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Just to clarify what I was saying: You claimed they -started during declining test scores-: "My assertion, then, would be to point that "teaching to the tests

• taeric 3y ago
  Ah, I think I see the main contention. Most of the time I hear folks talking about "teaching to the tests" they are upset that they are just getting kids so that they can pass the tests. Indeed, even one of your complaints was that you had to compromise your teaching so that they could score better. My point is that if that is the concern, they are failing even at that. Test scores are going down, such that most of the arguments that they learned the tests, but not life skills, are moot. They aren't even passing the tests. That is, I didn't mean to claim that they simply started during declining scores. I meant more that the scores are declining now. If the concern is that they are "teaching to the tests", my bigger concern is why are they so bad at that, even? For timing, the assessments seem to be that they have been declining steadily since 2012. If your claim is that the "teach to the tests peaked in 200x" and that that is why tests are failing, that should have started reversing with kids this year? (I assume the assertion is there would be a 7ish year lag on kindergarten kids getting to age 13, to be reflected in this story. Obviously not a full step function, but I don't have a solid model on that. Love it if you have one.) To that end, my assertion would be that if they were at least able to pass the tests, that would still be an improvement over where we seem to be. Test scores are falling. Why? It can't be that teachers are just teaching to the tests. Or, rather, if it is, they are doing a bad job at that, even. I'm assuming the idea is that the kids are passing lower level tests better, but failing later tests? I'll take a quick dive on some of that later, to see if that hypothesis holds up.
  • mlyle 3y ago
    > If the concern is that they are "teaching to the tests", my bigger concern is why are they so bad at that, even? Again, I think purely teaching to the tests is short term gains for long term losses. To take my example: I expect my students are going to be mostly 4's and 5's on the AP Microeconomics exam (this is good). But if I could have taught them why the functions looked the way they did, they'd have a better understanding of microeconomics. This would have been a dangerous thing to actually teach them, because if they used this knowledge on the test, there's no guarantee a pair of readers would understand it and give them the point. Better to dumb it down and teach the graph-based and algebra-based reasoning rather than the calculus-based reasoning of how it actually works, even though my students were capable of it. I got to teach students stuff that they'll have to unlearn for deeper study, but maximized their short term performance. I'm totally willing to do this because it is in the students' interest: they really want a "5" on that exam to prove their capability to colleges and to skip a course. But if the test results weren't important to the students (like most of these standardized tests) but were important to -me-, that would be a terrible conflict of interest. > I'm assuming the idea is that the kids are passing lower level tests better, but failing later tests? 4th grade scores kept climbing longer and have been flat for the past 7-8 years even as 7th grade scores have slowly slid downwards.
    • taeric 3y ago
      Right, but where are the short term gains? Scores are down. The charts I saw on the NAEP site had 4th grade scores basically flat. Which chart do you see them going up in? Specifically, their charts do show we are up in math compared to 90, but it has been flat since about 2003. And 4th grade reading has been flat basically forever, which is laughably in contrast with the older kids. If your assertion is that they are having to teach to the test just to keep things flat, and that is why 4th graders are treading water and then starting to fall off by grade 8, I can buy that. I'm a little susp that the charts between 4th and 8th graders seem to not have a time lag on them. In that, whatever we are doing wrong seems to impact both grades at the same time. If that is the assertion, though, I stand by my "if they are teaching to the tests, they are doing a bad job at that."