Standardized Testing

[Arkady]

There's an ongoing attack on standardized testing, mostly by liberals:

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/04/joh...ything_thats_wrong_with_standardized_testing/

Liberals have long been uncomfortable with such tests, from the earliest days of IQ tests and the SATs, but I think it really heated up when the high-stakes-testing of "No Child Left Behind" got identified with Bush, which put more of a partisan spin on the issue.

This is one where I have to disagree with the typical liberal position. Sure, I fully admit that the tests are flawed, and that they can have buried in them cultural assumptions that wind up reinforcing the current power structure. For example, you're more likely to find an analogy built around a word like "yacht" than around terms more familiar to someone with an urban or poor background, and that influences outcomes. But, I see those flaws as things to fix, rather than reasons to abandon standardized testing.

I've mentioned this before, but I like such tests because they can be disruptive of multi-generational wealth and privilege. Although the children of the rich and powerful can get all sorts of advantages in preparing for the tests, in the end, it's just them and the test, just like for everyone else. And this provides a way for those who don't come from wealth and power to get consideration. If you get perfect scores on your SATs, then I don't care if you're the kid of some Mississippi dirt farmer or an unemployed single mom in Detroit, you're going to get offered some scholarships and admissions to top schools, because of the potential you've shown. Top grades don't get that same attention, because they're dependent on teachers, and can therefore be nothing but a reflection of the personal likes and dislikes of teachers.

One of the biggest opponents of standardized testing I ever met is my aunt. She developed a problem with the tests when her sons scored very poorly. She was convinced this showed the tests were bad -- after all, her sons went to a great private school and came from an upper-middle-class background, so how could they not be brilliant? But the truth is, her sons were meat-heads. They'd been raised their whole lives prioritizing sports above all else. They never read for pleasure and they only cared about classes to the extent needed to stay eligible for sports. The family never did anything culturally or intellectually enriching, because every weekend was dominated by the kids' sporting events, and summers were taken up by sports camps. As such, they were both barely literate, and struggled horribly with tests. It wasn't like school, where their frat-boy charm won them special consideration, and friendly teachers (many of whom doubled as coaches) could give them "gentleman's C's" and cover for their deficiencies. When it came time to take a standardized test, it was just them and the paper, and all their weaknesses were laid bare.

My own experience was very different from that. I went to a rural public high school where there was a huge economic range in the student body, from people living well below the poverty line on up to the children of the richest people in town (since there weren't private schools nearby, and the population wasn't big enough to justify a separate high school for the rich neighborhoods). The honors programs were clogged by dumb rich kids -- the teachers simply took for granted that those who had the cultural signals of coming from money must be the most academically gifted. And if you came from a family that didn't have their name on a local car dealership or doctors' office, the teachers assumed you'd wind up as a fisherman, secretary, or mechanic, so they tried hard to push you towards a vocational track. But standardized tests disrupted that. Some of us who'd been assumed to be unworthy of consideration scored very well, and suddenly teachers paid attention. Those honors tracks we'd been told weren't for us opened their doors. And once there, we dominated many of our socioeconomic superiors. And standardized tests resulted in us getting merit scholarships and admission in top universities, too.

Without standardized tests, I worry that we'll return to a system where academic status just reflects socioeconomic privilege. I'm very skeptical about the ability of most teachers to see past the social cues without some kind of black-and-white result to force them to reconsider their prejudices. A kid who comes into class wearing thrift-store clothes and sporting a lower-class accent has an up-hill battle getting any real effort from a teacher, but if he also has a 99th percentile standardized test result, suddenly he's viewed as a diamond in the rough.

 

[as seen on tv]

the opposition to standardized tests (at least in maryland) comes most from the "professional education bureaucracy" who . . .

• believe testing will demonstrate that the same kids are being promoted year after year, with no improvement in skills
• undermine the rationale behind the huge increases in salaries and benefits which teachers have attained
• expose that there are tangible achievement gaps between good teachers and mediocre ones, leading taxpayers to question the seniority pay system for educators which disregards success in the classroom.

 

[Arkady]

the opposition to standardized tests (at least in maryland) comes most from the "professional education bureaucracy" who . . .

• believe testing will demonstrate that the same kids are being promoted year after year, with no improvement in skills
• undermine the rationale behind the huge increases in salaries and benefits which teachers have attained
• expose that there are tangible achievement gaps between good teachers and mediocre ones, leading taxpayers to question the seniority pay system for educators which disregards success in the classroom.

I think there are a few centers for opposition to standardized testing. One consists of minority activists, who, I think, worry that the outcomes of such tests will be used towards racist ends. One consists of upper-class (mostly liberal) types who freak out about anything that suggests their kids aren't gifted -- they prefer a situation where they can flatter and cajole educators into giving their kid a gold-plated college application, regardless of the kid's aptitude or effort. And, I think, the last group is the one you identified: the educators.

I certainly understand where those educators are coming from. It's human nature to resist things that will make your job harder, and standardized testing does that. And they are rightly worried that the results will be misused -- for example, to punish good teachers in bad districts. With most of those who push standardized tests the hardest being in the same political camps as those who bash teachers at every opportunity, a certain level of paranoia makes sense. But, I'd like to see an effort to move the teachers past this opposition, by making it clear that the majority of them could actually wind up better off with a testing regime. It comes down to what you're willing to trade. If the deal you're offering is harder work and more interference with nothing to benefit them, of course they'll oppose it. But if you instead trade off higher average pay, or sabbaticals, or some other benefit in exchange for getting on board with the testing, I think you can get buy-in. Teachers are unionized, so the trick is to find a solution that the majority of the members see as advantageous to them. A testing regime that benefits the bottom line of most teachers while weeding out the lousy minority is something you could get the majority to vote for, if you could convince them it's on the level.

 

[RickWA]

There's an ongoing attack on standardized testing, mostly by liberals:

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/04/joh...ything_thats_wrong_with_standardized_testing/

Liberals have long been uncomfortable with such tests, from the earliest days of IQ tests and the SATs, but I think it really heated up when the high-stakes-testing of "No Child Left Behind" got identified with Bush, which put more of a partisan spin on the issue.

This is one where I have to disagree with the typical liberal position. Sure, I fully admit that the tests are flawed, and that they can have buried in them cultural assumptions that wind up reinforcing the current power structure. For example, you're more likely to find an analogy built around a word like "yacht" than around terms more familiar to someone with an urban or poor background, and that influences outcomes. But, I see those flaws as things to fix, rather than reasons to abandon standardized testing.

I've mentioned this before, but I like such tests because they can be disruptive of multi-generational wealth and privilege. Although the children of the rich and powerful can get all sorts of advantages in preparing for the tests, in the end, it's just them and the test, just like for everyone else. And this provides a way for those who don't come from wealth and power to get consideration. If you get perfect scores on your SATs, then I don't care if you're the kid of some Mississippi dirt farmer or an unemployed single mom in Detroit, you're going to get offered some scholarships and admissions to top schools, because of the potential you've shown. Top grades don't get that same attention, because they're dependent on teachers, and can therefore be nothing but a reflection of the personal likes and dislikes of teachers.

One of the biggest opponents of standardized testing I ever met is my aunt. She developed a problem with the tests when her sons scored very poorly. She was convinced this showed the tests were bad -- after all, her sons went to a great private school and came from an upper-middle-class background, so how could they not be brilliant? But the truth is, her sons were meat-heads. They'd been raised their whole lives prioritizing sports above all else. They never read for pleasure and they only cared about classes to the extent needed to stay eligible for sports. The family never did anything culturally or intellectually enriching, because every weekend was dominated by the kids' sporting events, and summers were taken up by sports camps. As such, they were both barely literate, and struggled horribly with tests. It wasn't like school, where their frat-boy charm won them special consideration, and friendly teachers (many of whom doubled as coaches) could give them "gentleman's C's" and cover for their deficiencies. When it came time to take a standardized test, it was just them and the paper, and all their weaknesses were laid bare.

My own experience was very different from that. I went to a rural public high school where there was a huge economic range in the student body, from people living well below the poverty line on up to the children of the richest people in town (since there weren't private schools nearby, and the population wasn't big enough to justify a separate high school for the rich neighborhoods). The honors programs were clogged by dumb rich kids -- the teachers simply took for granted that those who had the cultural signals of coming from money must be the most academically gifted. And if you came from a family that didn't have their name on a local car dealership or doctors' office, the teachers assumed you'd wind up as a fisherman, secretary, or mechanic, so they tried hard to push you towards a vocational track. But standardized tests disrupted that. Some of us who'd been assumed to be unworthy of consideration scored very well, and suddenly teachers paid attention. Those honors tracks we'd been told weren't for us opened their doors. And once there, we dominated many of our socioeconomic superiors. And standardized tests resulted in us getting merit scholarships and admission in top universities, too.

Without standardized tests, I worry that we'll return to a system where academic status just reflects socioeconomic privilege. I'm very skeptical about the ability of most teachers to see past the social cues without some kind of black-and-white result to force them to reconsider their prejudices. A kid who comes into class wearing thrift-store clothes and sporting a lower-class accent has an up-hill battle getting any real effort from a teacher, but if he also has a 99th percentile standardized test result, suddenly he's viewed as a diamond in the rough.

I generally agree with your conclusion, but I have to tell you that your analysis of most issues demonstrates that you are utterly steeped in experientially-derived bitterness. It's tempting to term it covetousness - because your reviews invariably lament the comparative advantage of others - but it's probably not fair for me to be that specific without knowing you.

I'll just say that when you discuss most matters, from estate taxation to standardized testing, you become deeply engrossed in (and excessively judgmental of) the relative advantage of others either socially or financially. I wonder if this is what fuels your overly socialistic redistributionist bent.

You spend a lot of time in synthesis of argument about what other people ought not have or should not value.

You even view testing through the prism of social leveling. It's remarkable.

 

[as seen on tv]

I think there are a few centers for opposition to standardized testing. One consists of minority activists, who, I think, worry that the outcomes of such tests will be used towards racist ends. One consists of upper-class (mostly liberal) types who freak out about anything that suggests their kids aren't gifted -- they prefer a situation where they can flatter and cajole educators into giving their kid a gold-plated college application, regardless of the kid's aptitude or effort. And, I think, the last group is the one you identified: the educators.

I certainly understand where those educators are coming from. It's human nature to resist things that will make your job harder, and standardized testing does that. And they are rightly worried that the results will be misused -- for example, to punish good teachers in bad districts. With most of those who push standardized tests the hardest being in the same political camps as those who bash teachers at every opportunity, a certain level of paranoia makes sense. But, I'd like to see an effort to move the teachers past this opposition, by making it clear that the majority of them could actually wind up better off with a testing regime. It comes down to what you're willing to trade. If the deal you're offering is harder work and more interference with nothing to benefit them, of course they'll oppose it. But if you instead trade off higher average pay, or sabbaticals, or some other benefit in exchange for getting on board with the testing, I think you can get buy-in. Teachers are unionized, so the trick is to find a solution that the majority of the members see as advantageous to them. A testing regime that benefits the bottom line of most teachers while weeding out the lousy minority is something you could get the majority to vote for, if you could convince them it's on the level.

we're not seeing political extremists - left or right - opposing testing in maryland.

however, resistance to "core curriculum" seems to be all over the map.

the right believes it will be used to create a revisionist view of american history, which diminishes the role of the founding fathers, the constitution, etc.

the left objects to a core curriculum which champions free market values and private enterprise.

no calls to add "ebonics" as a core curriculum item so far, however.

 

[Arkady]

I generally agree with your conclusion, but I have to tell you that your analysis of most issues demonstrates that you are utterly steeped in experientially-derived bitterness. It's tempting to term it covetousness - because your reviews invariably lament the comparative advantage of others - but it's probably not fair for me to be that specific without knowing you.

I'll just say that when you discuss most matters, from estate taxation to standardized testing, you become deeply engrossed in (and excessively judgmental of) the relative advantage of others either socially or financially. I wonder if this is what fuels your overly socialistic redistributionist bent.

You spend a lot of time in synthesis of argument about what other people ought not have or should not value.

You even view testing through the prism of social leveling. It's remarkable.

As a moral person, I of course want a more fair and prosperous situation for my fellow human beings.

 

[RickWA]

As a moral person, I of course want a more fair and prosperous situation for my fellow human beings.

Agreed, I'd like everyone to have an opportunity to compete and earn according to personal achievement.

But all these diatribes about people around you who have more than they deserve are odd. Just let it go, man.

 

[PhilFish]

perhaps teaching what a yacht is...would help. I'm not sure what is suggested here.. that children of particular socio-economic strata..should have their lexicon and conceptualization limited..to..well..their socio-economic circumstance?

 

[Arkady]

we're not seeing political extremists - left or right - opposing testing in maryland.

however, resistance to "core curriculum" seems to be all over the map.

the right believes it will be used to create a revisionist view of american history, which diminishes the role of the founding fathers, the constitution, etc.

the left objects to a core curriculum which champions free market values and private enterprise.

no calls to add "ebonics" as a core curriculum item so far, however.

I like the idea of a core curriculum. I can't speak, specifically, to "common core," since I've only reviewed it briefly, so I have too little information. But in the modern era, having big differences in educational standards between one locality and another just doesn't make sense. This isn't like the 19th century, or even the early 20th century, when most people would be born and educated and work within a small radius. People move around a lot now, and even if they don't move they wind up in commerce that directly involves people all around the world, and so some consistency is hugely beneficial.

 

[Arkady]

Agreed, I'd like everyone to have an opportunity to compete and earn according to personal achievement.

But all these diatribes about people around you who have more than they deserve are odd. Just let it go, man.

As a moral person, I cannot just let go of the injustices around me. I have to try to fix them. I am the beneficiary of countless generations of dedicated liberals who have worked to improve the world that was left to them, and so I have a duty to leave the world better than I found it, as well.

 

[Arkady]

perhaps teaching what a yacht is...would help. I'm not sure what is suggested here.. that children of particular socio-economic strata..should have their lexicon and conceptualization limited..to..well..their socio-economic circumstance?

What's being suggested is that the tests reflect the limits of the socioeconomic conceptions of the test designers, who are disproportionately white, upper-class, native born Protestants. One could write a test in the same basic form, but with other cultural touchstones and different vocabulary focus, and get different results. For example, if you had a short text selection that had a story about someone preparing to be "jumped in" to a gang, it might be easy to follow for test-takers from poor backgrounds, but not for richer ones, who may come out looking like they have lousy reading comprehension simply because the piece assumed familiarity with cultural touchstones that are outside of their life experience.

A vocabulary word like "furlough" might be common knowledge among people with relatives in prison, while "sabbatical" might be common knowledge among people with relatives in academia. They're both perfectly legitimate words, but if the test designers tend to be the kinds of people whose relatives take sabbaticals from their universities, rather than the kind who get furloughs from their prisons, which is going to be included more often on the test? Because of that, sharing a socioeconomic milieu with the test-makers is a real advantage.

Similarly, you'll get different results if you focus on words like "cotillion," "decolletage" and "dressage," than if you go with "sublet," "tenement," and "probation" -- or, for that matter, words more common in rural settings like "winnow" and "artesian," or among military families like "sortie" or "scuttle." Someone with a really big vocabulary will know lots of material from outside his daily life, but the point is that test-takers who run in the same social circles as the people who design tests are going to do better at any given vocabulary size, just because of where the test focuses.

Thinking back to the test when I took it, I recall that the SAT drew a lot from French loan words (e.g., "soiree" and "souffle") which the upper class has embraced, but not Spanish loan words (e.g., "quinceanera" and "paella") which would be more familiar to those from lower class backgrounds.

 

[Fast Eddy]

The left apposes testing because the teachers union doesn't want it, it holds the teachers accountable for what they do and lord knows we don't want that. Just look to the Georgia teachers for the results.

The right started out wanting testing, but that is going away quickly as Common core is implemented. This seems like a tool to limit what your kid does in life, much like the communists, they pegged each kid early in life, who went to the trade schools and who went to college. The federal government needs to get out of education.

Common Core is an abomination. The math just pure sucks and we will raise a generation of math idiots. The rest is too agenda driven, to much gay, black, Mexican, feminist issues pushed, not traditional history. CC is trying to rewrite history. Every class has an agenda and no one but the teachers gets to set the agenda.

 

[fairsheet]

I'm one of those who's discomfited by this drive towards standardized testing. On the other hand, I'm not prepared at this point, to suggest a better alternative. My issue is not so much with their presumptive disparate impacts on people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds. My issue is that we have yet to develop a test that I think is an accurate measure of teaching and learning.

Teachers are professionals, just as are doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers. Professionals are held to an especial standard in terms of their initial educations and certifications. From that point on, their work is judged not by random Democrat panels of self-righteous "know-it-alls", but by substantial and proven experts in their OWN fields. As I've hinted in the past, I've got tremendous respect for Microsoft's Bill Gates AND his foundation. Bill Gates has decided to intrude himself into our educational milieu. Bill Gates knows IT and marketing - for damn sure! But, does that necessarily imply him to be some sort of expert in the field of education? I say no...in fact the opposite is true since for a variety of reasons including his own innate intelligence, Bill Gates's educational experience is absolutely irrelevant to 99.999% of us.

 

[RickWA]

As a moral person, I cannot just let go of the injustices around me. I have to try to fix them. I am the beneficiary of countless generations of dedicated liberals who have worked to improve the world that was left to them, and so I have a duty to leave the world better than I found it, as well.

...as you fixate on other people's money, other people's relatives who got them job opportunities, other people's relationships with teachers or coaches that benefit them, etc.

Dude, the contortions you go through to try to make yourself sound noble are ridiculous. Who do you think this fools?

 

[Fast Eddy]

I'm one of those who's discomfited by this drive towards standardized testing. On the other hand, I'm not prepared at this point, to suggest a better alternative. My issue is not so much with their presumptive disparate impacts on people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds. My issue is that we have yet to develop a test that I think is an accurate measure of teaching and learning.

Teachers are professionals, just as are doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers. Professionals are held to an especial standard in terms of their initial educations and certifications. From that point on, their work is judged not by random Democrat panels of self-righteous "know-it-alls", but by substantial and proven experts in their OWN fields. As I've hinted in the past, I've got tremendous respect for Microsoft's Bill Gates AND his foundation. Bill Gates has decided to intrude himself into our educational milieu. Bill Gates knows IT and marketing - for damn sure! But, does that necessarily imply him to be some sort of expert in the field of education? I say no...in fact the opposite is true since for a variety of reasons including his own innate intelligence, Bill Gates's educational experience is absolutely irrelevant to 99.999% of us.

In my opinion Bill Gates is an idiot and does more harm than good. Bill dropped out of college and got lucky in buying someone elses software that he made the deal with IBM with. Not a great programmer, just lucky he knew a guy that had what they want.
Bill pushes his agenda onto everyone because he has money and can. Bill is a believer in agenda 21.

 

[Arkady]

I'm one of those who's discomfited by this drive towards standardized testing. On the other hand, I'm not prepared at this point, to suggest a better alternative. My issue is not so much with their presumptive disparate impacts on people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds. My issue is that we have yet to develop a test that I think is an accurate measure of teaching and learning.

Teachers are professionals, just as are doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers. Professionals are held to an especial standard in terms of their initial educations and certifications. From that point on, their work is judged not by random Democrat panels of self-righteous "know-it-alls", but by substantial and proven experts in their OWN fields. As I've hinted in the past, I've got tremendous respect for Microsoft's Bill Gates AND his foundation. Bill Gates has decided to intrude himself into our educational milieu. Bill Gates knows IT and marketing - for damn sure! But, does that necessarily imply him to be some sort of expert in the field of education? I say no...in fact the opposite is true since for a variety of reasons including his own innate intelligence, Bill Gates's educational experience is absolutely irrelevant to 99.999% of us.

I think there's a tendency of the tech billionaires to regard themselves as experts on every topic, and so I definitely share your concern there. They can buy big public policy movements, but it seems like they tend to start with assumptions about what should work, rather than actually starting from the evidence and figuring out what does work (or even just experimenting to figure that out).

 

[fairsheet]

In my opinion Bill Gates is an idiot and does more harm than good. Bill dropped out of college and got lucky in buying someone elses software that he made the deal with IBM with. Not a great programmer, just lucky he knew a guy that had what they want.
Bill pushes his agenda onto everyone because he has money and can. Bill is a believer in agenda 21.

I don't imagine Mr. Gates lies awake at night, worrying about your assessment of him. But, call him an idiot or call him a genius. Whatever he is, he's not typical of the average American.

 

[fairsheet]

I think there's a tendency of the tech billionaires to regard themselves as experts on every topic, and so I definitely share your concern there. They can buy big public policy movements, but it seems like they tend to start with assumptions about what should work, rather than actually starting from the evidence and figuring out what does work (or even just experimenting to figure that out).

I imagine Gates, Allen, et al, regard human beings as "memory modules" into which info-bytes are fed and stored.

 

[Arkady]

...as you fixate on other people's money, other people's relatives who got them job opportunities, other people's relationships with teachers or coaches that benefit them, etc.

Dude, the contortions you go through to try to make yourself sound noble are ridiculous. Who do you think this fools?

I'm simply trying to do what's morally right. I understand that's a concept that will strike some people as alien. It seems to particularly make religious people uncomfortable, since most of them are not used to thinking in moral terms.

 

[RickWA]

I'm simply trying to do what's morally right. I understand that's a concept that will strike some people as alien. It seems to particularly make religious people uncomfortable, since most of them are not used to thinking in moral terms.

There's nothing moral about channeling your developmental hurdles from early life into getting even and punishing those 'undeserved'.

That's mere vengeance rebadged.

Oh well, as I said earlier - I generally agree with you on standardized testing as metric. While I wouldn't want it as singular dashboard, it's a valuable one.