More Than a Score Page 3

  No matter how many students take an NRT [norm-referenced test], no matter how well or poorly they were taught, no matter how difficult the questions are, the pattern of results is guaranteed to be the same: Exactly 10 percent of those who take the test will score in the top 10 percent. And half will always fall below the median. That’s not because our schools are failing; that’s because of what the word median means.10

  And as professor of education Wayne Au explained in 2011, when he was handed a bullhorn at the Occupy Education protest outside the headquarters of Gates Foundation, “If all the students passed the test you advocate, that test would immediately be judged an invalid metric, and any measure of students which mandates the failure of students is an invalid measure.”

  Unsurprisingly, the Gates Foundation was not swayed by the logic of Au’s argument. That is because standardized testing serves to reinforce the mythology of a meritocracy in which those on the top have achieved their position rightfully—because of their hard work, their dedication to hitting the books, and their superior intelligence as proven by their scores. But what researchers have long known is that what standardized tests measure above all else is a student’s access to resources. The most damning truth about standardized tests is that they are a better indicator of a student’s zip code than a student’s aptitude. Wealthier, and predominately whiter, districts score better on tests. Their scores do not reflect the intelligence of wealthier, mostly white students when compared to those of lower-income students and students of color, but do reflect the advantages that wealthier children have—books in the home, parents with more time to read with them, private tutoring, access to test-prep agencies, high-quality health care, and access to good food, to name a few. This is why attaching high stakes to these exams only serves to exacerbate racial and class inequality. As Boston University economics professors Olesya Baker and Kevin Lang’s 2013 study, “The School to Prison Pipeline Exposed,” reveals, the increases in the use of high-stakes standardized high school exit exams are linked to higher incarceration rates. Arne Duncan’s refusal to address the concerns raised by this study exposes the bankruptcy of testocratic policy.

  Perhaps the testocracy’s most cherished standardized test concept is “value-added modeling” (VAM), which attempts to gauge the contribution of a teacher toward student learning by complicated formulas involving multiple test scores. The absurdity of using VAM scores to evaluate pedagogy was on full display in Tampa, Florida, when Jefferson High social studies teacher Patrick Boyko was named the 2014 Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year. Despite being recognized by his school community as a stellar teacher, Boyko’s VAM score for the 2012–13 school year was -10.23 percent (meaning his students scored 10 percent worse on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), supposedly due to his teaching, than comparable students across Florida). In 2011–12, Boyko attained an even lower VAM score of -⁠19.44 percent. That score “would never reflect on what I do,” Boyko said.11 The American Statistical Association (ASA, the largest organization of statisticians in the world) agreed. The ASA released an April 2014 study stating, “VAMs are generally based on standardized test scores and do not directly measure potential teacher contributions toward other student outcomes.” The study continues, “VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects—positive or negative—attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.”12 As Dr. Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, associate professor at Arizona State University, explained in her invaluable book Rethinking Value-Added Models in Education, VAMs are unreliable because “a teacher classified as adding value has approximately a 25–50% chance of being classified as subtracting value the following year.”

  Authentic Assessment

  Let’s make this much clear: Educators are not against the assessment of students. Teachers rely on various forms of assessment every day to help understand the thought processes, progress, and conceptual obstacles faced by their students—all in the service of informing instruction for the next steps in a student’s development. In the next chapter I describe how, in the wake of the MAP boycott in Seattle, educators came together to form the Teacher Work Group on Assessment and created guidelines called “Markers of Quality Assessment,” which defined authentic assessments as those that reflect actual student knowledge and learning, not just test-taking skills; are educational in and of themselves; are free of gender, class, and racial bias; are differentiated to meet students’ needs; allow students opportunities to go back and improve; and undergo regular evaluation and revision by educators. Authentic forms of assessment, used for helpful diagnostic purposes instead of doling out punishment, are prerequisites to an education designed to promote creativity and critical thinking. As Phyllis Tashlik explains in chapter 27,

  The general public gleans what the media throw at them and the tendency is for people to think, “Oh, if you’re against standardized testing, then you’re against assessments,” which is not the case at all. What we’re against is an assessment that has the consequence of narrowing curriculum and teaching and learning. It’s important to realize that as soon as you institute these standardized tests, you’re also affecting curriculum, and you’re affecting how teachers teach, and you’re affecting how time is used. And it’s that connection between assessment, curriculum, and instruction that just doesn’t get explained enough in the public conversation about testing. Performance assessments offer such a greater opportunity to develop interesting curriculum and structure more opportunities for the teacher to relate to the kids in front of them.

  Much has been written describing alternative forms of assessment to standardized testing (for a more comprehensive discussion on this topic, read the Rethinking Schools book Pencils Down, edited by Wayne Au and Melissa Temple). One straightforward way to visualize a superior substitute to bubble testing is to picture the process of getting a PhD. When PhD candidates prepare to graduate, their committees do not judge their knowledge by having them eliminate wrong answer choices on a standardized test. Candidates engage in the much more meaningful process of defending a dissertation. Doctoral students develop a thesis, conduct research over time, collaborate with an advisor, revise the thesis as needed, and finally defend the thesis before a panel of experts. Innovative classrooms around the nation (and around the world) have adapted just this model, tailoring it to every subject and age. This form of performance-based assessment, often coupled with a portfolio of the student’s work over a period of time, has many advantages over standardized bubble testing, but, perhaps most important, it challenges each student to explain her or his ideas around issues actually being taught in the classroom. The drawback to this form of assessment, from the testocracy’s vantage point, is that it empowers the teachers and students in the classroom, fosters critical thinking, and, without a standardized exam to sell to every district, makes it harder to turn a profit.

  Rotten to the Common Core

  The jewels in the crown of the testocracy are the high-stakes exams encrusted in the Common Core State Standards. As of June 2014, forty-three states had adopted these standards “to ensure all students are ready for success after high school,” as the CCSS website explains, and to “establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade.”13 The CCSS were described by Lyndsey Layton in the Washington Post as “one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history,” made possible because of the massive investment by Bill Gates. Layton points out, “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the county, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.”14 And with the testocrats in charge of the development of the standards, the primary stakeholders in education were excluded from providing any meaningful input
. As Rethinking Schools, a leading journal of social justice education, editorialized:

  Written mostly by academics and assessment experts—many with ties to testing companies—the Common Core standards have never been fully implemented and tested in real schools anywhere. Of the 135 members on the official Common Core review panels convened by Achieve Inc., the consulting firm that has directed the Common Core project for the NGA, few were classroom teachers or current administrators. Parents were entirely missing. K–12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards—and lend legitimacy to the results.15

  In some instances the CCSS have replaced deeply flawed standards or scripted curricular regimes that require teachers to read lessons from a script. In these instances, the CCSS’s claim of not prescribing to teachers how to meet the standards and of being “based on application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills” can appear emancipating. Yet because of the lack of educator and parent input to the standards, there are serious limitations. As Diane E. Levin and Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige (the latter a contributor to this book) have explained about the negative impact of CCSS on early childhood development,

  The proposed common core national education standards for K–12—which will impose higher academic standards on younger children—contradict decades of early education theory and research about how young children learn best and how to close the achievement gap. The imposition of one-size-fits-all standards on young children can’t solve the problems of an education system that is fundamentally unequal.16

  Chicago Public Schools preschool teacher and parent Kirstin Roberts elaborates on the research about how children best learn when she writes in chapter 19 that NCLB, RttT, and the CCSS have been responsible for “the dramatic increase in testing of the very young over the last decade,” and “[have] pushed out developmentally appropriate curriculum, including play-based learning, from early childhood classrooms.”

  The pitfalls of the CCSS are best illustrated by what its supporters have to say. Bill Gates said of the Common Core in 2009, “When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better” (my emphasis).17 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, estimates implementing the new standards will cost the nation between $1 billion and $8 billion. Nearly all the profits will go to book publishers and test creators like Pearson and CTB/McGraw-Hill.18 Prominently displayed on one sidebar of the official Common Core website is a pull quote from Edward B. Rust, Jr., Chairman and CEO of State Farm Insurance Companies, who proclaims: “State-by-state adoption of these standards is an important step toward maintaining our country’s competitive edge. With a skilled and prepared workforce the business community will be better prepared to face the challenges of the international marketplace.”19

  Here the true purpose of the CCSS is revealed: It has very little to do with helping students develop their capacities and much more to do with empowering US businesses to dominate global markets and stuff additional cash in the already bulging bespoke-suit pockets of testing executives. One of the most glaring examples of how the standards are designed to accomplish this goal is in their approach to literacy. The CCSS emphasize informational texts at the expense of literature, fundamentally impeding students’ understanding of a central element of human expression. As award-winning children’s author Alma Flor Ada argues in chapter 25, literature “not only gives an example of the power of language, but becomes a model of living consciously, of paying attention to what happens around us, of discovering a deeper meaning in life.” But if global competition is the purpose of education, then Ada’s contention that education be about investigating the meaning of life should be deemed frivolous and pushed from our classrooms.

  In addition to shunning literature, the CCSS also misuse nonfiction in an effort to turn writing into reading passages—and reading passages into test questions. The CCSS emphasize what is called “close reading” and call for students “to be able to answer a range of text-dependent questions, whose answers require inference based on careful attention to the text.”20 The idea is to emphasize “what lies within the four corners of the text” and deemphasize the student’s own perspective in order to uncover the author’s meaning in the text. One of the chief architects of the CCSS, David Coleman, even went as far as saying in an address to New York State educators, “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”21 As New York–based educator Daniel E. Ferguson has written, “Text-dependent questions, for Coleman, hold everyone accountable to what’s within the four corners of the text. What he does not say, however, is that they also make for better standardized test questions.”22

  Whatever you think of the standards themselves, the most detrimental aspect of the CCSS are the standardized tests—and the high stakes—that are attached to the standards. The new generation of CCSS tests, most prominently the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) exams, are designed to permanently enshrine high-stakes standardized bubble filling as the arbiter of success in education. Already there are numerous examples of the detrimental results of these CCSS tests. New York State was one of the first to mandate that students take the PARCC exams in the spring of 2013, and only 31 percent of students passed the tests in English and math.23 The testocracy celebrated this decline in test scores as proof that the new standards were ushering in an era of rigor and accountability, with then New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg calling the results “very good news.”24

  Amber Kudla, a high school student from North Tonawanda, New York, gave a speech at her graduation (the text of which appears in chapter 13) that contains an important analogy exposing the absurdity of Bloomberg’s thinking: “As for the argument that the assessments are challenging our students more, sure that’s true. It’s a challenge to fit the same amount of material into one year with more exams. It’s a challenge to memorize loads of facts in time for the next test. It’s also a challenge to eat a teaspoon of cinnamon in one bite without choking, but what are you really accomplishing?”

  Hypocrisy of the Testocracy

  At first glance it would be easy to conclude that the testocracy’s strategy for public schools is the result of profound ignorance. After all, members of the testocracy have never smelled a free or reduced-price lunch yet throw a tantrum when public school advocates suggest poverty is a substantial factor in educational outcomes. The testocracy has never had to puzzle over the conundrum of having more students than available chairs in the classroom, yet they are the very same people who claim class size doesn’t matter in educational outcomes. The bubble of luxury surrounding the testocracy has convinced many that most testocrats are too far removed from the realities facing the majority of US residents to ever understand the damage caused by the high-stakes bubble tests they peddle. While it is true that the corporate reform moguls are completely out of touch with the vast majority of people, their strategy for remaking our schools on a business model is not the result of ignorance but of arrogance, not of misunderstanding but of the profit motive, not of silliness but rather of a desire for supremacy.

  In fact, you could argue that the MAP test boycott did not actually begin at Garfield High School. A keen observer might recognize that the boycott of the MAP test—and so many other standardized tests—began in earnest at schools like Seattle’s elite private Lakeside High School, alma mater of Bill Gates, where he sends his children, because, of course, Lakeside, like one-percenter schools elsewhere, would never inundate its students with standardized tests. These academies, predominately serving the children of the financially fortunate, shield students from standardized tests because they want their children to be a
llowed to think outside the bubble test, to develop critical thinking skills and prioritize time to explore art, music, drama, athletics, and debate. Gates values Lakeside because of its lovely campus, where the average class size is sixteen, the library contains some twenty thousand volumes, and the new sports facility offers cryotherapy and hydrotherapy spas. Moreover, while Gates, President Obama, and Secretary of Education Duncan are all parents of school-age children, none of those children attend schools that use the CCSS or take Common Core exams. As Dao X. Tran, then PTA co-chair at Castle Bridge Elementary School, put it (in chapter 20): “These officials don’t even send their children to public schools. They are failing our children, yet they push for our children’s teachers to be accountable based on children’s test data. All while they opt for their own children to go to schools that don’t take these tests, that have small class sizes and project-based, hands-on, arts-infused learning—that’s what we want for our children!” The superrich are not failing to understand the basics of how to provide a nurturing education for the whole child. The problem is that they believe this type of education should be reserved only for their own children.