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So clearly we’ve all been thinking a lot about the necessity of test scores in making high stakes decisions. I mean, test scores seem to be used in everything these days: teacher evaluations, a student’s college or career readiness, merit pay, even neighborhood real estate, you name it.

And, sure, there are test scores of sorts used in any number of other professions. My father used to come home talking about game show Nielson Ratings, my brother in-law looks to see the totals for his opening weekends. (Can you tell I come from a family of entertainment?) But somehow our test scores are different.

Our test scores reflect far more than our efforts and performance. They reflect how much sleep a kid got the night before. They reflect the recent divorce, the boyfriend’s breakup during passing period, the number of days the kid wasn’t at school, apathy, yesterday’s enrollment into the school, and yes, content knowledge.

But test scores are the American way, a game to those who succeed in them, aren’t they? And like any competitive sport, there is the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” And, after all, we can’t all be winners, right?

But that’s just why teachers and schools have begun to circle their wagons and arm themselves with their voices loud against this threat of test scores running the show. Students should not begin their lives in the agony of defeat. We should be equipping them with what it takes to be victorious.

I think the reason why politicians tend to favor the need for competition in school is because it’s a language that’s worked for them, so they are confused about schools’ lack of buy-in. And while I’m all fine with a good healthy dose of financial incentive, we cannot compete unless we are all given the same resources. I mean, in the Olympics, does any swimmer in an antiquated swimsuit really stand a chance against someone decked out in the newfangled sharkskin suit? So is it for the inequity in school funding.

So clearly I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that soon our jobs may be identified and retained in large part to my students’ ability to take standardized tests, a variable which, in my opinion, is only one step up from hire date as a means to retain a position (see my article for Teacher Magazine, “Does Last Hired, First Fired Really Make Sense”). And having just ended our own standardized testing, that good ‘ole CST, I am reminded yet again that one of those factors that affect achievement is the lack of quality of the tests themselves.

So as my students bubbled away earlier this May , I looked at the test booklet to get an idea of what the testing gods felt were important enough to assess this year. The quality of what I saw was truly tragic, and I thought I’d share a little of the asinine quality of these tests as a means to answer the question:

How can my job quality be based on THESE tests?

My recollection of the questions (we aren’t allowed to write them down from the book) is also compounded by the feedback from the students. But just to protect the sanctity of the actual questions which are top secret and must not be discussed at all costs, I’ve replaced all the actual terms with similar ones that hopefully get my point across.) Here are the kinds of questions we observed:

1. They were randomly asked to define the word “yachting” (remember, the actual word is disguised to protect its true identity for fear of offending the original word.) Now my Title I minority students (the majority of my school) had never encountered that word. And I was proctoring the advanced math group. You know, those kids who started Algebra as zygotes? Now, I’m not knocking the students. I’m knocking the test makers who clearly can’t seem to avoid culturally elitist questions.

2. The informational reading selections were, how do I say it? Dated. One was on reading the instructions on how to use an old crank Phonograph.

3. How ’bout the fact that there is a percentage of questions on the test which will be dumped if over a certain percent of students get it right? The fact is that the test makers assume that if a high majority of the students get the question right, (reflecting of course that a high majority of teachers actually taught that standard well) the question is trashed as being too easy.

4. How ’bout the fact that there are questions meant to just be “piloted” during the actual test, with the intention of being too hard for most kids? How does that make a kid feel while testing? Why are they using high-stakes tests to assess the quality of the questions on the tests? How nice that the test makers get to use the tests formatively, but the schools don’t.

5. I also couldn’t help but notice that there was at least one question which asked students to pick a synonym for a word, let’s say it was “brick,” and the choices to choose from weren’t even nouns like giving them “run”, “jump”, “laugh”, “cry.”

Assessments are meant to reflect what has been taught, not how to out-think a tricky question. That is not critical thinking. But in this day and age, tests are actually driving the curriculum itself. That being the case, why can’t our standardized assessments at least reflect the lessons we know are the ones that truly need be taught? (See my recent post here on College and Career Readiness in Assessments.)

If the tail must wag the dog, why can’t the tail at least be well informed about what might be knocked off the table with each swing? If tests have become instructional guides in their own right, should they not at least be good ones?

And most importantly for the topic of this post: if tests are to judge my performance as a teacher, or the quality of my students and their community, should they not at least ask questions that are applicable? There are many reasons why tests are not great ways to evaluate performance. Yes, there are students not putting in the effort or families not doing what they need to help students achieve. But it is also the quality of the very tests that is also setting up our teachers and students for failure.

Bottom line is this: good test scores does not a good teacher make, just as bad test scores does not a bad teacher make.

Care to share any of the bizarre or poorly constructed questions that you saw on the tests this year? Please share below.

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And here’s a little Test Score blogroll so you can follow this topic from other edubloggers who comprise our Fellowship of the Ning (Otherwise known as Those-who-spoke-with-Arne-Duncan). Throughout June we will all be involved in discussions and webinars focused on the issues we raise in our series of posts on this topic. Remember, policy affects our practice. And all our voices need to be at the table. Check these out for further reading. Feel free to comment and participate on any of our sites:

Marsha Ratzel – “Reflections of a Techie”

Renee Moore – “TeachMoore”

Mary Tedrow – “Leaving No Multiple Choice Footprint Behind”

Anthony Cody – “Summer of Discontent”

Teacher Letters to Obama -

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=166176941518&v=app_2373072738&ref=ts

Well, I am in absolute awe of fellow Teacher Leader Network member and blogger, Anthony Cody. What began as a personal open letter to Obama on Facebook, has blossomed into a full-on social networking movement. Based on sheer eloquence, persistence, and social networking know-how, Cody and his fellow TLNer, Kansas City teacher Marsha Ratzel, have gotten Arne Duncan himself to agree to talk to a few teachers next week. In order to prepare for the call, Anthony’s asking folks to write concise letters to Duncan via his Letters to Obama Facebook campaign. Please keep in mind that if you write, try to keep Duncan’s new blueprint in mind so that you are referring to current policies and not Bush’s NCLB left-overs.

Here’s my letter I just posted this morning:

Dear Arne Duncan,

I am a teacher, a blogger, an author, a wife, and a mother. Before I go into what I think we need to do to help education, I want to acknowledge what you have inherited and how difficult it must be to fix a machine where so many cogs are broken. I know too that education feels like a black hole, an inherited problem for your administration, but it has been a culminating failure of multiple administrations, of a society who consistently votes against their own children, as well as a failure of the educational system, which has led us to where we are today.

But I need you to turn your face to us, the teachers in the crowd now, for advice. We need you and our leaders to listen to those of us who have been fighting alongside our children all along. For too long have we been left out of the rooms and away from the tables, and look where we are today. We are the ones you have to focus your attention on now: not the test-makers, not the textbook companies, us.

To simplify my thoughts so that perhaps they might be heard, I have honed in on four main components that I believe are deeply important for educational reform:

1. There is an equation of success for education. It is simple and it can only work with all variables intact and supported:

Student effort + teacher guidance + government funding + family support = school and student achievement

No longer can schools or teachers be solely held accountable for the failures of a broken system. Yes, I see in your blueprint that you are trying to acknowledge that there are elements outside of education that must be addressed, but this must be more aggressive and targeted for true change to begin.

2. Yes, teacher quality is an issue, but it is one that can be solved without villain-ising teachers as a whole. You cannot cut down an apple tree because of one diseased fruit. The systems you criticize: tenure, the seniority list, etc…we all understand your criticisms of them. But they do not define the majority of hard-working, talented, and self-sacrificing troops of experienced and new teachers out there who are dedicated to this profession.

Each of them talk about the complexities of these issues, complexities that you are overlooking, I assume, to appear strong to those who want to see a Democratic bicep. But just because many of your constituents do not understand the subtleties does not mean you need to cater to them, swinging an axe over your head, beating your shield. Change will show strength, Mr. Duncan. And change can only happen with teachers at your side and at your table.

3. The National Standards do not reflect enough the skills our students need for their future. Educational Technology is vital. A student cannot apply for a job without understanding some degree of Internet Literacy. Yet funding for Ed tech has been cut. You claim that students must be “College and Career Ready” but vocational funding has been cut, electives have been cut, student choice has been cut. And student choice and sampling of interests has long been the basis for professional taste testing in the K-12 system. A student who hasn’t tasted Speech and Debate or Woodshop, who hasn’t tried Home Ec or Orchestra, who cannot see through the sea of students in their AP class or cannot get remedial help in Reading will not be “college and career ready.”

4. Teachers, great ones, are always training. Just as students evolve, so must teachers. I understand somehow that education is unique in that you see teachers as the authorities who go through their prep programs and should, somehow, come out (cue microwave ding!) done with our own education. But to maintain the skills of our students’ futures, we ourselves must be proficient in an ever-evolving skill set as well as be brilliant and engaging communicators. Yet funding for our own training continues to be cut time and time again. There must be a shift in how society feels about what it means to desire current training. It is not a weakness, but a strength to be constantly learning. And while I don’t expect society as a whole to believe it, I do expect my Secretary of Education to believe it and support it.

The bottom line is this, Mr. Duncan: the very principals in your blueprint are degraded by the recent cuts and lack of funding. We need you to swivel your gaze back to those who know best. We are here, right in front of you. Our intentions are for the good of the student. We know our missive and we are living it every day. Listen to the teachers.

This past weekend, as many of you know, President Obama’s new, revised-NCLB plan was released in both the New York Times and the Washington Post. My parents called after finishing up their Sunday morning ritual of newspaper-n-coffee to downshift about some of the issues about which they had been reading. They’ve recently become my barometer for what many well-read civilians still may or may not understand about the complexities about our current educational conundrum, so when they asked me some questions about some of the common themes that they were hearing out there in mainstream-educational-media-land I threw the following chart together consisting of quotes from the Washington Post article and my feelings about them.

What I’m Hopeful About What I Read

“scores in other subjects could also be used to measure progress” - While students will be tested in math and reading, other subjects scores can still count, so that the accomplishments in the other core classes still have some testing value.

“would place more importance on academic growth then the current pass-fail approach to judging schools.”- AWESOME! GREAT TO HEAR! FINALLY!

“$29 billion in aid for schools, a 16% increase” – Money to schools is always good. Save for the fact that we need more, this is good to see.

Common National Standards – I support the use of standards and feel national standards are long overdue. I’ve taught in schools that didn’t use standards (both public and private alike) and I fear that it becomes a place of what’s important to the teacher to teach. Standards are meant to be a foundation of common, universal topics that all students must know. In theory, a good thing.

What Still Bums Me Out
“All students by 2020 are on a path towards “college and career readiness”- How is this a more reasonable expectation than the NCLB expectation of all students at grade level math and reading by 2014? Especially with cutting vocational ed and ed technology it’s like they’re talking the talk, but not walking the walk. Like NCLB, is this a mandate generated for publicity? Like the title NCLB (who wants to leave a kid behind?) “college and career” bound also has a nice PR ring to it, don’t you think?

“most of the money would be delivered through competitive grants” - Is competing for funds that are meant to provide equitable educational opportunities even constitutional? We aren’t a business. A competition means that there are losers. And the losers here are kids.

“common academic standards…would affect textbooks, curriculum, and teacher training across the country.” = Wasn’t the committee that created these common standards made up of representatives of the textbook and testing companies and not by teachers? And if we’re to prepare our students for college and careers in 2020, then why do these national standards still reflect the standards of 50 years ago? Where are the skills that students will need for their future?

“more sophisticated tests” – …means just one thing: more tests

“replace staff, independently manage, replace principal…” – No mention of accountability of family support or funding’s role in a school’s success. Nobody else is being held accountable to student success save for the schools and their teachers.

“expressed support for a decision to fire the staff of a struggling high school” – Still seeing teacher firing as a silver bullet for school success. But the school belongs to the community and is theirs to own as a success or a failure. The talk is all about the goals, but where’s the promise of support to reach those goals?

“preserving school choice…will be a rally cry and unifier for Republicans.” – But until schools are supported, this will segregate education between those with advocates and those without. We cannot offer choice if we are leaving some students behind in schools nobody would choose.

It’s like Obama and Duncan want to use strong talk and strong language, as if it was what was missing all along. But illiteracy, child abuse, child neglect, homelessness…these resonate far more with educators than some seemingly heavy threats from those so far removed from the trenches.

I mean, I kinda feel bad for Obama. He’s inherited a knot of gargantuan proportions. But rather than tease it apart, strand by strand, until the knot is out, he is standing at the pulpit yelling, “We have a knot! To get this knot out we have to unknot it! We must make the string accountable!”

But this concept of assessing based on growth is promising, and because of this I do sense that they are starting to listen to teachers. But until they resist the pull to grandstand with their language and their threats, education will not truly be reformed.

Nevertheless, I watch. I listen. And I hope.

My fellow Teacher Leader Network colleague, Anthony Cody, recently began a Facebook campaign which has lit a fire in teachers from around the country. Open Letters to President Obama asks teachers to write a letter to our president and Secretary Duncan in the form of a discussion post about our concerns in their current educational policies.

Cody explains his mission in his Living in Dialogue post as well as on the Facebook page which has, to this date, inspired over 400 educators to voice their concerns about the direction of this current administration.

Each week, Anthony Cody send the letters on, and the campaign is ever-growing.

I am particularly concerned about how few teachers are sitting at the federal education table, a table whose seats are currently occupied by textook and test-creating execs posing as educational policymakers. However, more often then not, teachers are being blamed for education’s faults without being invited to the higher conversations proposing or implementing solutions.

It’s hard to admit but despite what we know about the damage NCLB has done to education, it is still here, stronger than ever. ?The rest of the country is cheering for Change and Hope, yet it is getting increasingly hopeless in education. After all, prior administrations may have sent us down this road, but we were all looking towards Obama to change it’s direction. It has yet to be seen.

My letter was as follows:

Dear President Obama and Secretary Duncan,
My hope has been replaced by fear: fear that the textbook lobbies are still controlling the direction of education, fear that biased and antiquated assessments are still controlling the direction of our lessons, fear that in a global community, America is still trying to just swing on its own porch. The future in education is in teaching skills our schools are not funded or even encouraged to teach. We are the best bubbling country ever! You both claim that technology is our future, but fund our necessities as if it were our past.

In the equation of student success: student effort + family support + federal funding + school content delivery, the only and easiest element to claim accountability are the teachers. Yet every variable must be taken to task for the success of our children. Our windows are broken, there is police tape on our yards, our tools are 20th Century, and yet it falls to the school to solve the problems of its communities, cities, and country.

You have a war going on here at home, fought by talented troops of both new and veteran teachers who have always been dedicated to the future of this country. We are being abandoned by the media seeking for villains in this story, abandoned by the families believing the propaganda, and abandoned by our government looking to blame someone for the failings of a systems and its parts.

Please allow teachers to speak at your table. We are a knowing voice in content, in its delivery, and in our global goals.

Sincerely,
Heather Wolpert-Gawron
Middle School Teacher

Join the campaign.

…nobody needed to worry about the contents of the speech, because our limited technology couldn’t stream the darn thing anyway! I just wish it hadn’t happened in front of the press.

Yes, it’s true. 5 minutes before the start of school today, I got a call from my principal asking if a reporter and photographer could come see the speech in my room and talk to some of the students. “Sure,” I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t been in a “jeans sorta mood” today. (more…)

As a teacher concerned about the future of education, and as a blogger who has jumped whole-heartedly into an online collaborative existence as a means to help teach her students, I am astonished at the oxymoronic message coming for our government.

One the one hand, we are to help our students function and advance in their use of technology. On the other hand, our budget to do so is constantly cut and slashed in a bloody display of shortsightedness.

I have blogged before that if you have any involvement in technology in the school, or even if you just see the writing on the wall, that using technology as a tool is the future for our students, then we all find ourselves in a special interest group.

Members of our group cross political boundaries. The use of technology and providing the tools to learn it are of the utmost importance to our country’s future. But once again, the funding to teach these vital skills is being threatened.

As a member of the national Ed Tech Action Network, I receive emails when key bills are about to be passed so that my voice can be heard. I hope that you too will lend your voice to this battle.

ETAN says,

Last week, the House of Representatives’ Appropriations subcommittee approved a 63 percent cut in the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) Program. If this cut becomes law, it will leave many school districts without funding for hardware, software and technology professional development, placing our students at a distinct skills and knowledge disadvantage when they enter the 21st century job market.

In order to get your opinion out there, please click on the link below (or cut and past the URL into your address bar). ETAN makes it all easy to get your stance out there. You can sign and send the existing letter or change it up in your own words. The representatives rarely read the letters, but they do count the number that they receive. And that determines their vote. So if we send enough letters, they will represent us.

http://capwiz.com/edtech/issues/alert/?alertid=13735446

Help education and technology’s role in it. Help our students to achieve in the 21st Century. Write your representative today.

ETAN’s made it easy.

Thanks,

Tweenteacher

This year, my 8th graders all produced a multi-genre project during 4th Quarter that focused on possible careers of their choice. But I went a step further with my 8th grade Honors class. They not only had to research a possible career, but they then had to each relate it to educational reform and school design. (more…)

There’s a really interesting discussion thread going on at the Interactive Whiteboard Revolution ning.  It all began with my post recapping Robert Marzano’s position on the influence of IWB technology when he presented at the CUE conference this year.  You can read the thread here.    

One of the most interesting arguments going on is in the importance of whether or not Marzano is sponsored by Promethean (he is) and whether or not this somehow corrupts his findings (it shouldn’t).  As Peter Kent points out, “Corporate sponsorship is common practice. The MIT Media Lab (created by Papet and highly reputable) and currently including Mitch Resnik of Scratch fame has over 60 corporate sponsors including the possibility to having an employee of a sponsor work in the Media Lab. There is also the opportunity for a sponsor to work closely with a principal investigator and a graduate student in a specific area.  My point is that corporate sponsorship of educational research is both common and necessary.”

I’ve written on this topic before when I’ve said that I think there is a future in education as a privately sponsored entity.  In my earlier post, “Walmart Presents: (insert some president’s name) Middle School,” I previously wrote, (more…)

The Register reports that DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) is currently researching how to create robots that are “like some self-aware computer systems capable of “meta-reasoning” and “introspection…”  Their goal is to “Provide machines with an ability to reason about their own reasoning.”

Um, is anybody else seeing the irony of these objectives?  We are funding the creation of synthetic brains that are able to reflect and have insight, yet we are still unwilling as an educational system to support, teach, or assess our children towards these same goals.

Our current student assessment system doesn’t even acknowledge the importance of thinking, but bubbling, on the other hand, ranks really high up there in the skills that students desperately need to know.

The students of today will, theoretically, be the scientists of our future generations; yet they will not have had the cranium training that their garbage disposals will be privy to.  

Perhaps we should just start training our Tech-Com human resistance now.