There was also a great vocational track via RSTA that was integrated in the regular curriculum. Minutemen, and other vocational high schools are also highly regarded. Frankly, my friends who went through RSTA or Minutemen are making better bank than I am with a degree from the University of Chicago.
I definitely agree we should introduce vocational tracks as early as they do-middle school-and develop an alternative curricula that is better suited for the trades. More mandatory high stakes testing is definitely a step away from that goal, but the egghead/hardhat alliance I envision against big business in general can definitely be aligned against corporate ed reform too.
It should be assumed IMO until the moment a decision is actually made sometime senior year of high school that anyone and everyone might want a shot at college. There should be well-rounded and basic skills and knowledge for all students, though I guess I should admit a bias on my part in favor of academic pursuits over trade. There should be a baseline for both academic and vocational schools with divergence for more specialized knowledge. I suppose some basic training in do-it-yourself type stuff might not be a bad idea. For example except for driving and filling the gas tank I’m helpless when it comes to cars. Prop 2.5 killed shop and home economics in junior high for me, but since I’ve always seen schools as being for academics I didn’t miss them nearly as much as other things that were affected,
We are turning colleges into trade schools while trying to turn trade schools into degree granting institutions. We are obsessed with credential hoarding. People look down on the trades-but they are some of the last fields where people can make a true middle class living without having to go to college. I think there are a lot of students piped through mediocre collegiate institutions, getting loaded up with debt, and majoring in things like ‘communications’ that really inhibit their ability to be skilled employees.
I am not sure what changed. But it’s pretty obvious by high school who the ‘A students’ are, who the B and C students are, and who the kids are that just find traditional schooling boring or uninteresting. There is no reason why B and C students can’t find fulfilling careers in the trades. There is no reason why the kids who can’t handle traditional schooling can’t find alternative programs that work for them. I think NEU’s co-op model should definitely be expanded to other colleges in it’s tier.
As a U of C student, I find the liberal arts to be a sacred profession. We are one of the last places, even compared to the Ivy’s, where you read the full length original texts of the greatest works of Western civilization. I see no reason why we have to become yet another STEM focused institution to get government funding or be worthy of consideration, but that is the direction we are going in to be competitive. I think STEM can be done via trade schools in high school, trade institutions at the secondary level that are 2-3 year, community colleges, and technical colleges.
My child, a high school dropout who owns his own business and house here on Cape Cod, will help you out with your automotive needs! He owns an auto repair shop and used car dealership! He had a bias against academics in favor of trade.
(Full Disclosure – he did subsequently finish his HS degree and enrolled in Community College for business and accounting classes, but he had the auto gig first. And no, his parents did not help him; he did it on his own)