NCLB and standardized testing

[dejr_8]

Our educational system has been on the decline since Carter decided to "help" it along by creating a cabinet level position and the Dept of Education..

 

[clarabelle]

my kids go to private school -so I don't really have a dog in this fight .
I did want to mention my own school experience. Particularly high school

I had some of the laziest, unmotivated, uncaring teachers you have ever seen.
(not everyone -but the majority)
This was a rural Ga school in the 80s. We often didn't even work. Our teachers would just let us have a study hall. We rarely finished a textbook.

I understand that this kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore? You can't have a school where the atmosphere of the entire place becomes one of just not even trying?

What I am trying to say is I like the idea of some kind of accountability. That teachers have to at least TRY to teach their students -and students have to show up and do they work.

 

[MrsPete]

1. NCLB has made it crystal clear which counties in our area are dedicated to school excellence and which counties don't give a hoot.

This is the attitude that teachers find infuriating: If students don't succeed, it must be because the school and the teachers "didn't give a hoot".

The majority here are right: NCLB is bad legislation. It doesn't pick up problems in individual kids, and it does nothing to help solve those problems. Instead, it is a vain and useless attempt to level the playing field by forcing schools to spend immense amounts of time measuring the performance of various groups, and it is a superb waste of everyone's time.

If a standardized test helped identify a deficiency in your child's education, it wasn't NCLB that did it. NCLB doesn't do that. It simply doesn't. The teachers must've gone through the individual data -- not required by the legislation, which only cares about subset performance -- and realized the problem. Then they must've chosen a method of helping her "fill in those gaps" -- again, not required by the legislation.

 

[golfgal]

my kids go to private school -so I don't really have a dog in this fight .
I did want to mention my own school experience. Particularly high school

I had some of the laziest, unmotivated, uncaring teachers you have ever seen.
(not everyone -but the majority)
This was a rural Ga school in the 80s. We often didn't even work. Our teachers would just let us have a study hall. We rarely finished a textbook.

I understand that this kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore? You can't have a school where the atmosphere of the entire place becomes one of just not even trying?

What I am trying to say is I like the idea of some kind of accountability. That teachers have to at least TRY to teach their students -and students have to show up and do they work.

WOW!!! I am glad I can say that I have NEVER had that experience. That is one thing I like so much about our kids' school-you go to open houses or parent teacher conferences and you can just feel how excited the teachers are to be there. They LOVE their jobs. A lot of that comes from hiring the right people but the teachers also have excellent support from the administration so it filters down.

Our superintendent is often at marching band practice in the summer--which is from 6-9PM in the 90+ degree weather. He loves watching the band and will sit there for a couple hours every so often. Our principal is out there frequently too--keep in mind this is AFTER they have worked all day at school. We ran into the middle school principal at the state cross country meet last year. She drove down there because some of her old students were running and she wanted to support them. I LOVE our schools!!

Around here the private schools take the tests too-you have to pass them all in order to graduate, private school or public.

 

[MrsPete]

I totally agree with this, we saw it in the county we left. However, because of NCLB, they were increasingly unable to hide the corruption that resulted in one high school having holes in the ceiling and not enough teachers and another school with an indoor olympic swimming pool that STILL didn't have enough teachers. I think with enough teachers, there are very, very few kids out there that couldn't make AYP.

This isn't what NCLB does. It doesn't consider the condition of the school, the number of teachers, etc. The only thing it does is measure subsets of students against one another, against standards, and against their previous year's progress.

I do know that. This year our special ed kids and the ESL kids all made proficiency. I know it can be done. I've seen it.

All kids don't get tested -- at least a the high school level.

Certain special ed kids are exempt, and kids who've been in this country less than two years are sometimes exempted. In these cases, there's an alternative assessment -- a portfolio (hopefully) showing improvement -- that is tremendous work for the teacher. And a few "regular" kids just don't take the test. Ever. They miss the exam and just won't come in for a make-up; even in this day and age, all families just don't value education.

A problem we have in high school is that some of the students come into the final exam already knowing that they can't pass the class -- this is a particular problem in 9th grade classes. Perhaps the student knows he's missed 25 or so days of school, perhaps he knows that he's not done his work and has failed each 9-weeks, so the final can't bring him up to the 70 level. Often these kids just sit down and "Christmas tree" the bubble sheet. A kid in this situation isn't going to really bother taking the test, and he doesn't really care whether this hurts the school or not.

 

[MrsPete]

Most of the schools out here that didn't make AYP was because the special ed population didn't make make the expected progress. If one sub-category doesn't make expected progress, then the whole school is deemed "Not Met". If kids in special ed can meet the standards, then they don't need to be in special ed for academics. It's such a stupid law.

It's not just special ed kids who are divided out into separate groups -- they have all sorts of subsets, many of them based upon race and gender. So they're measuring how 9th grade African American boys scored in math, how 9th grade Asian girls scored in science, how 9th graders repeating English 1 for the second time scored, etc. Sometimes these subsets contain literally only 2-3 kids, and those few kids can "throw" the results of the whole school.

Until you've actually dug into these figures yourself, you don't realize just how foolish the whole program actually is.

 

[MrsPete]

I'm not a fan of NCLB but I do feel that both of my sons with LDs have received more intervention because of the the program.

Respectfully, no. Your sons did not receive diddly-squat because of NCLB.

The tests may've pointed out deficiencies in their subset, but NCLB does not require (or even suggest) that the school address these problems. In fact, unless the individual teachers go through mounds of data, they aren't even going to know that John scored well in fractions while Mike did poorly on the analogy section. If your sons received interventions, it was because the county school system put programs into place to help them improve their weaknesses.

This is what teachers hate about NCLB: We're required to spend time, time, time and money, money, money to have standardized tests alert us to flaws in various subsets of students -- and that takes up gobs of resources -- but then we're left on our own to figure out how to fix the problems. What a waste.

 

[clarabelle]

WOW!!! I am glad I can say that I have NEVER had that experience. That is one thing I like so much about our kids' school-you go to open houses or parent teacher conferences and you can just feel how excited the teachers are to be there. They LOVE their jobs. A lot of that comes from hiring the right people but the teachers also have excellent support from the administration so it filters down.

Our superintendent is often at marching band practice in the summer--which is from 6-9PM in the 90+ degree weather. He loves watching the band and will sit there for a couple hours every so often. Our principal is out there frequently too--keep in mind this is AFTER they have worked all day at school. We ran into the middle school principal at the state cross country meet last year. She drove down there because some of her old students were running and she wanted to support them. I LOVE our schools!!

Around here the private schools take the tests too-you have to pass them all in order to graduate, private school or public.

Well this was almost 25 years ago. My question was before NCLB was there some kind of accountability?

At the school my kids go to they do not take the state standardized test and are not accountable to "no child left behind"

They do take another standardized test -but it is not the focus of the school The school does not "teach to the test"

It is a prep school and does not have special ed etc...

 

[MrsPete]

WOW!!! I am glad I can say that I have NEVER had that experience. That is one thing I like so much about our kids' school-you go to open houses or parent teacher conferences and you can just feel how excited the teachers are to be there. They LOVE their jobs. A lot of that comes from hiring the right people but the teachers also have excellent support from the administration so it filters down.

I'll tell you this for certain: I'm a 40-something who's been teaching a long time, and the new teachers coming out of college are either really incredible teachers, or they're stink-os who stay 1-2 years and then disappear. Those incredible teachers really have the potential to change things for the better -- but teachers' working conditions and pay are getting worse and worse, and I don't see this new set of young super-stars staying with us for 30-year long careers unless things improve.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I think the transparency demanded by NCLB is refreshing. I'd like to see how some of those private schools did with the tests, how much info their kids really knew...

FWIW, the kids usually spend 8-12 weeks before the test prepping for it at their (public) school. It's not onerous; a few worksheets a day to get them into the rhythm of testing.

I don't have a problem with them "teaching to the test" if the test covers important information that they need to know. And from what I've seen, it does.

1. Is it refreshing to grade a school based on children who are academically at a disadvantage due to Learning Disablity or physical impairment that affects what they are able to learn. (i.e. the mentally handicapped)?

2. In Florida--they are so in tune to getting the all mighty buck that the approved textbooks for several subjects are not open until AFTER FCAT. Prior to FCAT the students are taught solely out of an asenine workbook for FCAT prep.

3. The test is not necessarily "more important information" . It is average information.

Being a homeschooler my eyes are wide open! We opt for standardized testing as a litmus of how we are doing b/c that is what standardized tests are for.

We do not TEACH to the test. I don't look up what they are testing for 3rd graders. I am using excellent materials to teach my daughter. Some years she may "miss" a section and we don't worry about it b/c I don't let a standardized test dictate the order of which she will learn things. For example--this year--her math slid. Without knowing what she was working on--that may look "bad". But it isn't. Her math curriculum didn't cover division and if you pull out only those questions she answered and how much of those she got correct--she did really well.

The problem with education is that all brains are not standard. We all absorb information differently and when you use a test as a crutch of achievement, the results are skewed. You then change from educating children to think, to educating children to spit out random information.

My child does not study for 1 minute for the test. And she does fantastic.


When I was in school (10 of them by the time I graduated in 4 different states)--I took so many different standardized tests b/c each state had different standards.

The curious part--not one single teacher "tought the test".

There is an insane beauty of "educating" a child verses just teaching at them. Teaching to the test is just an issue of conformity and we are no longer educating thinkers, but simply teaching bean counters.

I know several teachers in the public school system and NCLB is the biggest crock there ever was.

 

[daughtersrus]

You doubt wrong. They DO have to take the test, at least a certain percentage of the student do. Read back a few pages where a mom with a severely disabled child has been taking the test. Ask at your school, you will be surprised.

Severely disabled children that can't walk, talk or feed themselves are taking a standardized test without any accommodations? How are they even holding the pencil?

I know that my child has never taken a standardized test (she's 15yo). In talking with her various teachers, they all have made comments that none of their students ever have.

From the website that I linked to.

"New Policy
States may develop modified academic achievement standards and use alternate assessments based on those modified achievement standards for students with persistent academic disabilities and served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. States may include proficient scores from such assessments in making adequate yearly progress (AYP) decisions but those scores will be capped at 2.0% of the total tested population. This provision does not limit how many students may be assessed against modified achievement standards.

This policy allows students with persistent academic disabilities to take academic assessments that are sensitive to measuring progress in their learning and that recognize their individual needs. This provision is for those students who are not likely to reach grade level achievement because of their disability in the same timeframe as students without disabilities, but who will make significant progress. Individualized education program (IEP) teams will make the decision about which individual students should take such an assessment."

 

[Kickapoo Joie Juice]

Well, MN was doing this before NCLB. All children took state tests every year and they tracked their progress. Actually all districts still use some kind of annual test but it is different then the one they take for NCLB-it is a comprehensive test each year, not just math one year, reading another, etc. We have records of our kids' state testing from the time they were in kindergarten. It isn't an issue, there are testing organizations out there that do exactly this. Tracking the kids with a social security number would be a simple process. Again, how can you measure success in a school or county if you don't track individual progress??? Also, not every state has county wide school districts-we don't here. Most districts only cover one town or maybe a couple towns, never an entire county.

There are dozens of kids in our school (and hundreds in the system) that are either children of illegal immigrants or illegals themselves. They don't have any form of id. You can't track them, but they need to be in school. I understand this problem is much, much worse in states like California, where as much as 40% of the student body does not have any identification.

It is intereting that school districts in other states may only cover a town. Growing up in MA I remember the school district for Brockton was very different than the town I grew up in.

I personally track my childrens' progress using the ITBS, which all children in GA take for certain grades (I think it's 1, 3, 5, 8, etc). I'm assuming this is similar to MN. It's my job to track their progress as an individual, not the state's. They've also taken the Cogat and a few other tests to check their progress against a national norm, because I do have strong concerns about the regionality of testing.

Georgia and a few other states received an "F" for state standards levels that are determined "proficient." Johnny can't read in 47 states, but in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee he's proficient.

Check out this chart to see what grade your state received for setting the standards high enough.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18845034.html

For others reading this thread, if you are in the top 10 and all schools met standards, then you have bragging rights. Otherwise, -- no.

Again, I want to reiterate that none of my children has taken the NAEP, we've never seen the test in our school district (which is number 1 in the state), and a 30 year veteran teacher I am friends with has never seen it given, so I believe some of the determining data for the NAEP may be corrupt or at least inaccurate as far as Georgia is concerned. In those states where NAEP is commonly given, such as MA, then an accurate measure of the student body is more typical. This is not to rush to Georgia's defense, however, but to point out that the validity of a conclusion is based on the validity of the data used, and I have some concerns about that data. Especially when it's *so* egregiously disparate.

I agree that Georgia has some serious issues, but there are excellent schools here that perform consistently in the top 10% of all schools nationwide. The problem is that most of georgia is rural agriculture, and the prevailing notion here is that kids don't need to go past 8th grade because they're needed on the farm after that. One of the additional problems Georgia has is that ALL kids are required to take the SAT here. In other states, only the kids who are planning on attending college take the SAT. Because we have all children taking this test, the aggregate scores are much, much lower.

Our county has actually successfully applied and received what's called an IE2, which exempts the county from many the archaic and contrived rules that most georgia schools struggle under and allows the county to innovate quicker and raise standards faster than the rest of the state. It does not exempt us from NCLB.

This is the attitude that teachers find infuriating: If students don't succeed, it must be because the school and the teachers "didn't give a hoot".

If a standardized test helped identify a deficiency in your child's education, it wasn't NCLB that did it. NCLB doesn't do that. It simply doesn't. The teachers must've gone through the individual data -- not required by the legislation, which only cares about subset performance -- and realized the problem. Then they must've chosen a method of helping her "fill in those gaps" -- again, not required by the legislation.

When my daughter took the CRCT, she answered several questions incorrectly regarding measurement. The test answers and questions were provided to me, and we were able to figure out where she was failing to understand.

Again, I stress that I respect and admire teachers enormously, and around here, failing NCLB falls squarely on the county government's shoulders. The corruption in some counties here is simply astonishing. Nobody, absolutely nobody, blames the teachers. We have bunches of parents that show up at the beginning of the year and tell the teachers "whatever you need, we'll do it/get it/help."

When your county fails NCLB here, it gets enormous attention and there's a huge outcry. Usually there are audits, people are fired, and changes are made. Typically for the better. I've seen nothing but improvement here in Georgia over the past ten years with NCLB, on a personal level. THe fact that Georgia consistently ranks so low, and the accompanying publicity, has raised awareness in many parents minds-parents that would otherwise have not cared at all about their children's education.

For Georgia, at least, the shame factor in scoring so poorly in many areas has been a very effective prod towards reform.

 

[MrsPete]

When my daughter took the CRCT, she answered several questions incorrectly regarding measurement. The test answers and questions were provided to me, and we were able to figure out where she was failing to understand.

Here's what you're missing: NCLB didn't provide those wrong test questions to you. NCLB doesn't care a hoot about what the individual child does and doesn't know. Your school system chose to pay extra to have that information provided. Not all school systems are making that same choice.

NCLB requires ONLY that the schools measure the progress of numerous subsets within the student body. It does absolutely nothing to help the children learn what they didn't grasp the first time (in your daughter's case, measurement). NCLB doesn't even suggest that schools should help students catch up on what they've failed to grasp the first time.

IF NCLB didn't exist, you could still have garnered that same knowledge. How? Your teacher has a list of things she's supposed to teach in Grade X, and surely measurement's on that list. When it popped up on a teacher made test, you could've just as easily said, "Oh, look. She got all the addition and subtraction problems right, but she "doesn't get" measurement. We should work on that." The federal government and massive amounts of taxpayer dollars didn't have to be involved.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

My other issues with using testing as a litmus that teachers are teaching....

It isn't done annually, so what's the point?

And it is done just too gosh darn early in the year!

Testing 3rd grader with 3 months left in the year is ridiculous!



My daughter is homeschooled--and we test annually (she's had testing since Kindergarten) and she is tested at the end of her school year (April/May).

It seems a disservice to teachers to be the "testing year" for their students who haven't tested in 2 years and have th have them ready in about half a school year for a test on their current grade.

And if testing was that important, why not pass/fail based on the test?

 

[Kickapoo Joie Juice]

Here's what you're missing: NCLB didn't provide those wrong test questions to you. NCLB doesn't care a hoot about what the individual child does and doesn't know. Your school system chose to pay extra to have that information provided. Not all school systems are making that same choice.

NCLB requires ONLY that the schools measure the progress of numerous subsets within the student body. It does absolutely nothing to help the children learn what they didn't grasp the first time (in your daughter's case, measurement). NCLB doesn't even suggest that schools should help students catch up on what they've failed to grasp the first time.

IF NCLB didn't exist, you could still have garnered that same knowledge. How? Your teacher has a list of things she's supposed to teach in Grade X, and surely measurement's on that list. When it popped up on a teacher made test, you could've just as easily said, "Oh, look. She got all the addition and subtraction problems right, but she "doesn't get" measurement. We should work on that." The federal government and massive amounts of taxpayer dollars didn't have to be involved.

You would think so, but in our case she answered similar questions correctly on the teacher tests and on the ITBS. It was a question about measuring time that hadn't been asked on either the itbs or in the textbooks. We noticed that she answered the questions wrong on the crct (used to measure ayp), and asked for the info. If she hadn't taken the crct (thanks to nclb), we wouldn't have figure it out. I think when there are serious issues, like your third grader can't do division or doesn't know how to read, then the teacher and the other standardized tests will catch it long before the ayp tests, but it's an additional tool.

Does anybody have a suggestion for improving schools, insisting on transparency, measuring improvement on a scale that applies nationwide, and mandating improvment that *isn't* the NCLB? Are there any alternatives out there? Because I'm all for improved alternatives, but I'm not in favor of a blanket repeal...

 

[Kickapoo Joie Juice]

My other issues with using testing as a litmus that teachers are teaching....

It isn't done annually, so what's the point?

And it is done just too gosh darn early in the year!

Testing 3rd grader with 3 months left in the year is ridiculous!



My daughter is homeschooled--and we test annually (she's had testing since Kindergarten) and she is tested at the end of her school year (April/May).

It seems a disservice to teachers to be the "testing year" for their students who haven't tested in 2 years and have th have them ready in about half a school year for a test on their current grade.

And if testing was that important, why not pass/fail based on the test?

The AYP tests in our county are done in april, with one month left.

It is given every year, to every student.

Some of the other tests which do not figure into AYP but are used for placement in gifted or IEP classes are done every few years.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

The AYP tests in our county are done in april, with one month left.

It is given every year, to every student.

Some of the other tests which do not figure into AYP but are used for placement in gifted or IEP classes are done every few years.

I would guess that is a state decision and not NCLB, no?

As some posters have posted in their area the testing is not every year.

Perhaps you are giving NCLB more credit than they deserve and perhaps it is your state responsible for all of this.

How your student's teacher knows a specific question was answered incorrectly still confuses me since standardized test results do not include the answer key on specific skills.


Again--if testing is so important--why not use THAT and not a report card to determine if a child should be passing a grade or failing?

And did your child really take 3 standardized tests in the SAME year? Or was this different years?

 

[ead79]

Georgia and a few other states received an "F" for state standards levels that are determined "proficient." Johnny can't read in 47 states, but in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee he's proficient.

Check out this chart to see what grade your state received for setting the standards high enough.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18845034.html

For others reading this thread, if you are in the top 10 and all schools met standards, then you have bragging rights. Otherwise, -- no.

I understand your point, but there can be huge differences within a state and from school district to school district. Georgia's performance overall is typically abysmal, but that doesn't preclude a specific school or school district from excelling when compared to national standards.

The public high school I attended is ranked in the top 100 public high schools in the country. http://www.newsweek.com/id/201160 Failing to meet NCLB standards isn't really a blip on Walton's radar. Students graduating near the top of their class from Walton go to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Duke, etc. Another high school in the same county fails year after year to meet NCLB standards and is known for being a pretty poor school from an academic perspective. I don't believe it's possible to evaluate a school's performance simply by looking at what state, or district for that matter, a school is located in.

 

[MM27]

To the homeschooling parents that do use standardized tests:
Are you required to do some type of testing for your state or is it just your choice?
How does the testing work for homeschooled students? Do you give the test or do you need to take your child to a public school to have them tested?

Just curious

 

[castleview]

I really don't care if a school is deemed "failing" under NCLB. The southewest coast of CT (not where I live) has to die for school systems and some of them are at risk of being failing.