The scores for the PSSA (Pennsylvania’s state standardized
test) just came out. Rumor has it they are not good, with 70% of the students
scoring below basic in math. 70% failure rate??????? When I was in college
learning how to be a teacher constructing a test was one thing we learned
about. It should have a variety of opportunities for responses, should include
multiple choice, fill in the blanks, essays, and true-false questions. We
learned that if we gave a test based on what we taught that saw more than 50%
failing, that there was probably something wrong with the test, that it didn’t
measure what we actually taught, that we should find out what the problem with
the test was, re-teach the material and retest. If 70% are failing the test,
there is a disconnect between what is being taught and what is being tested. We
already know there is a problem in the math curriculum, expecting students in
Algebra 1 to master concepts from Algebra 2/Trigonometry. If they are testing
these concepts on the test, then the failure rate is understandable.
Teaching/testing concepts that require advanced math in a beginning level
course is plain old stupid. Stuff like this is happening all over the United
States, it’s no accident.
Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and continuing with Race
to the Top (RttT), education has been assaulted by corporate reformers bent on
privatizing public schools, union busting, and setting public schools up for
failure and takeover. Education budgets have continuously been decreased as
prices for books, supplies and heating oil rise. Teacher pensions have been
continuously under attack and many states have not contributed to the pension
funds for decades. Teacher tenure, which in reality is only due process in K-12
schools has been attacked to get rid of the most experienced teachers with
advanced degrees who earn more money than new teachers, balancing the budget on
the backs of the school employees.
Professor Jesse Turner, an educator from Connecticut, has
been walking to Washington DC and meeting with education activists along the
way to highlight the dangers of standardized tests and other education
“reforms.” He met with a few dozen activists in Philadelphia the other day
after they accompanied him across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Camden, NJ to
Philadelphia. With Independence Hall as a backdrop, he addressed the need to
stop the reforms that aren’t working and to get rid of high-stakes tests for
students. He called for a moratorium on the Keystone tests and the PSSAs, and
for a fair-funding formula for public schools. Teachers, parents and students
shared their stories about the devastating effects of these tests on students
and teachers. They admonished corporate-education-supporting politicians NO
JUSTICE, NO VOTES.
Teachers assess students every day, several times a day, in
various ways, only some of which require an actual test. Looking at writing
samples, listening to a discussion, judging a poster for accuracy and
creativity, Listening to a child explain a math problem to his peer, reading
and answering questions in reading groups, noticing what kind of questions a
child asks can also give some indication of whether they understand a concept.
Watching a group of students put together a play about an historical figure,
write a song about a science concept. There are many more ways to determine if
a child is progressing. The idea that only a standardized test can tell if a
child is succeeding is ludicrous.
A standardized test is a way, however, to gather information
quickly and compare it nationwide. The NAEP tests, given every 2 years in specific grades, do just
that. Even the NAEP's results do not come back in enough time to make a
difference that year for the child that took them. When I went to elementary
school, we took ONE standardized test in 4th grade to determine our IQs. The
rest of the year, our teachers tested us weekly in spelling and math, monthly
in history and geography and civics, (we didn't have science until 6th grade).
We had January and June exams. These exams were usually locally made and cumulative
but didn't count for the whole grade in the report card. I believe they counted
for 25% of your grade. My second standardized test was the PSAT and then the
SAT. And that was it until I took my National Teachers Exams my senior year of
college.
We don't NEED standardized test to tell us which kids are
having a problem. In fact, we can probably sit down with the child and
ascertain what the problem is quicker than they can take a standardized test.
Sometimes we can't figure out how to help the child and that's where the IEP
process takes over. Speaking of IEPs, do you realize that kids can't be
declared Special Ed unless they are performing two full years or more below
their grade level? Special Ed kids have to take these grade level tests with no
accounting for where they CAN perform. The only accommodations are the teacher
reading the directions and a longer testing time and a small group atmosphere.
As if taking 4 or 5 hours to complete a 1.5 hour test will make a big
difference. Either you can or you can't do it, whether you can't do it in an
hour or in 4 hours, it's still not going to make a difference.
To hold up graduation or promotion because a child cannot
perform on a standardized test is a travesty. You are willing to bet that a
test taken on one day can judge a child better than a year's performance in
class? I don't think so. One day of testing negates 4 years of high school
tests, projects and reports? No.
As a teacher, I can see a place for standardized tests, but
not the high stakes these tests come with. My last year of teaching (I retired
in 2012) brought me a class of 25 fifth graders. Two were homeless, one who had
a mother who was an addict. One girl's mother had just died that summer, one
boy's mother had a stroke and was bedridden at home, two kids received special
ed services, one boy arrived in November having never attended a regular
school. He had been in a 6-students class for emotionally disturbed kids for
the previous 5 years. He required constant attention and a TSS worker who never
materialized. Another young man was on his 5th school in the past 2 years
because he had emotional problems at all the others and was seeing a shrink
twice a week. Yet another young man had anger issues and was under a
psychiatrist's care. Two kids arrived mid-year from a local charter school that
counseled them out because they were failing (both kids were performing 2-3
years below level). Another girl had been shuttled back and forth from relative
to relative because she was manipulative and mean. She needed psychiatric help
but was not receiving any. That's almost HALF my class with issues that would
prevent them from learning and doing well on tests.
The rest of the class? I saw 6 at or above grade level and 7
were one year below grade level. I taught my heart out that year. Brought 2
kids three levels forward in reading, stopped one of the kids from running out
of the class when frustrated, found hidden talents in several kids that caused
higher self-esteem and therefore higher school performance.
How did we do on the PSSA? The on-level kids did great! A
couple of the one-year-below kids were able to make proficient on either math
or reading. One of the special ed kids did well in writing. The emotionally
disturbed kids bombed the tests because they refused to take it once they got
frustrated. The standardized tests they took didn’t begin to scratch the
surface of all the students learned
that year or any of the years before.
If you asked me whether that year was a success, I could
give you at least one success for each child in that room. Indeed, some of the
kids performed beyond my wildest dreams. I was told at some point that some
kids were assigned to my room simply because I had infinite patience and was
non-confrontational with the emotionally disturbed kids. Many years, I'd get
the kids no one else wanted. If I were to be judged on their overall test
performance, I'd be judged as an ineffective teacher. But I wasn't ineffective
at all. My students left me in a much better place than they arrived, not
because of any test, but because I tried to work with them in the ways they
needed me to.
Truly, a standardized test cannot tell you whether a child
has learned or not. It only tells you that the child is good at taking a
standardized test. The writing test tells you that your child can follow a
rigid template and use multi-syllable words. That template destroys any kind of
creative response to a prompt and the essays all end up sounding the same. It’s
disgusting what the writing test has done to creative writing.
Standardized test cut scores are set every year AFTER the
test has been taken. Why? So the appropriate number of students will fail. What
is that appropriate number? What ever will make a bell curve. There will always
be low-scoring students because that’s the way the test is set up. If by some
chance everyone who took the test did well and ranked in the proficient area,
they’d take those cut scores and make it so only 25% of the kids scored
proficient and 25% score below basic, even though their results would have
earned everyone a proficient score the year before. They can set the cut scores
anywhere they wish to make it look like kids are failing or kids are
progressing well. The scores have nothing to do with what a child knows and has
learned, the scores are manipulated each year.
What to do? Until the standardized tests become low-stakes
tests and aren’t the determiner of promotion or graduation, the only choice is
to Opt Out. Join the movement, it’s been growing exponentially for years. Older
middle schoolers and high schoolers can simply refuse to take the test.
Elementary schoolers can be opted out by their parents refusing the tests for
their child in writing to the principal and superintendent after viewing it.
Still learning!
