Testing is Destroying Our Schools!

[sam_gordon]

The current system does not work, I will agree with that. However, we need some sort of Benchmarking that can be applied to all schools on all states so that we can see issues and problems as early as possible. Benchmarking is an important aspect that is needed. It has to be standardized though otherwise comparing scores would be worthless!

I tend to agree more with this line of thinking. There are some pretty great teachers out there, but there are also some pretty crummy ones too. Same thing with schools. How do you weed out the bad teachers so that you can get more good ones? How do you identify the crummy schools so that effort can be put into making them better? I don't know. If testing is not the answer, then what benchmark/standards can be used to do this accurately?

Well not testing hasn't worked out so great for education, either.

I've got a class full of students who can't pass a basic writing composition test. They can't puzzle their way through a writing composition homework that is closely-modeled after the in-class exercise we completed together. They can't articulate the rules and reasoning from cases they've been working with since early September. Heck, they can't even follow the simple direction "type the following sentence as your first heading."

Creativity is great. But nobody is going to give a crap about your creativity if you can't express it in coherent sentences.

Has testing gone overboard? In some circumstances, absolutely. Has testing been used as the scapegoat for crappy teaching? Yes.

Absolutely agree with all the above.

Why do I get the feeling if we "do away with testing", we'd have people protesting about "Tom Landry Middle School" not teaching kids what they need to know? That they need to make sure that school is teaching the same thing as the MS across town, across the state, or across the country?

And wasn't there a big outcry 10-20 years ago that teachers aren't being held accountable? Now there's complaints that teachers ARE being held accountable. How are you supposed to "win"?

We need to know the kids at EVERY school are learning up to "benchmarks". Some schools may get past those benchmarks. But how is the public to know those benchmarks are getting not only taught, but learned? It doesn't do any good for teachers to teach a subject if a student doesn't understand.

Is testing the best way to know these things? Maybe not. But I haven't heard anyone give a better solution.

 

[SaraJayne]

It is not testing itself that is the problem. You have to have testing. A properly designed test should show to what extent they've mastered the material and whether they can apply what they've learned to situations they've seen and situations they have not. It shows where kids are deficient and where they are not. Proper testing and evaluation is a good thing.

The problem is not testing. The problem is that standardized fill in the bubble testing has been made the be all end all of whether a school gets funded and how much, or even whether teachers and administrators keep their jobs. Teachers and schools are rewarded or given the chop solely on these standardized tests. This is what leads to teaching to the test. Put a person's career on the line via the results of a test and when push comes to shove what is he going to do? Teach to the test. Put a school's very existence on the line and what's that school going to do? Teach to the test. And if a teacher doesn't teach to the test, what's going to happen? They will be selected out when push comes to shove and his students don't perform on the test as well as those that have had it drilled into them. And what is the district going to do when their rankings and such are on the line? Teach to the test. What is that principle going to do when he knows he has a bad student come in for a minor disciplinary problem before the test? Suspend him. So instead of being all about learning and education, it becomes an exercise in how to game the system and cheat the quota.

You are correct and great point. I am specifically talking about standardized testing, not the normal end-of-chapter tests/quizzes.

We can thank NCLB for where our education system currently is and where it is headed in the future.

 

[LisaR]

But I still do not get what is wrong with teaching the materials on the test, why is that a bad thing???? Once again if we are teaching certain math skills for 4th grade and that is what is on the test because School A is teaching to the test, wouldn't School's A students do really well?

Obviously, each school is different so that must be factored into what I am going to say. Around here, the schools put aside history and science for as long as an entire semester so they can focus on math and English because those are the two areas that kids falter in the most on our state standardized tests. If you have to sacrifice half the science and history textbooks so the kids can get the top scores in math and English, you are doing something wrong.

I have nothing against testing. It was used as one means to help students in my day. Now it seems to be the only measurement and everything is riding on it. When I was in school, there wasn't any prep for the state tests. We didn't neglect entire subjects just to study for the test. Teachers didn't promise to shave their heads or throw a pizza party if our class had the top scores. I don't recall ever even getting my scores and I certainly don't know how our school did as a whole. We came in, took the test, and we moved on. Things have changed and not for the better.

In Florida, when last years FCAT scores came back significantly lower than anticipated, they simply changed the way they score the test! There is so much wrong with our state testing it isn't funny. I support the concept, but I don't support the way it is implemented.

 

[nuttylawprofessor]

'Testing' doesn't teach proper use of commas and apostrophes.

Of course it doesn't. Testing doesn't teach; it evaluates what students have learned. Perhaps having writing mechanics on the test will get teachers to spend more time teaching those skills.

I don't know of a standardized test that actually checks that. Not really.

Our writing composition diagnostic exam is made from retired questions from a standardized test given to 8th graders. Exams can absolutely test writing mechanics.

 

[zoemurr]

there needs to be a huge shift in how our country views teaching and I just don't see it happening.

In Finland (#1 in world in education) it is very honorable to be a teacher. It is extremely difficult to get into teaching school, and when you secure a job the pay is very high, and you are well respected.

I'm in New York in the highest taxes county in the US. We have a very successful school district, and crazy high taxes. Yet a starting teacher makes $36,000. They also are expected to pay for their own graduate degree in most cases. Preschool teachers here make $8 an hour and it's very hard to secure a position without an advanced degree.

"Those who can't.. teach" is a common phrase here and is terrible. I don't think teaching is attractive to many who would be very successful at it.

That being said DD and DS have had some wonderful teachers, but there are a few that no one likes. The school system is well aware of their shortcomings but there is no easy way to get rid of a poor quality teacher.

When I was little we took the IOWAs once a year. It tested what we knew. We didn't practice or stress over it. Now my kids take oodles of tests. It tests how many practice tests they took ahead of time. There have been years when they took 5-6 whole mornings to take complete tests from other years. Huge wasts of time and the results are not as accurate as if they had not practiced.

 

[NHdisneylover]

there needs to be a huge shift in how our country views teaching and I just don't see it happening.

In Finland (#1 in world in education) it is very honorable to be a teacher. It is extremely difficult to get into teaching school, and when you secure a job the pay is very high, and you are well respected.

I'm in New York in the highest taxes county in the US. We have a very successful school district, and crazy high taxes. Yet a starting teacher makes $36,000. They also are expected to pay for their own graduate degree in most cases. Preschool teachers here make $8 an hour and it's very hard to secure a position without an advanced degree.

"Those who can't.. teach" is a common phrase here and is terrible. I don't think teaching is attractive to many who would be very successful at it.

That being said DD and DS have had some wonderful teachers, but there are a few that no one likes. The school system is well aware of their shortcomings but there is no easy way to get rid of a poor quality teacher.

When I was little we took the IOWAs once a year. It tested what we knew. We didn't practice or stress over it. Now my kids take oodles of tests. It tests how many practice tests they took ahead of time. There have been years when they took 5-6 whole mornings to take complete tests from other years. Huge wasts of time and the results are not as accurate as if they had not practiced.

and Finland does VERY little testing and teachers are given a HUGE amount of freedom n what they teach and how they go about it.

 

[Pigeon]

What we have now is like a farmer who lets his cows starve to death because he's too busy weighing them all the time to feed him.

I'd like to see politicians get out of education and stop politicizing it. They know nothing about teaching or learning and they certainly are not improving education with their attempts to micromange schools.

 

[cornflake]

My kids go to Catholic school and they take standarized tests every year. We take the IOWA test.

As far as "cream of the crop", while you do have to take an entrance exam to go to the High Schools, the elementary /middle school have no entrance criteria.

This may be the case in your area, but entrance criteria for elementary certainly exists many places. The ISEE is a national test.

 

[mikehn]

There needs to be some metric to measure progress, or lack thereof. Of course nobody likes to be measured.

 

[NHdisneylover]

What we have now is like a farmer who lets his cows starve to death because he's too busy weighing them all the time to feed him.

I'd like to see politicians get out of education and stop politicizing it. They know nothing about teaching or learning and they certainly are not improving education with their attempts to micromange schools.

I love this analogy

 

[bellebud]

a quick google brings up lots of info on Finland's education system...

one little tidbit...

The New York Times notes that formal education doesn't start in Finland until age 7, and testing students and assigning homework is scorned until they are in their teens. Classes are kept small in Finland, and the nation emphasizes teacher quality.

could that BE any more different than our American system???

They were state testing my dd13 when she was in K in our private Catholic school (or maybe it was my ds11's class 2 years later??) In either case, it was beyond ridiculous. My dd was 4yo entering K, because we went by NYS's age deadline.

My kids in 4yo pre-K also got homework in this same school.

And our local public school's homework is just as ridiculous.

 

[sam_gordon]

Is it valid to compare Finland (whose ENTIRE population is ~5.4 Million) school systems with the US (where 49.8 Million students will attend school in 2012) systems?

Source for # of US students: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

 

[NHdisneylover]

Is it valid to compare Finland (whose ENTIRE population is ~5.4 Million) school systems with the US (where 49.8 Million students will attend school in 2012) systems?

Source for # of US students: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

Well, you could compare a state to Finland--since our schools vary so much form state to state.

They are totally different system though, aren't they?

 

[Southernmiss]

My thoughts on the subject of schools in my area...

Yes, there's a lot of testing and "teaching to the test". This year schools have implemented Common Core Curriculum that all schools across the country are supposed to be implementing. My jury is still out as to if this will be a good thing or not.

Our local Catholic and other private schools are not able to offer many of the courses that our local public schools offer. Therefore, a private education in my area is not better academically.

My public school educated kid is at college and is doing fine there.

I do wish that our area schools would allow the kids to progress on their own level. But right now there does seem to be more emphasis on teaching to the middle ability child. Having said that, I am grateful that there are AP classes, etc. for the advanced kids and other opportunities for those not academically inclined.

 

[Mkrop]

Obviously, each school is different so that must be factored into what I am going to say. Around here, the schools put aside history and science for as long as an entire semester so they can focus on math and English because those are the two areas that kids falter in the most on our state standardized tests. If you have to sacrifice half the science and history textbooks so the kids can get the top scores in math and English, you are doing something wrong.

I have nothing against testing. It was used as one means to help students in my day. Now it seems to be the only measurement and everything is riding on it. When I was in school, there wasn't any prep for the state tests. We didn't neglect entire subjects just to study for the test. Teachers didn't promise to shave their heads or throw a pizza party if our class had the top scores. I don't recall ever even getting my scores and I certainly don't know how our school did as a whole. We came in, took the test, and we moved on. Things have changed and not for the better.

In Florida, when last years FCAT scores came back significantly lower than anticipated, they simply changed the way they score the test! There is so much wrong with our state testing it isn't funny. I support the concept, but I don't support the way it is implemented.

Wow, no we do not out any subject aside for standardized testing. They are tested by grade level, not tested down. And they are tested in Social Studies and Science.

But once again people want these results, we live in a pretty competitive area for private schools and our public school is not bad. But we always get people wanting to know our standardized test scores when they come to look at our schools and they are frustrated that the Catholic schools do not take the same test as the public schools so they can compare apples to apples. So for people saying they dont want testing, they sure want to see the results

 

[SpecialK]

It is not testing itself that is the problem. You have to have testing. A properly designed test should show to what extent they've mastered the material and whether they can apply what they've learned to situations they've seen and situations they have not. It shows where kids are deficient and where they are not. Proper testing and evaluation is a good thing.

The problem is not testing. The problem is that standardized fill in the bubble testing has been made the be all end all of whether a school gets funded and how much, or even whether teachers and administrators keep their jobs. Teachers and schools are rewarded or given the chop solely on these standardized tests. This is what leads to teaching to the test. Put a person's career on the line via the results of a test and when push comes to shove what is he going to do? Teach to the test. Put a school's very existence on the line and what's that school going to do? Teach to the test. And if a teacher doesn't teach to the test, what's going to happen? They will be selected out when push comes to shove and his students don't perform on the test as well as those that have had it drilled into them. And what is the district going to do when their rankings and such are on the line? Teach to the test. What is that principle going to do when he knows he has a bad student come in for a minor disciplinary problem before the test? Suspend him. So instead of being all about learning and education, it becomes an exercise in how to game the system and cheat the quota.

You are correct and great point. I am specifically talking about standardized testing, not the normal end-of-chapter tests/quizzes.

We can thank NCLB for where our education system currently is and where it is headed in the future.

That wasn't NCLB. It was "Race To The Top" that required standardized test scores to be used to evaluate teacher performance.

Reading here about how some of your districts handle testing really makes me appreciate our school district.

 

[bellebud]

Is it valid to compare Finland (whose ENTIRE population is ~5.4 Million) school systems with the US (where 49.8 Million students will attend school in 2012) systems?

it's definitely different... here's more from the google article I came across...


"Its school system has roughly the same number of teachers as New York City’s but far fewer students, 600,000 compared with New York’s 1.1 million. Finnish students speak Finnish and Swedish and usually English," the New York Times said.

There are obvious challenges to adapting what works in a racially-homogenous, prosperous little country to the United States, but the New York Times story suggests that Finland could be an excellent model for individual states.

“The fact that we have more race, ethnicity and economic heterogeneity, and we have this huge problem of poverty, should not mean we don’t want qualified teachers — the strategies become even more important,” said Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond in the story. “Thirty years ago, Finland’s education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features our system has: very top-down testing, extensive tracking, highly variable teachers, and they managed to reboot the whole system.”

It's different here, but does that mean it HAS to be harder to do what Finland does? I don't see why it would.

I especially like the 'no formal instruction until 7yo' (NYS starts K at 4yo and 5yo), and K means instruction and homework... and many pre-K's are like K in that regard.

I think we try to teach too much, too soon. I liken it to trying to teach a 6 month old baby to walk. No matter how much you try to 'teach' the baby to walk, some will walk at 9 months, some at 1 year, some at 15 months, etc. You could have sat there and picked your nose all day instead of trying to teach the baby to walk, and you'd have the exact same outcome. BUT, if we did that, you'd have parents of the 9 month old walkers saying how "their" method is the best, because their child walked early, knim??

I recall a friend telling me about a study she read, where if you waited to teach 'higher' math until the kid was about 14 or 15yo, it would take 1.5 years to teach them what takes us from 4th grade until 12th grade to teach them, because the kids will be completely ready at 14yo and not bogged down w/ hating math, feeling bad about math, etc.

Finland obviously does just fine in math (better than the US), and they don't start formal studies until 7yo, and I didn't look up when they start "math" on paper (but 7yo would be the earliest I assume). Our kids are doing math on paper in pre-K, so 3yo's and 4yo's. Just like trying to teach a 6 month old to walk. It's not working!

 

[sam_gordon]

it's definitely different... here's more from the google article I came across...


"Its school system has roughly the same number of teachers as New York City’s but far fewer students, 600,000 compared with New York’s 1.1 million. Finnish students speak Finnish and Swedish and usually English," the New York Times said.

And "Boom goes the dynamite!" I don't think anyone would argue that smaller teacher:student ratios wouldn't help. The only ways to change that would be either increase the amount of teachers or lower the number of students. Maybe you could do that by eliminating K, but I don't think you'll make enough of a difference.

As far as increasing teachers, as I understand it, we don't pay teachers much NOW. So how do you entice people to take that up as a profession?

I think it's easy to sit back and say "pay teachers more" or "build more schools" (both of which are needed IMO), but where does the money come from? Don't raise my taxes now.

 

[Southernmiss]

And "Boom goes the dynamite!" I don't think anyone would argue that smaller teacher:student ratios wouldn't help. The only ways to change that would be either increase the amount of teachers or lower the number of students. Maybe you could do that by eliminating K, but I don't think you'll make enough of a difference.

As far as increasing teachers, as I understand it, we don't pay teachers much NOW. So how do you entice people to take that up as a profession?

I think it's easy to sit back and say "pay teachers more" or "build more schools" (both of which are needed IMO), but where does the money come from? Don't raise my taxes now.

See and now there's a push in my area for Pre K in public schools.

I disagree with this. I think children need to be with their parents until kindy age 5/6. Mine were well prepared when they started Kindergarten. There was a lot that we easily taught them at home in those early years.

 

[disney1990]

Standards, I think, make sense. But they should be national. Whether it is the Common Core or some other set of standards, it doesn't make sense to me that some states require more out of their students than others.

Standardized tests, however, show a lack of imagination at the state and federal level when it comes to assessing student knowledge. And it shows a lack of trust of the school or the educator. If a teacher evaluates a student and indicates that student is proficient in a subject, that should be enough for the state. The student shouldn't be required to fill in little bubbles and write essays that get reviewed by a computer or a profession test scorer hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

Hum, nice - but people would be complaining about the Federal government telling the states what they have to do.