4 ms·

This is crazy. If you have another metric for student performance other than test scores, just say it.

asveikau 14y ago
I'm not certain he had another metric in mind, but it seemed plausible that he may be suggesting that test score performance did not actually increase after No Child Left Behind, or that an increased emphasis on test scores in the last decade had not had a positive measurable impact, even on an imperfect measure like test scores. I don't know what the actual data say but it seems like that was the avenue he was going down.
lutorm 14y ago
We do have another metric: The teachers', who spend 5 days a week with the kids, knowledge. They have a dataset infinitely deeper and more multi-dimensional than a standardized test can give. Of course, it doesn't lend itself well to making graphs, but that's the nature of complex data.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  The subjective opinions of a teacher are not a metric, they are merely a noisy data set. They are also nearly worthless scientifically - they are incomparable (how do you compare the opinion of teacher A to that of teacher B) and non-reproducible (how can one repeat an observation).
  - lutorm 14y ago
    All true, of course. But numerically accurate data on a proxy quantity that you don't care about are not necessarily inferior to numerically inaccurate data on the quantity you care about. Both pose challenges to interpretation. It's easy to be seduced by clear numbers and worry less about what the numbers mean. We can argue about which fields count as "science", but many fields try to learn from non-reproducible data. (And I say this having spent my career in the physical sciences. There's too much noise induced by people who present statistically solid analyses of numbers whose connection to the core questions is much more tenuous...)
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Standardized tests typically measure how good a student is at adding, subtracting, and reading a paragraph and using the information it contains. Why do you feel we don't care about that? What information should we care about?
      - dsanderson 14y ago
        Standardized tests claim to measure those quantities. To be fair, my school system was quite good, so I don't think I suffered too greatly from teaching to the test, but I did read quite a few of the study/test guides put out by Kaplan and their ilk. Much of it was tricks based on the structure of the tests; the "types" of question that will be asked and type-specific solution strategies. These tests are not about basic understanding and skill at adding, reading comprehension, etc., but rather a well-defined subset of those skills. The assumption is that skill in the subset is a good proxy for fundamental skills in the student. If teachers are evaluated solely by these partial measures, it is in their best interest (and, in the eyes of the administrators, produces the best results) if they optimize for these partial measures; the argument from standardized testing opponents is that teaching for these partial measures has not been shown to produce general understanding. In that sense, NCLB created a race to the bottom; schools that performed below-average got less funding, so if any schools successfully "taught to the test", they all had too or face budget cuts (that's my understanding, IANAT). Is there evidence that these partial measures reveal and/or necessarily lead to a more general understanding?
        yummyfajitas 14y ago
        Here is an actual CA standardized test: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf Please explain why you feel it doesn't adequately measure the ability of students to "read, write, and compare rational numbers in scientific notation (positive and negative powers of 10) with approximate numbers using scientific notation" (as well as the other topics listed). Or, similarly, can you explain specifically what "teaching to the test" means and why it is suboptimal for learning the aforementoined topics?
seanmcdirmid 14y ago
Why are standardized test scores a good metric? A more accurate metric might be standardized testing company profits...mission accomplished! The US educational system is evaluated against other countries, and we've only gotten worse in our rankings despite paying those testing companies all that money. Does Finland have standardized tests? No, they kick our butt simply by treating teachers as professionals and paying the, accordingly.
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Classroom work? Like it used to be when we were kids. You went to school, and learned the material in class, and the teacher had a grasp on where everyone in the class. You did homework, and took tests prepared by your teacher. Now teachers in some states have to spend 30 min a day just teaching HOW TO TAKE A STANDARDIZED TEST! "here you go little johnney, fill in the bubble the whole way"
- ntumlin 14y ago
  What prevents the teacher from giving his class all the answers so that he doesn't have to work and doesn't get fired for his students grades being too low.
  - ImprovedSilence 14y ago
    The other teachers on his team? Its not like that was a rampant problem when we were groing up....
  - intended 14y ago
    nothing really. ITs ok, this types of train wrecks have their own logic - after a while people will cotton onto this part, and then there will be spot checks to ensure that students aren't being given the question paper. After that they will realize that all tests should come from one standardized system, lets say Pearsons. Then pearson will conduct tests for all 10th graders and then all high schoolers and so on. Kids will start spending time coming up with creative ways to cheat and beat the system. Its happened before in other countries and will happen again. At the end of this, expect people to enter the test center after going through a metal detector and removing any metallic object.
  - hdctambien 14y ago
    Teachers and administrators are actually incentivized to cheat. And sometimes even the students are in on it. Yesterday: 23 schools penalized for helping cheat tests http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/29/schools-stripped-of-key-ranking-after-reports-of-cheating-other-irregularities/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/29/schools-stripped-o... Last March: the head of the School District's test security program reported more than a dozen testing violations at the school. http://thenotebook.org/blog/125270/wagner-cheating-follow http://thenotebook.org/blog/125270/wagner-cheating-follow Last Year: America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta http://news.yahoo.com/americas-biggest-teacher-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-atlanta-213734183.html http://news.yahoo.com/americas-biggest-teacher-principal-che... http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/07/11/teachers-cheating-in-schools http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/07/11/teachers-cheating-in-scho... I remember hearing about a school where the teachers assigned a letter to each corner of the room and would stand in the corner of the room that corresponded to the correct answer to each question. In Atlanta they were having "grading parties" where teachers were getting together on the weekend to erase incorrect answers and fill in the correct ones. They got sloppy.

I'm not certain he had another metric in mind, but it seemed plausible that he may be suggesting that test score performance did not actually increase after No Child Left Behind, or that an increased emphasis on test scores in the last decade had not had a positive measurable impact, even on an imperfect measure like test scores. I don't know what the actual data say but it seems like that was the avenue he was going down.

lutorm 14y ago

We do have another metric: The teachers', who spend 5 days a week with the kids, knowledge. They have a dataset infinitely deeper and more multi-dimensional than a standardized test can give. Of course, it doesn't lend itself well to making graphs, but that's the nature of complex data.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
The subjective opinions of a teacher are not a metric, they are merely a noisy data set. They are also nearly worthless scientifically - they are incomparable (how do you compare the opinion of teacher A to that of teacher B) and non-reproducible (how can one repeat an observation).
- lutorm 14y ago
  All true, of course. But numerically accurate data on a proxy quantity that you don't care about are not necessarily inferior to numerically inaccurate data on the quantity you care about. Both pose challenges to interpretation. It's easy to be seduced by clear numbers and worry less about what the numbers mean. We can argue about which fields count as "science", but many fields try to learn from non-reproducible data. (And I say this having spent my career in the physical sciences. There's too much noise induced by people who present statistically solid analyses of numbers whose connection to the core questions is much more tenuous...)
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Standardized tests typically measure how good a student is at adding, subtracting, and reading a paragraph and using the information it contains. Why do you feel we don't care about that? What information should we care about?
    - dsanderson 14y ago
      Standardized tests claim to measure those quantities. To be fair, my school system was quite good, so I don't think I suffered too greatly from teaching to the test, but I did read quite a few of the study/test guides put out by Kaplan and their ilk. Much of it was tricks based on the structure of the tests; the "types" of question that will be asked and type-specific solution strategies. These tests are not about basic understanding and skill at adding, reading comprehension, etc., but rather a well-defined subset of those skills. The assumption is that skill in the subset is a good proxy for fundamental skills in the student. If teachers are evaluated solely by these partial measures, it is in their best interest (and, in the eyes of the administrators, produces the best results) if they optimize for these partial measures; the argument from standardized testing opponents is that teaching for these partial measures has not been shown to produce general understanding. In that sense, NCLB created a race to the bottom; schools that performed below-average got less funding, so if any schools successfully "taught to the test", they all had too or face budget cuts (that's my understanding, IANAT). Is there evidence that these partial measures reveal and/or necessarily lead to a more general understanding?
      - yummyfajitas 14y ago
        Here is an actual CA standardized test: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf Please explain why you feel it doesn't adequately measure the ability of students to "read, write, and compare rational numbers in scientific notation (positive and negative powers of 10) with approximate numbers using scientific notation" (as well as the other topics listed). Or, similarly, can you explain specifically what "teaching to the test" means and why it is suboptimal for learning the aforementoined topics?

seanmcdirmid 14y ago

Why are standardized test scores a good metric? A more accurate metric might be standardized testing company profits...mission accomplished! The US educational system is evaluated against other countries, and we've only gotten worse in our rankings despite paying those testing companies all that money. Does Finland have standardized tests? No, they kick our butt simply by treating teachers as professionals and paying the, accordingly.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

Classroom work? Like it used to be when we were kids. You went to school, and learned the material in class, and the teacher had a grasp on where everyone in the class. You did homework, and took tests prepared by your teacher. Now teachers in some states have to spend 30 min a day just teaching HOW TO TAKE A STANDARDIZED TEST! "here you go little johnney, fill in the bubble the whole way"

ntumlin 14y ago
What prevents the teacher from giving his class all the answers so that he doesn't have to work and doesn't get fired for his students grades being too low.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  The other teachers on his team? Its not like that was a rampant problem when we were groing up....
- intended 14y ago
  nothing really. ITs ok, this types of train wrecks have their own logic - after a while people will cotton onto this part, and then there will be spot checks to ensure that students aren't being given the question paper. After that they will realize that all tests should come from one standardized system, lets say Pearsons. Then pearson will conduct tests for all 10th graders and then all high schoolers and so on. Kids will start spending time coming up with creative ways to cheat and beat the system. Its happened before in other countries and will happen again. At the end of this, expect people to enter the test center after going through a metal detector and removing any metallic object.
- hdctambien 14y ago
  Teachers and administrators are actually incentivized to cheat. And sometimes even the students are in on it. Yesterday: 23 schools penalized for helping cheat tests http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/29/schools-stripped-of-key-ranking-after-reports-of-cheating-other-irregularities/ http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/10/29/schools-stripped-o... Last March: the head of the School District's test security program reported more than a dozen testing violations at the school. http://thenotebook.org/blog/125270/wagner-cheating-follow http://thenotebook.org/blog/125270/wagner-cheating-follow Last Year: America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta http://news.yahoo.com/americas-biggest-teacher-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-atlanta-213734183.html http://news.yahoo.com/americas-biggest-teacher-principal-che... http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/07/11/teachers-cheating-in-schools http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/07/11/teachers-cheating-in-scho... I remember hearing about a school where the teachers assigned a letter to each corner of the room and would stand in the corner of the room that corresponded to the correct answer to each question. In Atlanta they were having "grading parties" where teachers were getting together on the weekend to erase incorrect answers and fill in the correct ones. They got sloppy.