Conservative-Liberal Common Ground on High Stakes K-12 End-of-Year Testing
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18 responses to “Conservative-Liberal Common Ground on High Stakes K-12 End-of-Year Testing”
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Should we wait to see if it works first? What if the preparation for the progress checks turn into more aggregate wasted time per year (in the teacher’s definition)?
When we were investing in EdTech, the question was always had Florida, Texas, and/or California adopted the tech yet, as they were the early adopters and most progressive (non political use of the word).
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If they have to take time out to prepare their kids to check progress on two months worth of work they did not do it right the first time.
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I agree with you that, in theory, they should not have to take time out for preparing students for a test on two months worth of work. Realistically, however, that is what they will do.
I’m ambivalent on this. Ideally, teachers have their own methods of periodically determining whether students are “getting” the material. These methods include homework, tests, written essays, etc. The period averages are contained in a report card. So, what purpose would periodic standardized tests serve? And, how do you design a statewide standardized test for two months of material?
I agree with ARL. Let’s see how it works in Florida. If it is successful, great, we can try it. If not, we will not have wasted time and resources. After all, states are the laboratories of democracy. Let’s see what the Florida laboratory produces.
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If teachers and the kids they teach were uniformly skilled and motivated across the state, your characterization of the process of teaching would be correct. They are not. We have great teachers, average teachers and bad teachers. We have kids who work hard and kids who don’t. Kids have different skills and different levels of support at home. Absenteeism is a huge variable.
As you said, teachers give tests at regular intervals, but what are the quality of those tests? How informative to parents and schools, school divisions and the state are the grades awarded by poor teachers?
The entire motivation for the federal government mandating statewide testing programs across America was to identify failing schools, failing teachers and failing kids to correct the problems that caused those failures.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced No Child Left Behind and in large measure passed the torch of direct oversight of the testing program from the federal government to the states.
The current testing system in Virginia provides historical information received too late to act on. Periodic statewide tests would serve to fix that.
Virginia is already a year behind Florida even if we pass implementing legislation next year. The lessons from Florida will be visible before VDOE has to implement any new state law with regulations.
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Why do end of year tests provide information too late to act on? They provide information on schools and individual classes in which students are not achieving at acceptable levels. With that information, the state and local districts could take action to remediate those problems. The fact that such action does not happen or is ineffective does not invalidate the tests. Why do you think more frequent standardized testing during the year would have different results?
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Because an entire year has gone by in which kids did not learn before the test results revealed that.
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So, what happens if the first or second periodic standardized scores come in low? It will be difficult to replace a teacher in the middle of a year. Will those students who scored low have to repeat the previous work and retake the test? I realize that these are issues with the current system. My point is that I think standardized tests will improve the problem.
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So, what happens if the first or second periodic standardized scores come in low? It will be difficult to replace a teacher in the middle of a year. Will those students who scored low have to repeat the previous work and retake the test? I realize that these are issues with the current system. My point is that I think standardized tests will improve the problem.
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The principal would decide what to do. Some steps he or she will likely take:
– First, discuss the situation with the teacher. Perhaps a kid needs to be in a different classroom for any number of reasons if one is available. Moving a kid can sometimes set up a different learning dynamic. Check with the math or reading coach if they have one to see if the instruction in the kid’s classroom meets standards, particularly if there are multiple cases from a single classroom. Involve the counselor. That is why those positions were created and funded.
– Second an unofficial IEP. Consider assigning a reading or math specialist to the case. Tutoring over lunch on identified shortfalls, which I used to do as a volunteer in a local middle school, can work wonders if done right.
– Third, notify the parents to inform them, seek their views, and see if they can help with their kid at home.All of those steps are time-late after the school year is over.
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The problem with relying upon grades as a measure of student progress is that the grading system at many schools is a farce. In the face of parental bitching and pressure from central offices to pass kids even when they’re not doing the work, grade inflation is so rampant in some schools that the grades are meaningless. Grades still may be meaningful in some schools that have managed to uphold the standards, but the system has been hopelessly corrupted in others.
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OTOH, using test scores, i.e., grades, makes an excellent method for admitting students to the STEM HS?
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Didn’t they used call this “mid-term exams”?
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Even when they were in place, local mid-terms offered parents no statewide standards for comparison.
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Many districts have done away with mid term and final exams. Snow days kept interrupting the mid term exam schedule in Loudoun so they were discarded. Mid terms were very useful to me. It presented data that showed the weaknesses in content and skills. Late April/early May could be used to backfill those weaknesses for the end of course SOL test.
I am sympathetic to, and agree with, the criticisms of doing away with mid-term and final exams, lax grading systems, and social promotions. I am skeptical, however, of the proposal to have periodic (every month, six weeks?) standardized tests. Before going down that road, here are some questions/issues proponents will need to address:
1. Will the periodic standardized test score constitute the grade on the report card that a student gets periodically? (In my day, is was every six weeks; I don’t know what the grading period is now.)
2. If not, what function will it have?
3. If so, what happens to instruction and evaluation of writing exercises such as essays, book reports, and term papers and other types of learning that can’t be evaluated with multiple choice questions (essay questions)? If they are not going to figure in a student’s grade, they will go by the wayside.
4. In the comments, there has been emphasis on evaluating school divisions. Does that mean that every child from Big Stone Gap to Chincoteague to Arlington to Winchester and all points in between, will get the same standardized test?
5. Who will develop these statewide standardized tests?
6. What will the cost be to the state and localities of administering these standardized tests?
7. The banning of social promotion by Florida has been put forth as a positive. I don’t disagree with that in principle. Who will set the minimum score for promotion to the next level? The legislature, as in Florida or the Board of Education?
8. Who will determine what constitutes a passing score? For example, in the Florida legislation, a student has to score at Level 2 to move to the next level. How many correct answers does it take to make Level 2? 60 percent? 50 percent? (See, any system can be manipulated.)
9. If grades are going to be based on standardized tests with students achieving certain levels, what happens to the GPA? Lots of college use that data, especially since many have abandoned the SAT.
10. If it is to be state policy that promotion to the next grade level of every student in the state will be dependent on each student’s performance on a statewide standardized test, how will the state ensure that each student receives instruction that will be adequate to prepare him for that exam?
I am sure there are other policy issues that will need to be addressed. These are the ones that come to mind now.
I like how this Senate bill includes a year 2025 independent review to examine the effectiveness of the reforms. This might give the new plan a longer shelf life.
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I agree.
Jim, we’ve already begun this year pretty much what Florida is planning to do. This legislation (HB2027/SB1357) was passed last year. What we’ve found so far is that the data from the pre-assessments this fall were not of much value in that they tended to underreport student achievement.
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/educational-assessments-too-much-of-a-good-thing/
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