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21 Dec 07

What Should Be Done About Standardized Tests? A Freakonomics Quorum - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

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education nclb reform testing

Some standardized tests perform their measurement mission marvelously; others do a dismal job of it.
It depends on whether the right kinds of tests are being used and whether those tests are good ones. Given the kinds and caliber of the standardized tests currently being used in our schools, I come down on the “less” side of the argument. But that’s chiefly because the wrong sorts of standardized tests are frequently being used.
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- Do you know that almost all of the standardized tests now being employed to judge school quality are unable to distinguish between well taught and badly taught students?
- most professors know no more about making exit exams than they do about making French fries.
- Those instruments may not be perfect, or even good at identifying scholastic aptitudes, but boy are they good at telling us who the best test-takers are.
- the majority of today’s state-level standardized tests are multiple-choice measures of mostly low-level skills
- They largely sidestep higher-level skills
- when tests are high-stakes events, as they are under NCLB (teachers and principals can eventually lose their jobs if their students flunk NCLB tests for several consecutive years), educators have a strong incentive to “teach to the test.” In this case, that means teaching low level skills at the expense of the more demanding material that everyone says students need to master in today’s complicated world.
- Yet many state lawmakers have been wary of setting the bar higher for fear of large numbers of students failing.

08 Nov 07

Education Week: Closing the Measurement Gap

www.edweek.org/...10jennings.h27.html - Preview

assessment education nclb reform

Not that this is necessarily "bad," but the comparison is somewhat problematic. Asking "which hospitals are likely to have their heart patients die" is not the same as "which schools are failing to successfully educate students in basic skills."

Nevertheless, the more nuanced (and logical) approach to school assessment seems smart to me.

- ehoefler on 2007-11-08

high-mortality hospitals for heart patients
rather than reporting hospitals’ raw mortality rates, states “risk adjust” these numbers to take patient severity into account.
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- The idea is that hospitals caring for sicker patients should not be penalized because their patients were sicker to begin with.
- So, in addition to the adjusted mortality rate, “confidence intervals” are reported to illustrate the uncertainty that stems from these differences in size. Only when these confidence intervals are taken into account are performance comparisons made between hospitals.
- so why not do the same in education?
- When educators make this point, they are censured for their “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
- In education, there is a mandate that schools should make up the difference, irrespective of students’ risk factors.
- By the same token, the fact that some students in a school are failing does not mean that the school is failing. Sound public policy should be able to distinguish these two conditions.
- We have rightly seen tremendous political opposition to the idea of lowering expectations based on students’ social backgrounds.
- But when a school is not a low-performing outlier, it makes no sense to castigate educators and hope for the best.
- Instead, funding for a robust set of interventions should be made available to these schools.
- we cannot expect to get the same results for disadvantaged kids on the cheap.
- Risk adjustment places blame where it belongs.
- If we close the measurement gap, we can begin a radically different conversation about what investments in public education are necessary to give disadvantaged kids a fair shot.

Education Week: No Quick Fixes to 'Poverty Gap' Under NCLB

www.edweek.org/...12brookings.h27.html - Preview

education nclb reform

struggling schools that serve predominantly poor student populations are the very schools most likely to suffer from a drain on resources
his own experiences suggest that students need at least 100 individual lessons, at 40 minutes each, to get a grade-level-size boost.
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- teachers were not fleeing in droves
- Teachers also reported spending slightly more time on school-related activities outside school—seemingly a plus for students.
- Overall, the study also found that administrators reduced class sizes after states introduced the tougher testing and accountability systems, but usuallyin the grades being tested.
- Some evidence also turned up that administrators may have moved more-experienced teachers to those target grades.
- Gaps in teacher quality in schools attended by disadvantaged students and those attended by children from wealthier families remained large, as did the gaps between poor and nonpoor students within the same schools.
- Educators may have begun basing promotion decisions on more objective measures, such as test scores. But the trend halted temporarily in 2004, when a spike occurred in the number of low-income children held back in school; the trend then returned to pre-NCLB levels the following year.
- “Maybe where we are in NCLB implementation,” she added, “is that we’re not ready to have huge statements about what’s working and what’s not.”

19 Mar 07

Education Week: The New Anti-Intellectualism in America

www.edweek.org/...28noddings.h26.html - Preview

education nclb reform testing

In the interest of intellectual habits of mind, students must be asked to identify for themselves the important points in every unit of study, construct their own summaries, attempt problems that have no obvious solution, engage in interpretation, and evaluate conflicting explanations and points of view.
Providing a complete structure of what is to be learned and a detailed list of outcomes expected of all students facilitates quick, shallow learning and swift forgetting.
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- Students come to expect that they should have answers at their fingertips instead of developing an attitude of inquiry—one of willingness to figure things out.
- Part of our job as educators is to offer opportunities, to open the door to a world of intellectual possibilities. Another part is to encourage our students to think and to take responsibility for their own expanded learning.
- Intellectual life is challenging, enormously diverse, and rewarding. It requires initiative and independent thinking, not the tedious following of orders. It should not be reduced to mental drudgery.

18 Mar 07

Lawmakers demand changes to No Child Left Behind law - CNN.com

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education nclb reform

We can't have one-size-fits-all

28 Feb 07

Bridging Differences

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education nclb reform unions

I am deeply disturbed, upset, concerned, outraged, that so many schools—under pressure to meet AYP for NCLB (see how easily the acronyms invade our lives?)—have turned into test-prep factories.

18 Feb 07

Tommy & Roy: Domestic Shock and Awe on the Education Front | The Huffington Post

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-roy-domestic-sho_b_41544.html - Preview

assessment nclb reform testing

I left the session with the impression that they really didn't want to hear our concerns and that our testimony was beside the point.

STANFORD Magazine: July/August 2006 > Features > No Child Left Behind

www.stanfordalumni.org/...nclb.html - Preview

assessment education nclb reform testing

“massive” use of standardized tests “is one of the most effective, if unintentional, vehicles this country has created for suppressing creativity.”
NCLB’s greatest absurdity derives from the demand that schools alone wipe out the achievement gap.

06 Feb 07

Dianne Piché vs. Mike Petrilli vs. Joel Packer on No Child Left Behind

www.edspresso.com/...uary_59_dianne_piche_vs_mi.htm - Preview

education nclb reform

05 Feb 07

NCLB and Ethnic Cleansing

schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/...nclb-and-ethnic-cleansing.html - Preview

education nclb reform testing

30 Jan 07

One teen's struggles preparing for standardized test

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education nclb standardized testing tests

27 Jan 07

School Reform and the Attack on Public Education

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education nclb reform

The supposed dramatic decline of Scholastic Aptitude Test scores was a fraud

24 Jan 07

Teacher bashing and the politics of education

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education nclb reform

A Day In the Life: BEFORE THE FALL or how I see NCLB impacting me

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education nclb reform

Great responses from teacher about how NCLB impacted their school.
- ehoefler on 2007-01-24

NCLB is about school as a place to be controlled, tested, used, turned into a commodity. Fear rules.Maybe you think I overstate. My own children just spent 14 hours studying this weekend for the Monday exams. As all year. I see at least 5 hours of this a night, I suggested two days in Monterey with us missing a day, they cried in terror over what the school would do to them. Sure that's a happy