Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Not Bob
I agree with you on math -- it is relatively easy to come up with a standardized test for math. But it's not so easy to come up with a standardized test for reading comprehension, and even more not so easy to come up with one for writing.

And who is creating these tests? And grading them? My sister the teacher got all hostile with me about this very issue -- according to a newspaper she emailed me, her state farmed out the grading of writing tests to temps, many of whom turned out not to have the credentials that the testing company hired by the state said they had. She pointed out the campaign contributions paid by the testing companies to the state politicians, noted that the testing companies often sell textbooks that tie into the tests, and was furious about the double-dipping. As she put it, cheating on the qualifications of the test-graders was just adding insult to injury.

Your post seems to state that we need to put together good tests and grade them with quality people. Who would argue with that? But it doesn't seem to argue against testing.

If people are against testing, how else do we find if the teachers are doing their jobs? How else do we improve our schools? You can't be sure anything is working unless you have a way of measuring the success. Without testing what can we do to figure out what is working what is not? How do we insure our schools are doing their jobs.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Cite please?

No Child Left Behind

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
I thought the next sentence I typed showed that I understand that point. But, if I had a kid in a school affected by the law, I think I would also not like its effects on her education.

That said, I also confessed that I didn't know how to do a more targeted approach to get the same results for the bottom group.

S_A_M

Head Start has had a strong positive impact on fundamental reading skills in disadvantaged areas. It's a place I'd be more likely to start looking for a model.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by nononono
I think teaching to the test, along with prep classes (whether in-school or not) ought to be banned. WTF ever happened to merit?

I think this is an excellent point. Schools ought to teach what kids need to know, and tests ought to measure what kids need to know, but schools ought not teach what tests measure.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
No Child Left Behind

Very good. How about a cite for the part about NCLB working?

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by nononono
Hmmm? I am sure I had reading comp questions on every standardized test I ever took. Multiple-choice.

So did I. My point was that it is a bit harder to do that for reading than it is for math. And there is some debate about the validity of these sorts of tests measuring actual comprehension as opposed to literacy -- i.e., did Junior really know that the essay argued that blue is better than red, or did he simply recognize that "crimson" is another word for red, and picked B?

Originally posted by nononono
One concern I have with teaching to the test is that the tendency, then, will be to teach only that. And when you're talking about things like teaching to minimum competency tests, that's a horribly low bar.

Amen, sister. Welcome to public education. If it ain't on the test, they don't teach it. Not because, as bilmore put it, the teachers need more supervision, but because the district will lose its federal funding.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Cite please?

A couple days ago I'd early cited a recent federal study (yes, one funded by the current administration) that concluded results were "mixed" (this is oversimplifying a lengthy study and report, but the basic conclusion); there was a great exchange recently as well in Commonwealth magazine about the Massachusetts experience, with the pro-testing folks basically saying, we know the evidence is inconclusive based on the experience here to date but think it will improve for the following reasons and the anti-testing people pointing out programs with less cost that showed significantly greater results more quickly (such as Head Start). So, I'm not seeing a huge impact from this. As I noted before, it may because Bush hasn't funded his own damn programs.

My hesitation with all of this testing is that NCLB was modeled in great part after the Texas testing that's been going on for about 15 years now. Texas is not a state that I would ask anyone to look to for guidance on how to educate kids. There have been a great number of scandals involving faked grades, faked tests, faked reports on who the students are in a particular school and just plain poor performance.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
If people are against testing, how else do we find if the teachers are doing their jobs? How else do we improve our schools? You can't be sure anything is working unless you have a way of measuring the success. Without testing what can we do to figure out what is working what is not? How do we insure our schools are doing their jobs.

Problem is, absent objective standardized testing, there is no way to measure how the bottom kids in School A are doing compared to the bottom kids in School B. The testing we have right now is obviously far from perfect, but I'd bet that it gives us more accurate info than the system we had before (which consisted, I think, of teachers saying "we're doing well", and employers saying "um, they can't read, or make change.")

In MN, the teacher's union fought (and is still fighting) testing. When asked for some suggestions concerning how we could measure school-by-school success, they did come up with a formula. The teachers' philosophy regarding this is so entirely self-serving as to be laughable.

It involved not one measure of student performance. It graded schools entirely based on how much the school spent per pupil. If the expenditure was lower then others, then, clearly, the school was doing worse than the others.

NCLB, and its testing component, aren't perfect. Maybe they're not even great. But our teachers' input showed that we need something that objectively measures some part of what the kids are learning.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
In general the media has a liberal bias. I can say this because I see if from both angles. As a "social liberal" the mainstream media takes my side. I rarely notice it until I watch something like Fox or read the Washington Times. But generally, when I watch the mainstream media, I always think they do a good job of reporting the social issues (which means there is a strong bias in my direction).

But I am also angry at the way the mainstream media addresses the war, economics (actually with economic it is usually just ignorance), education policy etc. The mainstream media treated Murtha and Cindy Sheehan as heroes, and as unjustly criticized champions of a worthy cause, which drove me nuts. The mainstream media also took Michael J. Foxes side and I loved that.

When a social conservative accuses the mainstream media of being biased against them, I don't argue with them, I just acknowledge it and think to myself, this is a good thing and I am glad you just have to suck it up.

I don't see why in general liberals just don't act the way I do instead of trying to deny the bias.

The press is, for the most part, a for-profit institution, and so it has this odd bias towards reporting things that make it money. This means, inter alia, that reporters on the White House beat often report what the White House is telling them so that it will keep doing so; that local TV stations tend to tell you more about murders and robberies than about school bonds issues; that many complex issues get reduced to two commentators yelling at each other; that stories that involve reporting from esoteric foreign locations get shortchanged in favor of stories that can be reported from behind a desk in NYC or DC; that stories that require sophisticated credentials to make sense of (e.g., a law or economics degree) get reported poorly; and so on. All of these thing reflect the markets that the media are in.

The notion that all of these "biases" have less of an impact on the news we get than the particular political viewpoint of the reporter involved is foolish and ignorant, and would not be taken seriously by people conversant with the concept that large for-profit enterprises tend to act rationally to make money, except that it's a useful deceit to the sort of conservatives who like to complain that the deck is stacked against them by the cultural elites.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Head Start has had a strong positive impact on fundamental reading skills in disadvantaged areas. It's a place I'd be more likely to start looking for a model.

Head Start is a program designed to help kids learn better, faster. NCLB is simply a means of measurement of the success of schools. Completely different aims. And, the costs of NCLB are fairly small - and so the supposed "unfunded" portion (the existence of which is debatable to begin with) is even smaller, and is not interfering with Head Start. If you want to argue about the need for more Head Start funding, great, I'll help, but that's not a component of the "here's why NCLB and/or testing is bad" argument.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Spanky
Your post seems to state that we need to put together good tests and grade them with quality people. Who would argue with that? But it doesn't seem to argue against testing.

If people are against testing, how else do we find if the teachers are doing their jobs? How else do we improve our schools? You can't be sure anything is working unless you have a way of measuring the success. Without testing what can we do to figure out what is working what is not? How do we insure our schools are doing their jobs.

I am with you. Heck, even my sister the teacher is with you.

But -- there are lots of problems with this. (I might note that, thanks to the whole federalism thing, every state -- heck, every school district in every state -- is doing very different things for very different reasons.) First, my sister the teacher might point out that if you simply test a student, it doesn't really tell you how much a student learned in her class. So why would you say that she is doing a crappy job because of one test? She would suggest that teachers and schools should be measured based upon the progress of the student.

Fact -- when the Not Bobette was in elementary school, she did pretty well on a standardized test regardless of who her teacher was. You can't compare her score to that of a girl the same age who didn't speak English at home, or the one whose single parent father didn't have the time or inclination to read to her, or the one who had poor nutrition, etc. And this stuff is cumulative, such that by the third grade, there is a huge disparity between schools made up of haves and those made up of have nots (and, yes, there are individual exceptions).

However, the tests don't take that into account. And I agree that any kid can learn, and you shouldn't dumb down the curriculum, but the fact is that if a kid tests at the beginning of the school year at x less than where she should be, the measure of her teacher ought not to be simply "is she at grade level?" at the end of the year, but ought to consider "how far did she come this year?"

Many of the states that test don't do this. And those states that reward schools and teachers for high test scores will never attract good teachers to the schools where they are most needed.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
Problem is, absent objective standardized testing, there is no way to measure how the bottom kids in School A are doing compared to the bottom kids in School B. The testing we have right now is obviously far from perfect, but I'd bet that it gives us more accurate info than the system we had before (which consisted, I think, of teachers saying "we're doing well", and employers saying "um, they can't read, or make change.")

In MN, the teacher's union fought (and is still fighting) testing. When asked for some suggestions concerning how we could measure school-by-school success, they did come up with a formula. The teachers' philosophy regarding this is so entirely self-serving as to be laughable.

It involved not one measure of student performance. It graded schools entirely based on how much the school spent per pupil. If the expenditure was lower then others, then, clearly, the school was doing worse than the others.

NCLB, and its testing component, aren't perfect. Maybe they're not even great. But our teachers' input showed that we need something that objectively measures some part of what the kids are learning.

There's been testing for years. I certainly took standardized tests way, way, way back in ancient times. I'll bet almost everyone on this board did.

The questions are, (i) should standardized tests be elevated above broader assessments and grades in determining promotion within a system; and (ii) should standardized tests be the primary basis for a funding and accreditition system for schools.

If we have gotten to the point where standardized tests are better at assessing students that professionals who work with them, then our professionals must be pretty damn bad. Maybe, if that's the case, where we really need the money is teacher training.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
If we have gotten to the point where standardized tests are better at assessing students that professionals who work with them, then our professionals must be pretty damn bad. Maybe, if that's the case, where we really need the money is teacher training.

It's a self-interest problem. When I buy a piece of jewelry, I never ask that store to appraise it for me. Where I work, I don't get to evaluate myself and determine my raise or bonus. We provide referees for our kids' sports events.

Our professional may be quite good at knowing how well their students are doing. I simply question how accurately they report that knowledge to us.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Not Bob
So did I. My point was that it is a bit harder to do that for reading than it is for math. And there is some debate about the validity of these sorts of tests measuring actual comprehension as opposed to literacy -- i.e., did Junior really know that the essay argued that blue is better than red, or did he simply recognize that "crimson" is another word for red, and picked B?



Amen, sister. Welcome to public education. If it ain't on the test, they don't teach it. Not because, as bilmore put it, the teachers need more supervision, but because the district will lose its federal funding.

I would be happy with just literacy. I volunteer at the local Juvenile Hall (sometimes not so local). These kids write me letters and their lack of writing skills is unbelievable. They don't know the pronunciation of some letters. And they all have graduated from Junior High School. Why should anyone be able to graduate from the eighth grade if they can't read or write?

I try and explain to them the consequences of their property crimes, which requires math, and when I start referring to multiplying and dividing I leave a lot of these kids behind.

The obvious solution to this problem is to just test them. If they don't pass the test they don't graduate. But then I go to school board meetings and I hear the same B.S. that I hear here. "Teachers will just teach for the test". In this case that would mean that they are actually teaching something what is more than they are doing now.

At the basic reading and writing level I don't know how you could come up with a test that wouldn't force these kids to get more knowledge than they are getting now.

Without the test the teachers just move them through the system. "Teaching to the Test" is just a mantra used by teachers so they aren't forced to teach the students.

Wouldn't anyone argue that a teacher should give absolutely no tests? Of course not. How else would they know that the kids are learning? Yet at the same time people argue that we don't give standardized tests, but without these tests how do we know the teachers are teaching? We don't and as a consequence they aren't.

There is simply no reason to not test.

[nononono]

Originally posted by Spanky
I would be happy with just literacy. I volunteer at the local Juvenile Hall (sometimes not so local). These kids write me letters and their lack of writing skills is unbelievable. They don't know the pronunciation of some letters. And they all have graduated from Junior High School. Why should anyone be able to graduate from the eighth grade if they can't read or write?

I try and explain to them the consequences of their property crimes, which requires math, and when I start referring to multiplying and dividing I leave a lot of these kids behind.

The obvious solution to this problem is to just test them. If they don't pass the test they don't graduate. But then I go to school board meetings and I hear the same B.S. that I hear here. "Teachers will just teach for the test". In this case that would mean that they are actually teaching something what is more than they are doing now.

At the basic reading and writing level I don't know how you could come up with a test that wouldn't force these kids to get more knowledge than they are getting now.

Without the test the teachers just move them through the system. "Teaching to the Test" is just a mantra used by teachers so they aren't forced to teach the students.

Wouldn't anyone argue that a teacher should give absolutely no tests? Of course not. How else would they know that the kids are learning? Yet at the same time people argue that we don't give standardized tests, but without these tests how do we know the teachers are teaching? We don't and as a consequence they aren't.

There is simply no reason to not test.

You're using math to explain why theft is bad?