6 ms·

Thanks for your fascinating comment. Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. The p

by almost 15y ago

Thanks for your fascinating comment. Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. The production of these things is a shameful act. I thought the tests we had in the UK were bad, and they are, but the US obviously has a far greater problem. I hope this changes, because you are hurting your children and damaging your future.

NaOH 15y ago
Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. I agree, but my goal was more to share what I've seen of the process than to judge it. I think folks here are percipient enough to make those judgments independently. On top of that, I've long been out of the field and am far too ignorant too suggest alternatives, and that's what we seem to need more than critiques.
- saulrh 15y ago
  I've long been out of the field Speaking as someone that came out of high school a couple years ago and watched No Child Left Behind start taking effect, I've seen two different styles of test: one from the mid-90's, when it sounds like you were involved, and one from after No Child Left Behind. The NCLB tests today are utterly unlike the tests that your methods produced. Basically, instead of trying to rank students against each other, they began ranking every student against the same fixed hurdles. On top of that, they started testing once every year or two rather than once every four or five years, and question quality dropped precipitously as they just ran out of material. The changes were, to me, obvious, and the effects were disastrous. Null-value questions ("What shape is the end of a pencil? Cone, square, pyramid.", on a 7th-grade test), bad and wrong essays (as described in the OP), science questions that asked for rote memorization rather than actual understanding and thinking, and so on. These observations, though amateur and unscientific, suggest a few solutions. Basically, go back to relative rankings, do a lot less testing, and start rewarding uniqueness. Teachers need to have time to actually teach outside hitting every checkbox on list for the end-of-the-year test. Teachers need to be able to teach to their own students, rather than to the lowest-common-denominator child in rural Alabama. Teachers need to be able to encourange and guide every student individually, developing artists, scientists, thinkers, and doers, rather than having to force every single child into the same standardized mold. </rant>
  - NaOH 15y ago
    Right, I was in the field from something like 1995-2001, so I was before the No Child Left Behind style of testing. And I've been nowhere near the field in my work since. If I were to guess, the types of questions you received were different, but the general process of how the tests were made remained the same. And that's the bureaucratic, lowest-common denominator mentality that pervades broadly given tests. And I agree with you that "[t]eachers need to be able to teach to their own students." I think that was a big part of the OP's point since that's something she does. It's all part of the conundrum: Everyone wants good teachers and accountability in education, but there doesn't appear to be a high-level way of making such assessments that can pass the necessary political muster.
    - nitrogen 15y ago
      (I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing hyphen.) ...lowest-common denominator mentality... After reading your initial comment, I couldn't help noticing that you might have meant "lowest-common-denominator mentality." Consider this pedantism a subtle way of saying, "I read your comment completely; thanks for posting it."
      - chalst 15y ago
        NaOH is applying one of the standard forms of hyphenation: many styles dislike joining phrases used as attributives with many hyphens.
      - Drbble 15y ago
        If we are being pedantic: it should be "greatest common denominator".
- almost 15y ago
  I meant it when I thanked you for the comment. It was a fascinating insight into how these tests actually come about. Thanks for writing it!
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. They also help, by identifying bad teachers and bad schools. Do you have any data suggesting they hurt more than they help?
- keithpeter 15y ago
  In the UK, we have spent ages and a lot of effort in testing, league tables, improvement plans, improvement targets for schools. There is a slowly growing realisation that the result may not be good for the children. See the Wolf report https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00031-2011 https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicati... and also a short OFSTED report into Maths teaching, see the newspaper summary below. The full report may be of interest to you as it explains the pedagogy of mathematics well. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2982483/Ofsted-testing-culture-undermining-maths.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2982483/Ofsted-testing-... Teaching is a highly dimensional task. Assuming you could devise a metric space adequate to the task, my teaching at any point would be represented by a set of coordinates. The norm of the coordinates of my 'point' in the space might be higher or lower than the norm of another teacher. How do you decide which one of us is less 'bad'?
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Your first link, near as I can tell, doesn't even attempt to address the question of whether standardized tests are beneficial or harmful. It seems to be about the merits of vocational vs higher education. Your second link provides no data on whether testing is good for children. It merely shows that actual teaching methods do not conform to what the author's believe are the best teaching methods. No data is provided on student outcomes. Teaching is a highly dimensional task...How do you decide which one of us is less 'bad'? Any goal-oriented system is designed to maximize some arbitrary objective function. With standardized tests, you are forced to write down your objective function and admit it's an arbitrary choice. What benefit do we receive from having an unspecified objective function and no uniform method of measurement?
tatsuke95 15y ago
>Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. The rub is that: so do terrible teachers. It's inevitable in a world where bureaucrats take a top down approach to test taking and measurement that you end up with people who "teach the test". It sucks. But, when left to their own devices, some teachers don't teach at all. Teachers follow the same distribution of personalities as any other occupation on this planet; some are good, some are bad, most are average. These standardized tests were an attempt at saying, "You MUST teach at least this well", with "well" being defined by factoids. So, on one hand you have a free-for-all, where great teachers influence and inspire, while poor teachers ruin lives. The other side is a middle ground where what is to be taught is quantified, and everyone gets a mediocre (at best) education. What we need a hybrid system that allows good teachers to do what they want, while bad teachers are held accountable and forced to, at the least, teach the test.
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  Bad teachers teaching bad tests is worse than bad teachers left to their own devices. "Factoids" is a laughable metric for learning. (Especially when you're looking for factoids in a long-form response. If you want factoids, you need to ask for factoids. This test asked for complex thought, the grading should require complex thought.)
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    Bad teachers teaching bad tests is worse than bad teachers left to their own devices. How is it possible that a student is worse off having the knowledge necessary to pass a test than to have no knowledge? This test asked for complex thought, the grading should require complex thought Kids are dumb. Their "complex thought" is really quite simple. Further, the iPhone required a stunning amount of complex thought to create, yet I can asses its functionality with only simple observation. I doesn't necessarily require complex thought to asses the product of complex thought, particularly when that's complex thought at grade level X.
    - 15y ago

by almost 15y ago

NaOH 15y ago

Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. I agree, but my goal was more to share what I've seen of the process than to judge it. I think folks here are percipient enough to make those judgments independently. On top of that, I've long been out of the field and am far too ignorant too suggest alternatives, and that's what we seem to need more than critiques.

saulrh 15y ago
I've long been out of the field Speaking as someone that came out of high school a couple years ago and watched No Child Left Behind start taking effect, I've seen two different styles of test: one from the mid-90's, when it sounds like you were involved, and one from after No Child Left Behind. The NCLB tests today are utterly unlike the tests that your methods produced. Basically, instead of trying to rank students against each other, they began ranking every student against the same fixed hurdles. On top of that, they started testing once every year or two rather than once every four or five years, and question quality dropped precipitously as they just ran out of material. The changes were, to me, obvious, and the effects were disastrous. Null-value questions ("What shape is the end of a pencil? Cone, square, pyramid.", on a 7th-grade test), bad and wrong essays (as described in the OP), science questions that asked for rote memorization rather than actual understanding and thinking, and so on. These observations, though amateur and unscientific, suggest a few solutions. Basically, go back to relative rankings, do a lot less testing, and start rewarding uniqueness. Teachers need to have time to actually teach outside hitting every checkbox on list for the end-of-the-year test. Teachers need to be able to teach to their own students, rather than to the lowest-common-denominator child in rural Alabama. Teachers need to be able to encourange and guide every student individually, developing artists, scientists, thinkers, and doers, rather than having to force every single child into the same standardized mold. </rant>
- NaOH 15y ago
  Right, I was in the field from something like 1995-2001, so I was before the No Child Left Behind style of testing. And I've been nowhere near the field in my work since. If I were to guess, the types of questions you received were different, but the general process of how the tests were made remained the same. And that's the bureaucratic, lowest-common denominator mentality that pervades broadly given tests. And I agree with you that "[t]eachers need to be able to teach to their own students." I think that was a big part of the OP's point since that's something she does. It's all part of the conundrum: Everyone wants good teachers and accountability in education, but there doesn't appear to be a high-level way of making such assessments that can pass the necessary political muster.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    (I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing hyphen.) ...lowest-common denominator mentality... After reading your initial comment, I couldn't help noticing that you might have meant "lowest-common-denominator mentality." Consider this pedantism a subtle way of saying, "I read your comment completely; thanks for posting it."
    - chalst 15y ago
      NaOH is applying one of the standard forms of hyphenation: many styles dislike joining phrases used as attributives with many hyphens.
    - Drbble 15y ago
      If we are being pedantic: it should be "greatest common denominator".
almost 15y ago
I meant it when I thanked you for the comment. It was a fascinating insight into how these tests actually come about. Thanks for writing it!

yummyfajitas 15y ago

Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. They also help, by identifying bad teachers and bad schools. Do you have any data suggesting they hurt more than they help?

keithpeter 15y ago
In the UK, we have spent ages and a lot of effort in testing, league tables, improvement plans, improvement targets for schools. There is a slowly growing realisation that the result may not be good for the children. See the Wolf report https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00031-2011 https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicati... and also a short OFSTED report into Maths teaching, see the newspaper summary below. The full report may be of interest to you as it explains the pedagogy of mathematics well. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2982483/Ofsted-testing-culture-undermining-maths.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2982483/Ofsted-testing-... Teaching is a highly dimensional task. Assuming you could devise a metric space adequate to the task, my teaching at any point would be represented by a set of coordinates. The norm of the coordinates of my 'point' in the space might be higher or lower than the norm of another teacher. How do you decide which one of us is less 'bad'?
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Your first link, near as I can tell, doesn't even attempt to address the question of whether standardized tests are beneficial or harmful. It seems to be about the merits of vocational vs higher education. Your second link provides no data on whether testing is good for children. It merely shows that actual teaching methods do not conform to what the author's believe are the best teaching methods. No data is provided on student outcomes. Teaching is a highly dimensional task...How do you decide which one of us is less 'bad'? Any goal-oriented system is designed to maximize some arbitrary objective function. With standardized tests, you are forced to write down your objective function and admit it's an arbitrary choice. What benefit do we receive from having an unspecified objective function and no uniform method of measurement?

tatsuke95 15y ago

>Unfortunately, all the excuses in the world don't change the fact that these tests hurt education and hurt children. The rub is that: so do terrible teachers. It's inevitable in a world where bureaucrats take a top down approach to test taking and measurement that you end up with people who "teach the test". It sucks. But, when left to their own devices, some teachers don't teach at all. Teachers follow the same distribution of personalities as any other occupation on this planet; some are good, some are bad, most are average. These standardized tests were an attempt at saying, "You MUST teach at least this well", with "well" being defined by factoids. So, on one hand you have a free-for-all, where great teachers influence and inspire, while poor teachers ruin lives. The other side is a middle ground where what is to be taught is quantified, and everyone gets a mediocre (at best) education. What we need a hybrid system that allows good teachers to do what they want, while bad teachers are held accountable and forced to, at the least, teach the test.

lukeschlather 15y ago
Bad teachers teaching bad tests is worse than bad teachers left to their own devices. "Factoids" is a laughable metric for learning. (Especially when you're looking for factoids in a long-form response. If you want factoids, you need to ask for factoids. This test asked for complex thought, the grading should require complex thought.)
- georgieporgie 15y ago
  Bad teachers teaching bad tests is worse than bad teachers left to their own devices. How is it possible that a student is worse off having the knowledge necessary to pass a test than to have no knowledge? This test asked for complex thought, the grading should require complex thought Kids are dumb. Their "complex thought" is really quite simple. Further, the iPhone required a stunning amount of complex thought to create, yet I can asses its functionality with only simple observation. I doesn't necessarily require complex thought to asses the product of complex thought, particularly when that's complex thought at grade level X.
  - 15y ago