Heastie Doesn't Get It: Testing Issue Not Just About Hours Spent On Testing

From State of Politics:

The response to the large number of students opting out of the most recent round of standardized tests be may be a “macro look” at the number of hours spent on examinations, Speaker Carl Heastie on Monday said.

“It is a concern for all of us with a huge number of students opting out,” Heastie told reporters.

...

Heastie said the numbers will likely spur lawmakers in Albany to take a broader look at the issue of testing in the classroom.

“We do have to take a real macro look at this,” he said.

It's not about how much time is spent on testing.

It's about the stakes that are attached to the testing.

So long as the stakes are schools get closed and teachers get fired based upon test scores, there will be test-driven classrooms and schools that dominate everything else.

That's the "macro look" at testing.

Play Governor Cuomo's High Stakes Testing Three Card Monte Game

Commenters in this post point out how, if Governor Cuomo gets his way on teacher evaluation reform and makes test scores 40% of a teacher's evaluation, teachers who teach subjects without state tests will have to figure out whether they should use math or ELA scores for their test component.

Here's how that string went:

How do Art, Music, Dance, and Theatre teachers play into the 40%? How about the Physical a Education teachers? Other non regents teachers? How does the 40% state effect these several thousand teachers?

...

Anon 10:25pm. I am a phys ed HS teacher. I was given the choice of which subject to link to last year. Of course I looked at the overall scores for my school for the past several years and going that the English Regents was highest at around 84% passing. I linked to them and scored very high. Research your schools history on all regents subjects and link to that subject, which is part of the rules for non regents teachers. It's probably English. Do not allow your administration to make the decision for you. You are allowed to link to any subject You choose.

...

I am an elementary PE teacher and the poster above is correct. I was able to link my evaluation score to the overall math scores of my school. (The students in my school do better in math than language arts due to the high ELA population)

There will be plenty of games that will be played in order for teachers who teach subjects without annual state tests to be evaluated on their 40% component (if Cuomo gets his way on that, at any rate.)

Will it be like roulette, spin the wheel, see if it's ELA or math this time around?

Or will it be like three card monte - follow the positive VAM, here it is, here it is, oh, no sorry, that's a negative VAM...

These will be high stakes games, of course.

Because if a teacher chooses wrong and she/he comes up "ineffective" on the 40% test component, she/he will be rated "ineffective" overall for the year.

And if Cuomo gets his way on streamlining the dismissal process, two consecutive "ineffective" ratings will trigger automatic incompetency charges and firing.

So choose well, folks.

The wrong choice and you can lose your profession and your livelihood.

Returning The Phrase "High Stakes Standardized Tests" Back To The Education Vernacular

Politicians learned long ago that how you frame an issue goes a long way toward how the public feels or thinks about something.

For a long time, the GOP used to fight against the "estate tax."

But the word "estate" conjured up images of Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island in people's heads, so getting rid of the "estate tax" faced some headwinds.

Then they discovered that if they renamed the "estate tax" the "death tax," people got a different image in their heads - something about how everybody who died would still have to pay taxes - and people started to support the move to get rid of the "estate tax," now renamed the "death tax."

Same issue, different name, different result in how people felt about it.

And so we come to how the word "test" has been replaced in the education vernacular by "assessment," a move that education reformers will tell you has no ulterior motive behind it but is just a better way to describe what schools do to "assess" student skills and knowledge.

Ah, but the word "test" has a negative connotation in people's heads, especially if it is paired with the phrase "high stakes" - so much so that back in the early Bloomberg administration, when Chancellor Klein wanted to add formative tests to the other tests students were taking, he called them "no-stakes tests" so that people wouldn't rise up in anger against them.

You can bet the people running education reform understand message framing and word choice just as well as the political operatives do (especially because education reformers and political operatives are often one and the same) and they came to understand that the public might feel differently about "tests" if the name were changed to something more benign, something missing those hard "t" sounds - something like "assessment."

Nice soft "s" sounds lull you into a state of one with the universe - there's nothing major going on here, they're just "assessing" things. There are no "high stakes," with those hard "k" sounds that jar you into anxiety, to worry about in these "assessments," so don't worry, go back to sleep, all is well with the universe...

I think it is time we stop using the euphemism "assessment" and bring back the old word we used to use - "test."

Especially when there are "high stakes" attached to the these tests.

I'm not a p.r. person and I only have a few psychology classes under my belt, but I bet you will see a shift in public perception if we call these "Common Core assessments" the "high stakes standardized tests" they really are.

John Liu: Too Much Emphasis On High Stakes Testing in New York City Schools

He penned this for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

This week New York City students in grades 3 through 8, with their No. 2 Ticonderoga pencils nervously in hand, are struggling through the math portion of the annual New York state tests. Once again, these scores — along with their English Language Test results from last week — will determine crucial educational outcomes in their lives.

In this elementary and middle school equivalent of “who will live and who will die,” these tests often decide whether a child can advance to the next grade, be held back or be required to attend summer school.

But this high-stakes testing has enormous implications for teachers and entire school communities as well. Mayor Bloomberg has repeatedly and publicly called for teachers to be evaluated based on these test scores. And his Department of Education has closed down more than 100 New York City public schools predominantly because their students did not perform well on the high-stakes tests.

All this, despite the fact that high-stakes testing results have been criticized as unreliable.

Tests are an important measure of student knowledge and the success that a teacher has had in getting concepts across to his or her class. But they are by no means the only way to measure teacher performance. Report cards that cover an entire quarter’s performance and several months’ worth of teacher commentary are also good evaluators.

High-stakes tests have become problematic because they now hold such a heavy sway in determining a child’s, a teacher’s and even a school’s future. Yet they occur so infrequently as to be obviously susceptible to a bad day, a stomachache or getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

The New York state tests in Math and English Language Arts are given over a two-week period once a year. The New York City Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHAT), which determines which students get selected to attend one of the city’s elite public high schools, is given on one day every winter.

The SATs have taken on too big a role in deciding whether a student will attend a good college. Too much power is invested in these tests and the price that our students, educators, and school communities pay because of their outsized influence is embarrassingly high.

I favor more frequent, low-stakes testing: the Friday spelling test with papers folded in half and a list of 10 words, five on each side, that are put on the blackboard the previous Monday; the history pop quiz that gets handed out as the high-schoolers walk into their classroom. How about the impossible math problem up on the board that takes an entire period to unravel? These are all good methods for discovering how much our students know and whether their teachers are effective.

We need to remember that tests are merely tools, tools that are best utilized by educators to get a handle on how to do their jobs better, on a day-to-day, week-by-week basis.

High-stakes tests should not shape the destiny: for students, teachers or for entire school communities.

It is high time we break the yoke of high-stakes testing and broaden the conversation on public education in our city.

No wonder they have tried to destroy Liu with a jive campaign finance fraud "investigation."

Liu's politics are too outside the oligarchical mainstream views.

So they went after him for campaign finance fraud on $7000 donations.

Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg, who according to the NY Daily News bribed his way onto the Independence Party line through three elections - two of which were won by the margin of votes he garnered on the Independence Party ballot line - somehow isn't under investigation for bribery and campaign finance fraud even after he admitted to laundering money to the Independence Party during the Haggerty trial.

City Screws Up Spanish Test

The geniuses at the NYCDOE forgot to put the last page of the high stakes June 2012 city Spanish exam into the exam booklet.

That last page included the last part of an essay question plus the rubric for students to use to check over their work.

Oops!

But we'll still use this test for high stakes results, including judging students, teachers and schools.

Because as Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said, anybody who's against using these tests for high stakes decisions despite their flaws is just against accountability.

Even when the high stakes tests are as badly designed, badly written and badly proofread as the ones that the NYSED, the Regents and the NYCDOE are giving.

You know, we don't even have the new "local assessments" that are supposed to be part of the vaunted new Cuomo teacher evaluation plan in place yet, and there have already been a multitude of screw-ups by both the state and the city in their testing regimes.

First we had Pearson's infamous "Pineapple and the Hare" section on an ELA exam, then we had the NYSED pulling a total of 30 questions from various 4th-8th grade math and ELA exams because they had too many correct answers or no correct answers or the passages didn't make sense or the questions didn't make sense or the translations didn't make sense.

Now we have the NYCDOE forgetting the final part of a major essay on the 2012 Spanish exam.

Will anybody at the NYCDOE be held accountable for this mess?

Doubtful.

No one at the NYSED or the Regents has been held accountable for the Pearson mess.

In fact, NYSED Commissioner King tried to pawn all the errors in the tests off on the panel of teachers that rubberstamp the exams for the NYSED.

Nice try, John - those screw-ups were yours, baby, just like this one today is Chancellor Walcott's and Mayor Bloomberg's.

If you're going to use high stakes standardized tests to hold back students, fire teachers and close schools, the least you could do is, you know, proofread them and make sure they're correct.

But that's asking too much.

Let's face it, the people in power don't really care if these tests are any good or not.

They simply want to use them as political tools to promote their political agenda, which happens to be closing schools and firing teachers.

And so we get tests that are missing the last page of an essay or questions that have too many correct answers or no correct answers or a passage that doesn't make sense or a question that doesn't make sense or a translation that doesn't make sense and in the end, when you point out that these high stakes standardized tests are compromised and shouldn't be used for the vaunted new Cuomo teacher evaluation plan, you're attacked by the Regents Chancellor or the NYSED Commissioner as someone who is "against accountability."

But enough is enough.

It is time to hold the people in power accountable for these testing debacles.

I'm not against accountability.

Let's start by holding NYSED Commissioner King, Regents Chancellor Tisch, Chancellor Walcott, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo accountable for all of the testing errors this year.