OT: Standardized Testing in the Circus

[Dave B]

Soooooo, I am in my second day of standardized testing (think 5th grade) and every year around this time I look out and see young people unknowingly messing with their future.

As a teacher I think it is my job to try and help each kid. Yeah contrary to President Moron's beliefs some kids just will not become the bright shining star he is. :rolleyes:

I try...try I say...to help each kid understand the material we are covering as best as i possibly can all year long except for this week. My job requires me to adapt work, modify tests, and give kids who work incredibly hard the benefit of doubt. Yes I have given kids grades they did not earn. I had a kid tell me that his dad would beat him if he did not get an A in all of his classes. One midterm we actually saw he was telling the truth. So yeah I busted my butt for the next few weeks and gave the kid an A until he was earning it himself. End of the year he gave me a huge hug with tears and said thank you.

I get to teach the brightest and dumbest kids in the same class and am expected to have both types master the information. I work inthe richest school district in the state (my opinion, but probably true) and I still have to fight for kids who cannot afford to participate.

YET....I have to sit at my desk for the rest of today and this week with out answering one question or allowing a 10/11 year old to get up to use the potty or blow his/her nose because the state says it would invalidate the test.

I do not have a better answer yet for how to assess kids, but I can tell you that the method we have and no child left behind is the worst!

For those of you who do pray, sendone out for the kids of today who are suffereing from zero tolerance.

If we had more tolerance for things in this world, maybe we would have a better place to leave to our kiddos.

Or I could be wrong and President Bush really is a genius.......yeah that one made me spit out my drink too.

[Too Tall]

Direct political comment aside...no comment...bub you have a tough job and admire you for your obvious passion to make a difference. Here's to yah Cheers .

[sg8357]

I do not have a better answer yet for how to assess kids, but I can tell you that the method we have and no child left behind is the Or I could be wrong and President Bush really is a genius.......yeah that one made me spit out my drink too.

Standardized tests are excellent for determining who is good at taking standardized tests. Board interviews or papers are the ways you find out if the person has been educated. Interviews and papers produce fuzzy metrics,
tough to run a goverment program on fuzzy numbers. Schools are for the 3rs,
Education starts when you figure where the public library is.

on Iraqus Bush, aren't Republicans against gummint interference in local matters ? Me, I like diversity, if Kansas wants to teach hollow earth theory more power to them.

Scott G.
ps. In civilized countries teachers drive Mercedes, athletes drive diesel Rabbits.

[Dave B]

ps. In civilized countries teachers drive Mercedes, athletes drive diesel Rabbits.


Uhhh where is this? Are they hirering?

[Bud_E]

Mr. President, dedicated teachers like you have my undying respect. My wife just retired from teaching elementary school in inner-city L.A. after 30 years. She used to love it and worked very hard at it but the last few years she felt there was so much pressure to improve the "number" (standardized test scores) that it took much of the joy away from the students and the teachers. She spent too much time teaching the test but not really teaching.

It seems to me that the kids that are hurt the most by the system are the most highly gifted, creative kids who are bored, stifled, or just don't quite fit in and don't achieve enough success in the current system. Someone above said that education starts when you discover the public library -- but a lot of potentially bright kids won't make it there unless a great teacher reaches through to find the spark.

[fiamme red]

Education starts when you figure where the public library is.Very true.

[Sandy]

Very true.


Please explain. Are you saying when kids indepenently take responsibility on their own to seek learning?


Student Sandy

[swoop]

lets talk 'bout doping. i know those little rats start taking ritalin to hyper-focus in like 4th grade... push the scores up. i want blood tests!!!!!!!
:banana:

[goonster]

Are you saying when kids indepenently take responsibility on their own to seek learning?

I think he is perhaps questioning the definition of "education", and suggesting that, although there is no substitute for a diploma, there is more to being "educated" than regurgitating what the good folks put on the blackboard, atmo.

[Bud_E]

lets talk 'bout doping. i know those little rats start taking ritalin to hyper-focus in like 4th grade... push the scores up. i want blood test!!!!!!!
:banana:

It won't do any good. Kumon provides micro-dosing techniques to stay two steps ahead of the testers.

[swoop]

makes them color within the lines.

[theprep]

I just read in "Time" that we spend $8 billion a year on the mentally challenged (they said retarded) and only 10% of that on the gifted children.

We might have a cure for cancer or tubulars that don't loose air overnight if we reverse that.

[sg8357]

I think he is perhaps questioning the definition of "education", and suggesting that, although there is no substitute for a diploma, there is more to being "educated" than regurgitating what the good folks put on the blackboard, atmo.

Thats it, a 10min unit on the fall of the Roman Republic, is no substitute for Gibbon. Robert Graves will tell you more about what the soldiers are going through in Iraq than 100 years of Networks News. Finding these on your own, unforced, you have the possibility of learning much. Most textbooks are baby food, they're only good for giving you names to look up in the card catalog.

Scott G.

[fiamme red]

Please explain. Are you saying when kids indepenently take responsibility on their own to seek learning?Not the responsibility, but the interest.

Many students get excellent grades throughout school and college without developing a lasting interest in any of the subjects they study. When they get their diploma, their "education" is finished.

[znfdl]

Soooooo, I am in my second day of standardized testing (think 5th grade) and every year around this time I look out and see young people unknowingly messing with their future.

YET....I have to sit at my desk for the rest of today and this week with out answering one question or allowing a 10/11 year old to get up to use the potty or blow his/her nose because the state says it would invalidate the test.

I do not have a better answer yet for how to assess kids, but I can tell you that the method we have and no child left behind is the worst!


This is why we put our kids in a private school with only 8 kids to a class. The classes have mixed grades, so if your child excels in a subject they get placed ahead of their grade etc. Mr. President, I understand where you are coming from, as we took our kids out of the Fairfax County public schools in Va, which is one of the better school systems in the country.

I also despise that the fairfax county public school teachers would review the material for the standards of learning tests for one month. Therefore, the students would lose a month of learning new material.

[Sandy]

I think he is perhaps questioning the definition of "education", and suggesting that, although there is no substitute for a diploma, there is more to being "educated" than regurgitating what the good folks put on the blackboard, atmo.

I once did some mentoring at a county public school ( high school age) which was comprised of students who simply could not make it in any other public school in the county. They were normally from single parent homes, with drug problems often, with an unknown father or one in jail. They often had serious emotional problems. I had one boy who was very open to me about everything. He was really a time bomb, ready to detonate at any time with anyone. I got along with him fine, but many times he would simply look at someone, who he did not even know, and would become very aggressive towards that individual and would want to fight him or her, just because he did not like the way the individual looked at him.

The school, from what I could see simply tried to teach acdemics, and it was obvious to me, that academics was not the most imprtant things these kids needed to learn. Teaching towards standardized test score was a collosal waste of time for these kids (if that is what they were doing at the school).

Thanks goonster for your post....it makes me think that I should go and mentor again at the school. Actually, I have an even better idea- I love dogs, and do some vounteering (very little lately) at a local shelter which is only a few minutes from the school. I am good with dogs and have taught kids that age before and did not have trouble with them (many many moons ago- high school). I have thought about developing a program to take some of the kids from the school and let them learn how to walk and respect dogs (and other animals and people too). I think that it would be a great way for them to really learn responsibility. I would teach them about handling dogs and how to interact with them and treat them with kindness. Pit bulls, Rottweilers,,,are normally their dogs of choice. I would have them walk those dogs and learn how to treat them.

There was a change in direction and management at the shelter a couple of years ago, so the program might be feasible. Previously, I am sure that the director would never take the chance- too much liability. I fel confident that I could train the kids to be the best volunteers there. It wouldn't be too difficult to train them to be better than many staff members who routinely handle the dogs.

Thanks goonster... you may have started a project for me....


Sandy

[davids]

Wow. Bless you, Mr. Prez. You're one of the truly good ones, atmo.

I have very, very mixed feelings about standardized tests, mostly negative. What we're seeing here in MA with the MCAS is more & more teaching to the test, less & less discretion in the classroom, less art, less sports, more & more standardized curriculum. The best teachers are frustrated and bored, the mediocre & bad ones can cruise...

On the other hand, it has driven bad schools to impose rigor and live up to standards, as crude as they are. The MCAS are a better diagnostic tool than a lot of other, even cruder, standardized tests. Poor and mediocre students are learning more.

As far as my personal history with this stuff:

I did really, really well on standardized tests (National Merit Scholar, Presidential Scholarship finalist, etc.) and was really proud of that. Until I met kids at college, clearly sharper and brighter than me, who hadn't done particularly well on those same tests. I was smart enough to realize the test were flawed, and I'd been lucky to have the particular skills needed to do well with them. sg8357 got it right, atmo.

My wife & I decided to send our kid to private school before she was even conceived, based on conversations we had with my cousin's family who had moved up to Lexington MA from somewhere in NJ in the early 90s. His kids, all in high school at the time, told us horror stories about what was happening in the Honors & AP classes in one of the state's best high schools - Honors French classes where they were coaching kids on the American History AP test; A faculty that colluded with the students to inflate everyone's achievements, making the school and the kids look better than they were. It was very dispiriting.

Our daughter's been really lucky - She attended one of the finest private schools in the state from K-8, a liberal, child-focused environment that taught her how to think, how to get along with others, how to work hard, and any number of actual skills & facts... She was nurtured when she was young, and as the years went on, was challenged and given more autonomy. The teachers and faculty knew her almost as well as her parents, and visa-versa.

She took annual standardized tests from 4th grade on, and while it was interesting to see how her standing changed from year to year, they did little more than tell us she was quite bright and reasonably well educated. We did see her math scores improve in concert with her performance in the classroom - That wasn't a surprise...

This school did such a good job that, faced with a class that was going to triple in size this year (up to 150 kids...), she opted to find herself a smaller, even more challenging High School.

And she had to take a standardized test for this search, the SSAT. My wife & I explained exactly what we thought of it (a crude measure) and why it was important (admissions departments would be looking at her score!) She scored 92nd percentile among national independent school kids, and was disappointed. Not me - It fulfilled its purpose: She's now in a High School of 150 total, operating out of a pair of brownstones in the Back Bay.

This place is amazing; she's in classes with 10-12 other kids, most of the teachers have advanced degrees (at parents' night, her Lit teacher told us "I love teaching your kids - I'm never leaving this school. They'll take me out of here in a box!" with an enormous smile on her face.) Aside from intensely challenging academics, she's taking Pottery, a social history class on the "City of Boston", language & ethics with the Headmaster... Every kid is assigned a job at the school (she washes dishes once a week) - They're contributing to their community, learning to value labor, and saving the school enough money to fund a full scholarship every year. And the whole school, students and staff, spend 4 days at a camp in Maine every fall to bond!

We could have moved to a big house in the 'burbs. But we live in a city condo and pay staggering tuition bills every year. And I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to give my child this gift.

[davids]

lets talk 'bout doping. i know those little rats start taking ritalin to hyper-focus in like 4th grade... push the scores up. i want blood tests!!!!!!!
:banana:
Not to get all serious on you, but... My wife was talking to a friend whose son just started on some ADD drug (I don't know if it is Ritalin.) He told his mom, "Everything's sharp now, it's like the static has gone away from a radio station. And I can recognize people in a crowd!"

It's easy to joke about this stuff. But sometimes these drugs make a real, positive difference. Way cool.

[Sandy]

Wow. Bless you, Mr. Prez. You're one of the truly good ones, atmo.

I have very, very mixed feelings about standardized tests, mostly negative. What we're seeing here in MA with the MCAS is more & more teaching to the test, less & less discretion in the classroom, less art, less sports, more & more standardized curriculum. The best teachers are frustrated and bored, the mediocre & bad ones can cruise...

On the other hand, it has driven bad schools to impose rigor and live up to standards, as crude as they are. The MCAS are a better diagnostic tool than a lot of other, even cruder, standardized tests. Poor and mediocre students are learning more.

As far as my personal history with this stuff:

I did really, really well on standardized tests (National Merit Scholar, Presidential Scholarship finalist, etc.) and was really proud of that. Until I met kids at college, clearly sharper and brighter than me, who hadn't done particularly well on those same tests. I was smart enough to realize the test were flawed, and I'd been lucky to have the particular skills needed to do well with them. sg8357 got it right, atmo.

My wife & I decided to send our kid to private school before she was even conceived, based on conversations we had with my cousin's family who had moved up to Lexington MA from somewhere in NJ in the early 90s. His kids, all in high school at the time, told us horror stories about what was happening in the Honors & AP classes in one of the state's best high schools - Honors French classes where they were coaching kids on the American History AP test; A faculty that colluded with the students to inflate everyone's achievements, making the school and the kids look better than they were. It was very dispiriting.

Our daughter's been really lucky - She attended one of the finest private schools in the state from K-8, a liberal, child-focused environment that taught her how to think, how to get along with others, how to work hard, and any number of actual skills & facts... She was nurtured when she was young, and as the years went on, was challenged and given more autonomy. The teachers and faculty knew her almost as well as her parents, and visa-versa.

She took annual standardized tests from 4th grade on, and while it was interesting to see how her standing changed from year to year, they did little more than tell us she was quite bright and reasonably well educated. We did see her math scores improve in concert with her performance in the classroom - That wasn't a surprise...

This school did such a good job that, faced with a class that was going to triple in size this year (up to 150 kids...), she opted to find herself a smaller, even more challenging High School.

And she had to take a standardized test for this search, the SSAT. My wife & I explained exactly what we thought of it (a crude measure) and why it was important (admissions departments would be looking at her score!) She scored 92nd percentile among national independent school kids, and was disappointed. Not me - It fulfilled its purpose: She's now in a High School of 150 total, operating out of a pair of brownstones in the Back Bay.

This place is amazing; she's in classes with 10-12 other kids, most of the teachers have advanced degrees (at parents' night, her Lit teacher told us "I love teaching your kids - I'm never leaving this school. They'll take me out of here in a box!" with an enormous smile on her face.) Aside from intensely challenging academics, she's taking Pottery, a social history class on the "City of Boston", language & ethics with the Headmaster... Every kid is assigned a job at the school (she washes dishes once a week) - They're contributing to their community, learning to value labor, and saving the school enough money to fund a full scholarship every year. And the whole school, students and staff, spend 4 days at a camp in Maine every fall to bond!

We could have moved to a big house in the 'burbs. But we live in a city condo and pay staggering tuition bills every year. And I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to give my child this gift.

Sounds just like a typical big city public school system. :) You and your daughter made some tough decisions and they seem to be really working out really well. Wonderful for your daughter....you and your wife too...

Student Sandy

[fiamme red]

lets talk 'bout doping. i know those little rats start taking ritalin to hyper-focus in like 4th grade... push the scores up. i want blood tests!!!!!!!
:banana:http://www.amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

"You shouldn't have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine. It's not that you got it wrong. It's just that I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed."
--Paul Erdos

[swoop]

Not to get all serious on you, but... My wife was talking to a friend whose son just started on some ADD drug (I don't know if it is Ritalin.) He told his mom, "Everything's sharp now, it's like the static has gone away from a radio station. And I can recognize people in a crowd!"

It's easy to joke about this stuff. But sometimes these drugs make a real, positive difference. Way cool.

um david.... you know what i do for a living? hint: i'm here between sessions.
a good third of my practice is teenage boys. you'll get nothing but situational thumbs up from here.

the joke is grounded in the irony of actualy 'abuse' of adhd meds in college. truth is .. they do work well as a study aid. hyper focus is a good thing. tons of kids use them just for that too. i did in grad school (very selectively). yup. i know plenty of md's thata had some help from betablockers come test time too.

i'm not anti med... i'm pro med as part of a comprehensive treatment plan that includes taking on the family of origin. thank god for meds. i see the real good they do up close.

anyway...

ps there are non narcotic adhd meds these days too.

[davids]

um david.... you know what i do for a living? hint: i'm here between sessions.
a good third of my practice is teenage boys. you'll get nothing but situational thumbs up from here.
I know, I know... It was both wonderful and heartbreaking to hear this story - I've known this little kid his whole life, and never had any idea what he was experiencing. He's so happy now...

And I'm on hold with the cable company. Never use a residential service for a business, atmo.


p.s. My wife, now a nurse, used to be a therapist. She's coming to the conclusion that it's all chemical. OK, not really. But a lot of talk therapy can be replaced by the right pill.

[Fat Robert]

its a game

the state needs to use tests which generate a reasonable-looking curve

the state needs to find certification bodies to attest that the tests are "grade level"

when too many kids pass, change the test

I do AP Lit and AP Lang -- I like teaching to those tests, because they are fine, challenging assessments. but many state tests aren't worth taking, because they are so dumbed down (see point 2).

I taught 10th grade English in NC for a few years. The state test was a timed essay in response to an open-ended prompt (imagine a less maddening version of the AP or IB essays, or the Brit A -levels). It challenged everyone -- low and high -- and was a solid measure of how the kids could think and write.

in SC, you can pass the 10th grade writing test with a cohesive paragraph. yet, we are assured that it is a "grade level" test...and many kids in the state don't pass (there's 150 years or agrarian and textile industry benevolent paternalism for you).

the school district-approved reading measure indicates that my 12th graders on "on grade level." the good old Stanford Diagnostic says they read between the 9th and 10th grade levels.

shell game, baby.

shimano sucks

[swoop]

OK, not really. But a lot of talk therapy can be replaced by the right pill.

yeah.. this is what the drug companies want you to believe. there is no chicken without the egg and all the current studies show best result with a multi-modal multi-dimensional approach. the current science validates this.

you can't behave in a way that isn't genetically prewired unless (you have to have the genetic capacity towrds certain defense mechanisims) there is a physical injury... but at the same time the stresses that open paths to pathological defenses are often relational and developmental.

treating symptoms and reducing them is important. so is fostering healing. everyday i see the talk therapy effect quantifable change. i get too may calls from former patients who's lives have changed from it.

so.. um.. nudge the wife for me.... the kool aid is sweet but overlooks too much. even with what are now seen as purely biologically based pathologies like bipolar disorder... talk therapy is essential. its the one pathology that i see kill people.. drugs are not enough because the patients usually fail to comply.

drugs help manage symptoms but there's more to the puzzle. much more.

where therapy gets it wrong is that it tries to aspire to being a science when its really closer to an art. its more about the science of symbols (language and behvior as codifying feelings and desires)... its more shamanic at times.
also against it is that the field draws in folks that need to be on the couch but don't have the ego strength for it.. so they do it vicariously through their patients. thankfully there's plenty of good ones out there too. dr. phil not being one of them. atmo.

scuse the typos.. dyslexic. and hurried.

example... what pill to you give a woman who's parents survived the holocaust .. and are symptom free high functioning folks ... and she was born here yet expresses all the symtpoms of a holocaust survivor? she looks depressed. she looks like she has a personality disorder. touches of ptsd. hypersexual. may be abusing her mother. all kinds of 'bad' stuff
some things take a really complex relationship to get to.

what pill do you give a gal that can only get off on dead rats after she clubs them to bits?

what pill to you give guys that race cross on purpose?

[Fat Robert]

what pill do you give a gal that can only get off on dead rats after she clubs them to bits?



stop hanging around my mom

[1centaur]

Mandatory testing is a reaction to the apparent incapacity of the "teach the whole child" generations to produce students who actually could do well on mundane grammar and math tests. I think we all agree there needs to be a base level of three Rs in place by a certain age in order to advance the needs of society, especially a leading edge, knowledge-based society such as ours. Our engineering achievements are falling behind those of many smaller, poorer countries that are hardly teaching creative thinking. Sloppy writing and speaking skills are very common in US high school and college graduates, which does not provide great hope that those people can reason and judge with particular accuity. As results lagged, we saw lots of experiments in whole language and even whole math that left students stunted as they progressed. Parents grew frustrated with lack of accountability from teachers protected by their unions in state sponsored monopolies, and eventually they said enough is enough - stop speaking happy talk and make sure my kid can read and write. Teachers wailed about teaching to the test, not getting that until a REASONABLE test can be passed there cannot be the luxury of teaching many other things. Part of the problem is that pushy parents wanted kids learning physics in 7th grade, so to speak, which gave kids fewer years to focus on the basic building blocks. After tests started, resentful teachers adapted by actually teaching to the test rather than changing the curriculum so passing the test was a breeze. Some systems gamed it for stats - human character flaws revealed. Some states (Massachusetts) got greedy and started adding more and more subjects at more and more grade levels, rather than sticking to the original point. The results are varied - actually having objective standards is critical to society, and it's just the way it goes that some don't hit the mark. The tests in many cases should be improved and we should have a better idea about how to deal with kids who are bad at tests, but public schooling is not about individualism it's about the state needing an educated workforce (those who want academic freedom should be begging for charter schools, but too many teachers prefer to preserve their monopoly). 20+ years of the less tested way was producing bad results. 5 years of the new way is not close to perfect. But it's the tests and the attitudes that need to be changed, and BTW, bad teachers (of which there are many) should be fired while good teachers should be (and would be) cherished and paid more if union rules allowed it.

I am very much in the minority on the board when it comes to public education, so I don't expect much agreement with any of this. My son is in his senior year of high school having gone through the public system in one of the better Massachusetts communities (by reputation), and I have seen many, many reasons to support standardized testing. The public parents feel powerless to get their kids a reasonable, fair, thoughtful, well structured education, and rather than argue with "professional educators" about theory they have resorted to tests as their only way to get teachers to prove that they are doing a good job. So far, the results are uninspiring in many ways. It will take great Boards of Ed. to make testing work, and how many of those are there? I'd rather the free market got to work its magic - much more effective.

[Fat Robert]

Chiron man:

on which we disagree: your ibike sucks

on which we agree: if the test is worth taking, it is worth teaching

ascetic discipline and high standards

fcuk the rest

[Lifelover]

Not the responsibility, but the interest.

Many students get excellent grades throughout school and college without developing a lasting interest in any of the subjects they study. When they get their diploma, their "education" is finished.


Are you suggesting that some of the BS I was tested on in college is useful in everyday life?

Maybe I missed that class.

[caleb]

As someone who teaches in the public university system, I can tell you that things need to improve at the primary and secondary levels.

Standardized testing is probably a poor way to pursue that improvement, but somehow we need to get better.

[caleb]

Yet, failing schools and all, I deeply respect what you're doing.