Last week I posted an article about how some folks in Lorain County, OH, are fighting excessive amounts of standardized testing in Ohio.
I didn't realize this would generate so much controversy. A few comments that seemed to miss what the folks in Ohio are pushing back against:
- There is no way to assess what someone knows without testing them.
- "20 hours of testing" is a big deal?
- You make it sounds like what's on the test is arbitrary and has nothing to do with what students would otherwise be learning.
- Standardized tests measure the results of teaching.
There were many good responses to these misunderstandings and much thoughtful commentary. One thing that came out of this for me was that we should look at the experience in Texas. Yes, Texas.
Walter Stroup, an education professor at the University of Texas, compared the standardized tests to using a bathroom scale to measure height.
First, a few thoughts. This is not a "tests bad" vs. "tests good" argument. No one is arguing to eliminate testing. Tests of various kinds have always helped teachers assess learning.
As to "20 hours of testing" not being a big deal, several people seemed to focus on this number without thinking about the amount of work required to prepare for 20 hours of testing. If teachers are going to be judged based on test results, the incentive is for them to spend as much time as possible teaching the test. Some teachers have even gone so far as to change student answers to improve their own ratings. Criminal efforts aside, teaching to the test (an effort that takes far more time than just 20 hours) takes time away from teaching hours.
There also seems to be some confusion about how much standardized tests equate to teaching:
You make it sounds like what's on the test is arbitrary and has nothing to do with what students would otherwise be learning.
The issue here is that often what standardized tests measure is more the ability to take a standardized test rather than ability or subject matter.
Here's where the experience in Texas is relevant.
The experience of Texas
Texas has a $468 million contract with Pearson Education for 5 years for the STAAR tests starting in 2010. Texas has been the leader in standardized test adoption since 1979 and have doubled down on standardized tests every chance they could get to the point where in 2013 there were 32 tests and 15% of the final grade was based on standardized test results:
Maximum total tests: 32
Grades and subjects: 3-8: Reading; 4, 7: Writing; 3-8: Math; 5, 8: Science; 8: Social studies. End of Course tests in English I, II, III (reading/writing); Algebra I, II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, World geography, World history, US history
Stakes: Complex formula of EOC scores needed to graduate.
Teachers weren't allowed to see the tests.
Pressure had been building against the culture of testing since 2006. It finally won support from the state's education commissioner, Rick Scott, in January 2012. Scott spoke at a Texas State Board of Education meeting:
What we’ve done in the past decade, is we've doubled down on the test every couple of years, and used it for more and more things, to make it the end-all, be-all. You've reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak.
Much of this was in response to the formation of a grassroots group of parents and educators called Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (
TAMSA).
Days later he spoke in front of a conference of superintendents and said: "I believe that testing is good for some things. But the system we have created has become a perversion of its original intent." He received a standing ovation.
How do you know your tests actually measure what you say they should?
At a meeting in June 2012, people testified for hours before University of Texas professor Walter Stroup took the stand and asked the question: How do you know your tests actually measure what you say they should?
Stroup had run the numbers and found that 72 percent of performance on the tests was simply based on the ability to take tests.
Here's how the Dallas Morning News summarized his findings:
Given a classroom of 100 perfectly representative Texas students and how they ranked on one year’s TAKS math exam, Stroup could predict most of the rankings on that year’s English or history test. And on last year’s science exam. And the next year’s social studies exam. Or any other test those 100 students would take any other year.
What this means is that based on the results of one test, any test, Stroup could predict how students would do on other tests in different subjects and in different grades.
What this means is that the test measured the ability to take the test. Not what students were being taught.
Stroup testified that Texas had bought a pile of stress and wasted time from Pearson for their $468 million.
The analogy Stroup drew was using a bathroom scale to measure height. The tests were working exactly as designed, they simply were designed to rank students rather than assess performance.
A meeting was suggested with both Stroup and representatives from Pearson Learning. This meeting never took place. Pearson instead issued a talking points rebuttal.
Stroup and TAMSA had been heard though.
Rep. Bennett Ratliff, R-Coppell, a member of the education committee worked to pass a bill for an independent audit of the tests. The bill was one of four education bills that passed without a single "no" vote.
In 2013, the Texas legislature passed the reform bill HB 5 that scaled back standardized testing. One provision in the bill prohibited the state from appointing testing company employees to a school accountability committee.
What do we value?
Texas lost sight of the original goal and became standardized test obsessed. Teachers will respond to incentives to teach to a test and when the test measures test taking, they will teach test taking.
As veteran teacher Valerie Strauss wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
Teachers doing those kinds of things [involving students in education] are usually older, better educated, and more experienced, but high-stakes testing’s single-minded focus on scores has reduced them to simply guessing what’s probably going to be on the test and hammering it to near death. Experiences that create understanding? When test scores can dictate what happens to you, your students, the school’s principal, and the school, understanding runs a distant second to filling in the right bubble on the answer sheet.
The questions we should be asking are:
- Do we value learning or test taking?
- What do standardized tests provide and what do they impact?
- Are standardized tests even measuring what they're supposed to measure?
From a more personal level, I think back to the things I remember most from elementary school and high school. None of these involved a standardized test or studying for a year-end standardized test. One was a physics experiment that demonstrated that heavy things and light things fall at the same speed. Making apple sauce in kindergarten was another. One was a chemistry lesson on significant digits. One was a physics project where I built a pool table with a parabola as a bumper so that a ball that hit the parabola at any angle would head towards the focal point. A drawing of a robot that won 3rd-prize in a General Electric competition was another. I remember learning about the mathematics of music. I remember a poem that was read to the entire class that I still have. I remember an essay I wrote about The Great Gatsby that I didn't think was very good but earned an 'A'. I remember taking a radio class and my first on-air weather report and getting my FCC license. I remember winning a part in the play Guys and Dolls. I remember having to do a presentation on Canada as my country report in 6th grade. I remember conversations with teachers, both those I respected and those I didn't think very much of. Looking back, the ones I respected involved me in ways like those above and found interesting ways to teach complex subjects.
Perhaps this is why I find it very difficult to believe that anyone is going to remember learning much of anything preparing for a standardized test. Perhaps it's also because I design corporate training for a living and the best ways I've found to help people learn are the ways that involve them. While standardized tests may serve a purpose, they should not be the end all, be all of our educational system as they were in Texas.
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David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.