high-stakes testing

Say Yes to the Test

Eduflack Achievement gap, assessment, high-stakes testing, reform

“If we believe in the strength of the public education system in New Jersey, if we believe in a strong education (including literacy skills) as a key to success in both career and life, and if we believe that a high-quality public education is a civil right, then we must demand every piece of data available so that we can determine how to better support classroom teachers, how to better disperse state aid, and how to provide every learner the education that is promised to them.”

From Eduflack’s latest for NJ Education Report

Yes, We Need Testing

Eduflack accountability, AYP, BAM, equity, high-stakes testing, reform, Students

The voices calling for a pause in student assessments are growing. And why not, what with all of the uncertainty that makes up our new hybrid/virtual/Covid school reality.

Yes, these are uncertain school times. All the more reason why we need to double down and ensure we are assessing student learning and adjusting our teaching to meet new needs.

We explore this important topic over at the BAM! Radio Network. Give it a listen here.

Will DeVos Have Mastery Rule Roost?

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, DeVos, high-stakes testing, reform, Students, teachers

“Now, by jettisoning the debate on proficiency versus growth for a more productive discussion of mastery, [Betsy DeVos] is making clear that what a student learns and is able to do with those lessons is the key factor. DeVos has laid down a rhetorical marker that the top-down, one-test-fits-all model may indeed be a thing of the past.”

From dear ol’ Eduflack’s latest for The 74 Million, Beyond Growth and Proficiency Lies Mastery: DeVos and the Crowning of Competence as King 

From Opting Out to Opting In

Eduflack accountability, high-stakes testing, Parents, Students, teachers, technology

While the testing opt-out movement is incredibly hot, and is now credited with being far better organized this year, Eduflack gets personally frustrated with those parents who are opting their kids out of testing to make a political point. Forget the impact it might have on their school district, their school, or even their child’s personal education. It seems its is far better to “damn the man” and amplify the urban legends about those dreaded “high-stakes tests.”

Such a position may not come as a surprise from someone who has long advocated for the Common Core, for stronger state tests, and for greater accountability. But it may be a shock that Eduflack was an opt-out parent during the 2014-15 school year. We did so for very personal and real reasons, that I wrote about for Education Post. And now we are opting back in, with that same child taking the PARCC last year after sitting it out the previous.

As I opine:

Yes, this opt-out parent is now opting his child back in.

The reasons for this are simple. Our son has worked very hard over the last year and a half, and it is important for his teachers and his parents to see how he is progressing. PARCC is the best tool available to know where our son falls when it comes to fourth-graders in his school, our state and across the country. And it helps his fifth-grade teacher best know the knowledge and skills he is coming in with next school year.

His IEP is not an excuse, it was merely a new compass. It is also not an opt-out from accountability.

A week into the 2016 PARCC and I can report that both of my kiddos are proclaiming that the state test is “easy.” No stress. No vomiting on keyboards. No emotional breakdowns in the computer lab. Just another test in the course of regular quizzes, tests, and assignments the average elementary school student experiences.

Give the piece a read. Let me know what you think. Just don’t opt out of reading it.

 

 

Doing What “Works” In the Classroom

Eduflack accountability, ESEA, high-stakes testing, NCLB, teachers, Uncategorized

Last week, educators across Florida went to the state capitol in what has become a common refrain. Florida teachers demanded more respect for their profession. They asked for a reduction in testing and its emphasis. They took on the perceived “profiteering” in public education, whether it be seen in charter school operators or textbook publishers.

There is no question that the education profession has been under attack for many years, and there is similarly no question that educators deserve greater respect than they largely get. Teaching is an incredibly difficult job, and it has only gotten more challenging in recent years. We look to teachers to be everything from guidance counselors to social workers to parole officers, and then we expect them to get every child under their care into Harvard. (sure, a little hyperbole, but what would an education debate be without it?)

Eduflack was struck, though, by a comment made by a Florida school district’s head of employee relations. Obviously responding to a question about why 3,000 teachers descended on Tallahassee to speak their minds, this school official said, teachers “want to get back to doing things in the classroom that they know work.”

This is a common refrain in the post-NCLB world. But what does it really mean? Does it mean we want to empower teachers to do what is most effective in teaching the kids in their care? Or does it mean to let teachers do what they want, when levels of accountability were low?

“Doing the things that they know works” would seem a tip of the hat to research-based instruction, where we have qualitative data showing the instruction boosts student learning. It speaks to longitudinal studies that seek to pinpoint what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to instructional practice. And it is almost lifted directly from the NCLB law itself, particularly as we talked about scientifically based reading when it came to Reading First and the creation of the What Works Clearinghouse over at IES.

If that’s what going back to doing what teachers know works, then sign me up now. Give me a placard and a megaphone and let me shout loud and proud for using evidence-based instruction in the classroom.

But please don’t tell me it is code for letting us go back to the way things used to be in the 1990s, when it was the Wild West when it came to both instructional practice, student expectations, and accountability. Please don’t suggest we go back to the good ol’ days when inputs ruled the day and outcomes were horrible things that were just whispered about.

When a third of fourth graders are unable to read at grade level, we don’t know what works (and if we do, we certainly aren’t using it). When that same percentage of fourth graders are unable to earn a college diploma eight years later, we sure don’t know what works.

Yes, we need to empower teachers. They need to be equipped with the skills, knowledge, and pedagogy to succeed in the classroom. They need to be supported – by financial and human resource – to lead their classrooms and reach their students. They need to be give real-time student data (and know what to do with it) so they can adjust and tailor instruction to meet the needs of this year’s class of students.

Yes, all educators should be using what works in their classrooms. Alas, we still have a long way to go before we can agree on what those research-effective practices are, and where evidence trumps philosophy.

 

“Easing Student Pressure” Starts With Letting Educators Lead

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, assessment, high-stakes testing, Parents, Students

Over the holiday break, Kyle Spencer of The New York Times reported on how testing and a school district’s effort to ease student pressures has led to an “ethnic divide” in the community. It is an interesting read, a read that taps into many of the issues and concerns that have been rippling through public education in recent years.

But Spencer’s piece only tells a part of the story. How does Eduflack know? Because the edu-kids are students in the New Jersey district profiled by the Times. Currently, I have a fourth grader in an upper elementary school and a third grader in a lower elementary school. I wish it were as simple as the Times tried to make it seem.

For instance:

  • Spencer reports on how a gifted and talented math program has been moved from a fourth grade start to a sixth grade start. But there is no mention of parents lobbying hard to get their kids in that fourth grade program. Or of families that put their third graders through hours and hours and months and months of test prep so they would do well enough on the program entry exam to be accepted into the fourth grade class.
  • Spencer cites a researcher on how hard it is for Chinese and Indian immigrant young people to boost their way into the middle class. But there is no mention that the vast majority of these parents pushing for more are already 1-percenters (median family income in the district tops $150k), immigrants with advanced degrees, working on Wall Street or for one of New Jersey’s many pharmaceutical companies. In many of these families, middle class is far back in the rear-view mirror.
  • The article makes passing mention to “homework free” nights, but should include that there are four of those a year. And as a reference point, last year my then-second grader was doing nearly two hours of homework a night.
  • In drawing the fault lines between white parents and Asian parents in the district, the Times completely overlooks the local elections that were held this past November, where the candidate (a graduating high school student, actually) who was demanding higher standards and higher quality lost to the candidate urging a more holistic approach (exactly what the superintendent is now enacting).
  • And it certainly doesn’t mention the experience the edu-family had last year at back to school night, where a sea of parents surrounded the special education teacher, not because their children were special education, but because if it was a service the district offered, an offshoot of G&T they thought, then they were going to make sure their child got full access to it. The sea only parted when the sped teacher had the courage to point to a parent across the room and inform the throng that “there is a parent that I actually need to talk to about her child.”

In criticizing the district superintendent’s efforts to address the “whole child,” one parent is quoted by the Times as saying, “if children are to learn and grow, they need experiences.”

She is absolutely right. But those experiences require more than six hours in a classroom and three hours a homework a day, coupled with test prep and some time for extra-curricular foreign language classes and an instrument. (and for those who think I am exaggerating, let me introduce you to a girl who was in my daughter’s second grade last year). They need experiences that address both academic development and social-emotional learning. They need experiences that allow them to be kids, before they have to get into the cut-throat world of adulthood so many of their parents are pushing them into.

Since The New York Times article has come out, there has been a lot of criticism of Superintendent Aderhold and his focus on the “whole child.” Some have attacked him for dumbing down the district and denying students an opportunity to succeed. Others are appalled that he would impose his own vision for the district over the will of the parents. But maybe, just maybe, the supe is doing exactly what he should be doing, and exactly what we need from those leading our schools.

Dr. Aderhold is putting the needs of the children first. He is ensuring that educators have a voice, a real voice, in the direction of the public schools. He is showing there is more to student development and growth that reading, writing, and arithmetic. And he is working to demonstrate that the quality of a public education is about more than how many AP classes one takes, now many community college courses a high schooler enrolls in over the summers, and how many extra hours of math a fourth grader “earns” by getting a slot in a prized G&T program.

In the process, he might just be ensuring that elementary school kids get a little more time to ride their bikes and play a video game or two. He might just help a few more kids find the time to play baseball or take gymnastics.  And he may even help more families spend evening time together around a dinner table, talking and exploring, rather than just working through the hours of homework expected of a middle schooler these days.

 

Presidential Candidates, Time to Defend Testing

Eduflack accountability, CCSS, high-stakes testing, Presidential campaign

Over at Medium, I have a new piece, a different type of piece for me. I offer up a stump speech to all of those individuals currently seeking the presidency of the United States of America. Sure, we have heard many (most?) bash Common Core and testing and the like. But what would it look like if they were to come to defense of testing.

My stump speech, I Believe In a Tool Called Testing, offers just that. I dare a candidate to use all or part of it in talking about the importance of GOOD testing and how it can and should be used to improve both teaching and learning in our schools. As I write:

Good tests are invaluable tools in improving student learning outcomes. They track progress and identify gaps in learning. They provide teachers with valuable feedback on what is happening in the classroom. They equip parents and families with a true understanding of how their children are doing and how they stand against their classmates. Used properly, they can instill confidence in all of us when it comes to our schools, our kids, and our future.

Unfortunately, in recent years, we have seen test results misused and downright abused. We have seen outcomes bastardized and we have seen shortcomings held up as proof of failure of our schools, our teachers, and ourselves.

Give the whole thing a read. If you’re running for office, try saying it loud when you have a few thousand people around listening to you. You won’t be disappointed.

Asking Why on ESEA Accountability

Eduflack accountability, assessment, high-stakes testing

Instead of asking which superintendents and jurisdictions would sign onto such a belief—that we need strong standards, tests to measure students’ learning those standards, and test data getting into the hands of teachers do so something with those learning outcomes—we should be scratching our heads wondering which school district leaders AREN’T signed onto this and why.

Patrick Riccards, in Education World’s Those Held Accountable for Standardized Tests Want Greater Accountability

Urban Supes: We Want Greater Accountability

Eduflack accountability, assessment, CCSS, ESEA, high-stakes testing, reform

While all the things that go bump in the night tell us that tests and standards and accountability are responsible for the complete and utter fall of western civilization as we once knew it, a large and impressive group of superintendents (present and former) representing some of the nation’s largest school districts have a different view. They believe strong standards, assessments, and accountability are required if we are to provide all kids with a top-notch school experience.

Over at Education World, I write about how this group of school district leaders is calling on Congress to ensure a great public education for all kids. In asking Congressional leaders not to lose sight of the gains many of their districts made because of accountability measures in place, these educators offer a very simple equation for success. As Eduflack writes, these supes are telling us:

We believe in strong academic standards. We need annual tests in core subjects to determine student progress in meeting those standards. Those test results need to get back to teachers quickly, so they can adjust classroom instruction accordingly. States need to make sure this happens as intended. If it doesn’t, the feds need to step in. That’s how we make sure all kids—regardless of race, family income, or zip code—get a world-class public education.

It’s an important lesson from an impressive list of education leaders on the front lines of school transformation and improvement. I hope you will give it a read.

Do We Need a “New Approach to Accountability?”

Eduflack accountability, Achievement gap, CCSS, high-stakes testing

In public education, the term “accountability” often brings out the best and the worst in folks. Some see it as a necessary measure to understanding if teachers are teaching, students are learning, and districts are doing what districts need to do. Others see it as a “mandate” that measures the wrong things and places one-time student performance over the learning process as a whole.

Yesterday, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of Great City Schools issued their statement on testing, offering another voice opposed to “high-stakes testing” and calling for assessments that are meaningful and less stress inducing. President Barack Obama and EdSec Arne Duncan quickly backed the CCSSO/CGCS opinion (though I still maintain it is the path that Duncan has been largely advocating for nearly six years now).

Today, we have some new thinking that gets factored into the equation. The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) released Accountability for College and Career Readiness: Developing a New Paradigm. Written by Linda Darling-Hammond, Gene Wilhoit, and Linda Pittenger, the manifesto outlines for changes that need to be addressed in the accountability debate, while offering some fresh thinking on accountability 2.0 (or is it 8.0?).

What changes are needed? Put simply:

  • More sophisticated assessments that get at a deeper understanding of content, critical and creative thinking, problem solving, and the like;
  • More equitable and adequate resources with regard to teaching, materials, and technology;
  • Greater capacity among schools and educators to reach more challenging content; and
  • A more effective model for change and improvement that moves schools from the current industrial model to “innovative learning systems for the future.”

To get us there, the authors point to a new accountability model that focuses on four key components: 1) meaningful learning; 2) professional accountability; 3) resource accountability; and 4) continuous improvement.

And what of those dreaded assessments that seem to block any meaningful discussion on true accountability? The good folks at SCOPE call for a model that looks to both standardized tests and performance-based assessments and portfolios. Standardized tests would inform the performance-based assessments, and results from the latter would be used to improve and enrich the former (while also informing teaching as a whole).

It’s hard to argue with what Darling-Hammond et al put forward, for it is really common sense. We need better assessments, tests that inform instruction and focus on student learning. We need to do a better job of delivering resources to all classrooms, particularly those that would be labeled historically disadvantaged. We need to push the envelope with regard to teaching more challenging content (which I would argue is why CCSS is an important floor to start with).

And we definitely need to move beyond the misguided notion that a single test, taken on a single day defines the success of a school, a teacher, or a kid.

But how does such a frame fit with the anti-testing zealots (or advocates, depending on your view) out there? Can we accept there is a meaningful role for standardized tests in the learning process? Can we use such tests, along with performance-based assessments, without cries of drilling, killing, and death by bubble sheet?

Even more importantly, can we all agree there are significant achievement, learning, and opportunity gaps in our public education tapestry and that we need a strong accountability model to bridge those gaps? Can we agree all is not roses, lollipops, and rainbows in our schools, and we have a need to improve and thus need to chart the best course to get there?

The ideas moved forward by SCOPE help us see where we need to go. The notion of moving from our current industrial model to a more innovative, future-focused one is particularly valuable. But the devil is always in the details. Can we use these sorts of ideas to move the discussion forward? Or are we destined for another round of “testing bad, accountability badder?” I hope for the former, but fear the latter.