What is better than standardized testing? It turns out pretty much everything.

From the Washington Post's Answer Sheet, By Monty Neill

Assessment reformers are often challenged, “What would you do instead of standardized testing?” While stopping the damage wrought by test misuse and overuse is necessary in its own right, high-quality assessment is essential to student learning. Sadly, No Child Left Behind killed many innovative practices as schools were forced to focus on boosting standardized exam scores. However, a number of excellent examples of better assessments exist in the United States and other nations.

One top-notch alternative is conducted by the New York Performance Standards Consortium, an alliance of 28 public high schools. Schools in the Consortium use performance-based assessments in place of standardized exams, except the English Language Arts test. The performance assessments are used for graduation and accountability, including NCLB.

A recent consortium report, Education for the 21st Century, shows that performance-based assessment works well for the types of students that test-driven “reforms” are supposed to benefit but so often fail. The student population of the consortium’s 26 public schools located in New York City mirrors the city’s student body. They have nearly identical shares of blacks, Latinos, English language learners and students with disabilities. However, the consortium dropout rate is half that of New York City public schools. Graduation rates for all categories of students are higher than for the rest of New York City, while consortium rates for English Language Learners and students with disabilities are nearly double the city’s.

In 2011, 86% of African American and 90% of Latino male graduates of Consortium schools were accepted to college. National averages are only 37% and 43%, respectively. Ninety-three percent of consortium grads remain enrolled in four-year colleges after the first two years, compared with an average of 81% nationally. Yet, consortium students are far more likely to be low-income than the U.S. average. Consortium schools also have far lower rates of student suspension, but far higher rates of teacher retention, compared with other New York City schools, including charters.

Consortium schools focus on project-based learning. All consortium programs require students to successfully complete four performance-based assessment tasks (PBATs). These include an analytic essay, a social studies research paper, a science experiment, and an applied mathematics problem. They incorporate both written and oral components.

Education for the 21st Century explains that the PBATs “emerge from class readings and discussion. In some classes, the tasks are crafted by the teacher and in other instances by the student.” For example, in literature each student must write and then orally defend an analytic paper based on defined requirements. The report includes samples of the wide range of literature and interests addressed by the students, as well as similar samples for the other required tasks. In the oral defense for each PBAT, the student responds to questions from a panel of teachers and outside experts.

The report includes the scoring guides (“rubrics”) used to evaluate the tasks and defenses completed for the common graduation requirement. (Many consortium schools also use a range of other performance assessments and portfolios to document student progress.) Samples of the work are independently re-scored (“moderation”) to assure scoring is consistent and based on high standards.

No other nation tests as much as the United States. Finnish students, for example, outperform the world. Their schools have well-trained teachers who have autonomy to address their students’ learning needs — and no high-stakes testing! In other nations as well, performance assessments are common.

The United States can and must change. This will require developing high-quality assessment systems that can be used with other evidence to evaluate students, teachers and schools and to improve teaching and learning. The experience of the New York Performance Standards Consortium is one valuable model.

• See also the Webinar on Performance Assessment, sponsored by the Forum on Educational Accountability. It features Ann Cook of the Consortium, Sally Thomas of the Learning Record, and Monty Neill from FairTest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/02/an-alternative-to-standardized-testing-for-student-assessment/

Haven't you had enough of high stakes testing?

From Take Part,  by Lisa Guisbond

About a month and a half ago, astute journalists covering the historic Chicago teachers’ strike realized the issues brought up by the strike weren’t just about money, but were also a reaction to the tsunami of testing that is overwhelming teachers and students.

It was part of a growing national rebellion against high-stakes testing. It was also an opportunity to challenge the idea that we can test our way to better schools and smarter students.

And it’s not just teachers who refuse to take it anymore.

More: The Key to ‘How Children Succeed’: Hint...It’s Not Standardized Tests

Across the nation, hundreds of school boards have passed resolutions saying things like, "the overreliance on standardized, high-stakes testing ... is strangling our public schools." Parent-led test boycotts are expanding. Academic researchers are also speaking out. A group of Chicago researchers issued a statement backing up teachers’ concerns that too much testing is harming students. New York professors issued a similar statement.

To help spread the word, FairTest organized education, civil rights, and religious groups to launch The National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing. It now has more than 13,600 individual and 460 organizational endorsers.

High-stakes testing is detracting from learning rather than enhancing educational quality.

Why a testing rebellion? As long as most of us can remember, there have been standardized tests. They may have made students sweat, but they didn’t drive thousands of teachers into the streets or cause parents to organize protests. That’s because the problem isn’t just the tests themselves. It is the way state and federal policies have made raising test scores the primary mission of schools. It’s the way high-stakes testing is detracting from learning rather than enhancing educational quality. Tests and test prep are squeezing out art, music, social studies, gym and even recess.

There is a growing recognition that test-driven education, as embodied by “No Child Left Behind,” has failed. Students made greater gains before the law, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. No less an authority than the National Research Council found that a decade’s worth of high-stakes testing policies has brought little learning progress.

Test makers have lost credibility after years of expensive and disruptive errors. For example, after the passing rate on Florida’s fourth-grade writing exam plunged from 81 to 27 percent, the Florida board of education lowered the passing score at an emergency meeting. The board realized student writing wasn't any worse, but a new scoring guide penalized students for trivial mistakes. More and more parents understand that test makers are profiting from a testing bonanza with little or no accountability.

Finally, a nationwide epidemic of cheating has demonstrated that when so much rides on test results, teachers and administrators feel pressure to cut corners. Cheating scandals have emerged across the country, in Atlanta, El Paso, New York, and Washington, D.C., a total of 37 states in the past four years alone.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Alternatives to high-stakes testing have shown impressive results in the U.S. and abroad. For example, schools in the New York Performance Standards Consortium use performance-based assessments in place of standardized exams. A recent report shows that their schools significantly outperform others in New York City while serving similar student populations. Finnish schools also use performance assessments. Their students outperform the world with well-trained teachers who have autonomy to address their students’ learning needs—and no high-stakes testing!

Concerned parents, teachers, students and activists can help the rebellion grow in their communities. Talk it up with friends, family and colleagues, then approach school boards, parent teacher organizations, and other groups for support. FairTest’s web site has fact sheets, papers and other materials to use in these campaigns.

Sign up for TakePart Education EmailsStay up-to-date on the issues from Waiting for 'Superman' and other education news weekly.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/10/31/why-so-many-people-say-enough-enough-high-stakes-testing

Rick Scott's bussiness fetish keeps him from understanding education.

From scathing Purple Musinings, by Bob Sykes

From the Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Travis:

Gov. Rick Scott told members of the state Board of Education on Monday that his priorities for education in the coming year include an increase in K-12 choices and a drop in college costs for Florida families.

In a meeting held at Boca Raton High School, Scott said because competition helps improve education, he supports an expansion of charter schools, including lifting enrollment caps that districts can place on how large charters can grow.

He also wants to see districts give parents and students more options. He said that during a statewide swing, residents supported the idea of school choice as long as all schools were held to the same standards.

“They want to make sure it’s fair for everybody and we ought to live by the same rules,” he said. “When you have competition, prices come down, quality goes up and service goes up.”

Emphasis mine at the end. At times I feel that Scott has evolved a bit in the job. He’s afterall been the one who has had to deal with the disastrous infrastructure of the state’s accountability system. But his frequent slips into predictable sophomoric business speak to justify his charter school fetish shows he’s yet to grasp the complexities of education. Schools aren’t competing fast food chains.

http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/rick-scott-wants-continued-charter-school-expansion-in-next-legislative-session/

Education cuts what kids like to pay for testing

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Florida's destructive merit pay system

From Florida Today by Anthony Colucci

Dear Florida parents, I want to call your attention to a destructive policy that will have dire consequences for your children. Florida’s ill-conceived merit pay evaluation system may result in your children being subjected to inferior teaching. 

The merit pay system bases one-half of a teacher’s evaluation on standardized test scores, most of which is derived from a Value Added Model (VAM) score. The truth is teachers are being scored based on students they do not teach and not even on the students they do teach. Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best? 

Let me explain how this system played out for me last year. I teach a gifted enrichment class for four elementary schools. Each day, one grade level of students is bused to my school. As a teacher outside the regular classroom, nobody was able to tell me which tests my evaluation was tied to.  

Consequently, I taught a whole year and didn’t know how I would be evaluated. Toward the end of the year, I inferred my evaluation would be based on students’ FCAT scores; however, I learned only about 10 of my 80 students would be counted. Why, you ask? 

The Department of Education, which we are relying on to use an equation only mathematicians can understand, couldn’t figure out how to include my students who were bused to my school. I tried to correct the measure with the district; however, there was no recourse. My score will likely be based on the test scores of roughly 10 percent of my students. Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best? 

The lunacy of this system doesn’t stop there. Groups of teachers were formed and given a list of some of the school’s lowest- performing students. These students were tied to our evaluation scores, and our charge was to bring their test scores up. 

I pride myself on being a team player, but to determine my effectiveness as a teacher based on students I don’t teach is not what this system was intended to do. Even more preposterous is my evaluation will be based on the performance of a student who never set foot on my school’s campus this year due to an illness. Does that sound like a system in which you’ll know which teachers are the best? 

I commend your efforts to hold the Florida DOE accountable for ill-suited policies. I call on you again to defend the best interests of your children. Demand the merit pay system be repealed and replaced with a system that truly identifies effective teachers. 

Colucci is a National Board-Certified teacher. He lives in Titusville.

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20121108/COLUMNISTS0205/311080002?fb_comment_id=fbc_123132281177898_144350_123381187819674

President Obama now that you have been reelected can you stop screwing up education?

From the Washington Post's Answer Sheet, by Arthur Camins

Arthur H. Camins is director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

With the election behind us, it is time for the Obama administration to step back from its education policy and access whether its foundation is sound and supported by evidence. It is a moment to summon the courage to change course.

We have had wars on drugs, poverty and terrorism. Now, depending on perspective, we have a war either for or on education. Certainly, many educators feel under siege. Popular slogans like, “Whatever it takes,” sound like battle cries. This brings to mind the documentary film, “The Fog of War,” as a metaphor for education reform.

In the hopeful 1960s, the nation’s focus on poverty was undone by a president fearful of accusations of being weak on defense and soft on communism and trapped by unexamined cold war logic. Lyndon Johnson failed to heed President Eisenhower’s prescient warning to beware of the influence of the military industrial complex. As many presidents who succeeded him, Johnson permitted the defense industry to have undue influence in the making of foreign policy.

In the “Fog of War,” an aged and surprisingly reflective war architect, Robert McNamara, makes a compelling case that once the United States found itself enmeshed in war, an intellectual shroud clouded the ability of policy makers to see the evidence in front of them. Vietnam War-era policy makers understood North Vietnam as a tile in a row of falling dominoes that would lead to the worldwide communist domination. While it was readily apparent that their assumptions about the motivations of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were entirely mistaken, Johnson and his advisers could not recognize or admit that they were wrong. Nor could they summon the courage to change course. Such is the distorting power of unexamined ideology.

I think many of the powerful supporters of market–driven education reforms are caught in the fog of their self-made education war. In classic ends-justifies-means thinking, they dismiss the negative impact of over-testing on students learning and the injustice of using imprecise value-added modeling for teacher evaluation and dismissal.

During the Vietnam War many people used evidence to show that the United States government did not understand its declared “enemy” and that the war was counterproductive though Johnson, McNamara and those in the defense industry who profited from the war were not persuaded. Listening to McNamara’s telling of the tale, it is not clear whether their failure to change course was because no one inside the decision circle was willing to challenge the conventional thinking, or because there was an unwillingness to admit defeat and cede power or influence to their perceived internal enemies. By the time McNamara voiced any doubts, the course of action was too deeply set.

Similarly, I have been trying to understand the persistence of education reformers, especially those in federal and state government, in the light of so much contrary, well-articulated evidence. I have been trying to understand how teachers who oppose charter schools and merit pay, or who make the case that schools alone can’t undo the effects of poverty, have come to be defined by education reformers as the enemy – supporters of and apologists for the status quo. Somehow, educators who do not support the reformers’ ill-conceived version of disruptive innovation, but who have proposed myriad significant improvement, have been cast as defenders of bad teachers who supposedly believe poverty is destiny. Reformers have become so enamored by their own ideology and so invested in their own course of action that they are unable to recognize the evidence that challenges their policies and unable to recognize the damage it is causing to students.

I conclude that, as with the Vietnam War, eventually some combination of unrelenting organized opposition and the weight of the failure of the policy itself will eventually bring the folly to an end… but not before inflicting considerable damage on students and their teachers. President Obama, what education legacy do you want to leave?

In a recent interview for NBC’s “Education Nation” President Obama said, “You know, I’m a big proponent of charter schools, for example. I think that pay-for-performance makes sense in some situations.” Later in the interview, he said, “What we have to do is combine creativity and evidence-based approaches. So let’s not use ideology, let’s figure out what works, and figure out how we scale it up.”

I want to believe the president’s statement about ideology. But, frankly, I am not reassured. What logic and evidence is behind his support for scaling-up charter schools, merit pay, or for sanctions that require the firing of administrators at struggling schools typically inhabited by poverty-stricken students? Mr. President, are you open to the possibility that maybe your assumptions are wrong?

Following are several big ideas behind current education reform. Each of them is either not supported by evidence or is inapplicable to education.

Failing School Systems: The popular myth is that K-12 education in the United States has not changed much for the last hundred years and that we have made only incremental improvements in outcomes. We certainly do not yet have the outcomes we want, but in reality, NAEP reading and math scores are at their highest levels as are graduation rates. In fact, many of the effective teaching strategies that lead to deeper learning and are common in high-scoring countries such as Finland are also found in many U.S. classrooms. Powerful professional learning strategies such as lesson study, common in Japan, have become more widespread in the United States. What limits the spread of these practices is not educator resistance, but insufficient funding and an overemphasis on test scores as the central outcome goal.

What separates education in the United States from so-called competitor counties is that on average, socioeconomic status explains far more of the variation in test scores in the United States than in other industrialized countries. But, as many researchers have pointed out, it is not the presence of unions, tenure, or collective bargaining that explains that difference. A more plausible explanation is that the more successfully scoring countries have far more substantial social support systems to mediate the negative effects of poverty. A far stronger argument can be made that we need to change our focus — especially in struggling schools — from the drudgery of high consequence driven test-prep to engaging students to be critical thinkers and active investigators in meaningful subject matter. Or, even better, from spending millions on testing to spending millions on support services. In addition, the evidence is mounting that schools can also teach essential non-cognitive competencies, such as persistence, ethics, empathy and collaboration. Since the latter are not easily subject to measurement, the continued focus on testing narrow, more easily measured subject matter diverts important attention from their development.

Disruptive Innovation: Innovative companies such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple have rapidly revolutionized how we all communicate. Their success is not just the result of invention, but rather in designing the integration of multiple technical and process innovations, as well as successful marketing to the public. Their transformative power is measured not only in winning over customers from rivals, but in changing the entire landscape so that their rivals must change what they offer and how they operate in order to survive. The thinking of market-based reformers is that we need to make similar rapid and dramatic change in how we educate students. The need for dramatic improvement, especially for children from low-income families, is assailable. But, for every new private sector idea that was transformative, there were thousands generated that were not. In addition, not every idea that is transformative is necessarily good for society. For example, market-supported product and process innovations in the fast food industry have transformed how and what families eat. Consumers “choose” MacDonald’s. Is this a healthy desirable outcome? Ideas rise and fall, as do the fortunes of their developers and investors. This is, I think what reformers have in mind when they push for increasing the “market share” of charter schools that will need to compete for enrollees. Customers decide whether they want to buy an iPhone or a Blackberry. As a result, Apple stocks flourish and RIM’s plummet. For reformers, schools are just another market choice.

However, is this the best way to decide on the form and content of schools for children in a democracy? What happens to kids when schools open and close? Instability in the restaurant marketplace may be acceptable, but disruption in schools and teachers is a disaster for students whose lives are already too chaotic.

There is no evidence in the United States or anywhere in the world that market-driven choice among competing charter schools is a successful systemic strategy to improve learning for all students — not anywhere! Arguably, the likely result of charter school proliferation is that some students will get to go quality schools, while many others will not. This is hardly transformative. It is a replication of what we have now. In addition, rather than mediating current geographic segregation patterns through more integrated schools, it will exacerbate racial and socioeconomic isolation.

The Sword of Damocles: In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks argued that it was the absence of the proverbial sword hanging by a thread over the heads of teachers that explained presumed lack of innovation in schools. Is there evidence to support the notion that private sector innovation in product quality – not short-term profit — is advanced by fear? Is there evidence that fear and competition will spur more effective teaching? If anything, the evidence suggests the opposite. There is no credible evidence to support the reformers’ theory of action that merit pay and of the threat of firing of presumably low-performing teachers will drive systemic improvement. It is pure unsubstantiated ideology.

In his popular book, “Drive,” Daniel Pink summarizes the research regarding motivation. Extrinsic rewards are only effective to improve performance for short-term, simplistic tasks. Performance and learning with respect to complex tasks (teaching, for example) is undermined by reward systems. In addition, research shows that once a threshold of “fair pay” is reached, rewards for performance provide no benefit and may be counterproductive. Arguably, the result of reward systems – especially with untrusted metrics – is ethical lapses. We have known all of this for a long time, yet the reformers keep insisting on it as policy in the name of innovation. This is yet another case in the fog of the education war in which ideology trumps evidence.

Fire the Bottom 10 percent: Another pillar of current education reform, made famous by Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, is that annual firing of the lowest performing 10 percent of managers drives improvement. Presumably, this is what is behind the push to annually rank teachers across four or five normative performance categories. The charge is that tenure, inadequate teacher and principal evaluation systems, the absence of clear outcome-based performance metrics and lack of competition makes educators complacent about making needed change. By this way of thinking, the relatively low percentage of teacher firings and persistent poor student performance are prima facie evidence to support this strategy. This appears to be the justification for firing 50 percent of the teachers and the principal as a turn-around strategy in Title 1 schools. However, except with reference to anecdotal outliers, there is no evidence to support this idea.

In addition, firing as a systemic strategy fails the logic test. There is no substantial evidence that there are so many ineffective teachers or that this is the principle cause of low student performance. Unless it is inexplicably assumed that there is a pool of more effective teachers just waiting to be hired, replacement can only work for a minority of schools. GE might beat out Frigidaire for best refrigerator engineers, but that is only a winning strategy for GE’s bottom line, not the consumers. Once again, applied to schools, this is unexamined ideology driving policy.

I hope it will not take decades to see our way out of the fog of the education war. I hope some inside government official will not wait as long as McNamara to speak up. However, reasoned argument is not enough. Without massive organized opposition these policies are unlikely to change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/07/a-call-for-president-obama-to-change-course-on-education/

Jeb Bush's ed reforms suffer some defeats

From Scathing Purple Musings, by Bob Sykes

The election sucked all of the oxygen out of the air for the last three months. And from me, too. But as Romney supporter who awakened yesterday with disappointment, I’ve hope that the totality of the voting across that nation signals that public education was saved. Most notably, the education reform movement’s chief political architect, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, suffered three significant political defeats. Lets take a look.


1. Floridians didn’t buy the religious freedom nonsense and defeated Bush’s Amendment 8. Voters saw that it was just another back-channel attempt to legalize vouchers. Nearly 1 million Floridians voted against the measure, clearly showing that republican and indepenedent voters didn’t want it.

2. Allow me the opportunity to gloat: So how’s that Chiefs for Change thing going, Jeb? Just a few short months after Gerard Robinson resigned in disgrace in Florida, one of Bush’s hand-picked stars suffered defeat in a red state which Mitt Romney won on Tuesday. Indiana school superintendent Tony Bennett was defeated by a teacher, Glenda Ritz. Over 100,000 more Indianans rejected Bennet’s hyper charter school-voucherism in favor of the wisdom of an educator.

3. Bush’s foundation have provided significant political support for Idaho school chief Tom Luna. This from
The Answer Sheet:

Idaho voters appear to have overturned the “Luna laws,” three school reform laws named for state schools Superintendent

Tom Luna who made them the centerpiece of his agenda. Voters rejected his plan to require high school students to take two online courses and for the state to spend $180 million to lease laptops to make this happen. They also rejected merit pay for teachers that is linked to student standardized test scores and
they opposed limits on the collective bargaining rights for teachers.

Mitt Romney won Idaho by a 64 to 36 margin, a clear indication that republican voters rejected Bush-style education reforms.

Do Bush and his acolytes know they are backpedaling? They may. Late last month, they quickly jumped on Rick Scott’s bandwagon after he had released his official positions on education policy. Speculation that Bennett would leave Indiana for Florida will probably end after this week’s rebukes of the Bush way. Scott, who clearly has put his finger in the wind on education, may no longer be as enamored with what he’s being told by the Bush camp.

http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/jeb-bush-suffers-three-defeats-at-the-hands-of-republican-voters/