Civil rights groups back high stakes testing

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/14/what-are-these-civil-rights-groups-thinking

Nineteen organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Negro College Fund, just issued a joint statement (see text and full list of signatories below) about what they would like to see in a newly written No Child Left Behind law, which is the top priority of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the new chairman of the Senate education committee. And in their statement, they make some faulty assumptions about teaching and learning that have been the basis of flawed education reforms in the past.

<snip>

It presumes that high-stakes standardized testing has led to more equity for students. There is no evidence that it has. It presumes that high-stakes standardized tests are valid and reliable measure of what students know and how much teachers have contributed to student progress, but assessment experts say they aren’t. It presumes that requiring testing is the only way to ensure that minority and disabled students get attention. That’s shallow thinking.

We have had 13 years of federally mandated annual testing, and achievement gaps are still gaping. As education historian and activist Diane Ravitch noted on her blog, tests don’t help close achievement gaps; they only measure them. What standardized tests measure accurately is family income; look at SAT and other scores to see how closely they are linked to wealth and poverty. Standardized tests benefit students from privileged families, not children from low-income and minority families or children with disabilities.

Why would civil rights groups think that it is a civil right for students to take a test? The joint statement makes other assumptions about education that are, well, merely assumptions.

As my colleague Emma Brown reported, the joint statement calls for Congress to maintain requirements that states take action when schools do not meet performance targets or close achievement gaps among groups of students. NCLB required that struggling schools face consequences ranging from firing staff members to closing and reopening as a charter school, even though there is no real evidence that these “remedies” have worked.

[chervilant]

1. This is not about educating our younglings.

This is about milking this cash cow.

[msongs]

2. 100% correct. you get an A on your exam nt

[Igel]

6. Step away from your preconceptions.

And look at the history of high-stakes testing and standardized testing in general. Whether the Stanford-Binet, the SAT, the early standardized high school tests, or the calls for increased rigor and application of public school tests.

If the race advocates and social equality advocates weren't in at the ground floor, they caught up by the second floor. Consistently.

The SAT wasn't there to expose racial bias. It wasn't there as a gateway to colleges that only the rich had an easy time with. The SAT was devised to identify poorer students who were college-ready and allow colleges a broader base of applicants.

Soon unequal schools became an issue? Testing would exposed and identify the inequality so it could be remediated. Then use tests to show when equality's been achieved. It would also show inadequate schools--most of which were assumed to be serving poor communities or minority communities. This was in the '70s. Long before the testing binge started. I took some of the first ones given in MD.

The downside was that once the tests were being used to push equality between students of different skin hues, they were pushed to expose inequality between students of different ability or achievement levels. And to show that the achievement level of a student cohort wasn't in accordance with where they were supposed to be, expected to be, or desired to be. They spread. This was in the '80s.

More and more rigor was introduced as "where the students were supposed to be" had to be raised. Instead of minimum skill sets, these became "desired skill sets". That was in the '90s.

And along the way it became not only profitable for a few wonkish companies, but for all kinds of ed-based companies to get into the game. Money flowed in that direction, and piranha's gathered for the feast. This was by the late '90s.

Then NCLB threw a lot of money in the water and the little toothy fishes went wild.

[chervilant]

7. Please consider replying to others' posts without a patronizing insult in your reply title.

Frankly, it rendered everything else you had to say rather uninspiring.

(Oh, IL for you, so please don't bother to respond.)

[onecaliberal]

3. These tests are not a valid measure of

what student know or have learned. Testing does NOTHING to help close the achievement gap that exists with English Learners and a few other demographics. In fact it is just the opposite. Every valid study ever done proves these tests are not an accurate measurement of student achievement. High stakes tests only serve to line pockets of corporations at the expense of children.

[SheilaT]

4. Several things make me crazy about the high stakes testing.

First off, it created lots and lots of new tests, most of which weren't properly validated before being sent out there. Also, good tests had already existed. When I went to school in NY, from grades 2-8, every year we took what were called Achievement Tests, which seemed to do a pretty good job of assessing where each student was. It was three days towards the spring of the year, we got the results before school let out, and there was no special prep for them. Just the regular curriculum all along.

I also had the experience of sending my sons to a very good, academically intensive, secular private school, and I was amazed at how much more content they taught than the very good public school they'd been going to. As late as the day before the last day of school they'd be learning new material in their classes. None of the turning in of textbooks a week before the end and watch videos that last week which did occur in the public school. If you teach plenty of content, and have various ways to check on a child's progress, you don't need to give them very much test prep for one simple round of tests. And a student who scores significantly worse than his performance on a day-to-day basis is a special case, someone who probably needs just a little instruction in that kind of test taking.

It's not rocket science, but it has created huge inequities above and beyond those that already existed.

[eridani]

5. Indeed--inequality is promoted rather than countered. Good point. n/t