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Study: Standardized Tests Overwhelming Public Schools (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the standard-square-peg-in-standard-round-hole dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A new study examined the amount of time U.S. public schools spend on government-mandated standardized tests, and found that the requirements are detrimental to both students and teachers. On average, students will take 112 standardized tests during their K-12 education. From grades 3-11, students spend over 20 hours per year on standardized tests alone. "It portrays a chock-a-block jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said."

The U.S. Department of Education has issued an action plan to school districts outlining ways to reduce useless tests and eliminate redundant ones. President Obama even posted a video pledging to reduce the test load of American students. "Standardized testing has caused intense debate on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to craft a replacement for No Child Left Behind. Testing critics tried unsuccessfully to erase the federal requirement that schools test in math and reading. Civil rights advocates pushed back, arguing that tests are an important safeguard for struggling students because publicly reported test scores illuminate the achievement gap between historically underserved students and their more affluent peers."

16 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Did they learn anything?? by laurencetux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the biggest problem with No Child Left Behind is it turns out to be No Child Allowed to Excel.

    So we need to fix Teach The Test first.

    1. Re:Did they learn anything?? by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That was the whole point of NCLB. To sabotage the schools to help push vouchers to subsidize the school of the 1%. The sabotage is great, and the public can't figure out how to object to "help" that hurts. After all, the pro-school voters can't even comprehend someone deliberately harm school children to push a political agenda fr more welfare for the rich. Until the voters understand the evil nature of some in politics, we'll get the evil, sold as "help".

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    2. Re:Did they learn anything?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly. Plus, if the "small government" conservatives allow teachers to actually, you know, teach, that causes them problems. First off, it inherently recognizes teachers as actual professionals and flies in the face of the whole "incompetent teachers protected by the big nasty teachers union" narrative the like to push. Also, and the primary reason for the teachers union meme in the first place, educators have a nasty habit of teaching things they believe to be true as opposed to what is good for corporations or religion and that does not suit the right wingers well either.

      Hence the push for for-profit charter schools and other such corporate entities that are designed first and foremost to indoctrinate and control, and where that doesn't work we have these bundles of for-profit standardized tests to make sure that there's no time in the classroom day for things like critical thinking skills or anything subversive like that.

    3. Re: Did they learn anything?? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Vouchers will get students out of failing public schools, like, Newark, Chicago, etc. and give them a chance to break the cycle of poverty.

      School vouchers are a scam to keep the prisons full. If you hear someone talk about "school reform", run for the hills. They're famous flim-flammers.

      The school "privatization" movement is one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century. Charter schools fail. They exist to funnel money upward, not to educate kids.

      http://www.salon.com/2014/02/1...

      http://www.philly.com/philly/b...

      http://www.eschatonblog.com/20...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Did they learn anything?? by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What maked you think its about the '1%'? do you think they even care?

      Have a look at the teachers, the administrators, the associated unions, the 'think of the children' reactionary crowd, and you soon see that education is pretty much doomed before it begins.

      The majority working in education, especially younger grades, now just see it as a meal ticket, and the kids as an annoyance to be avoided as much as possible.
      Standardised testing is a threat to their ability to do as little as possible for this paychecks.

      The truly sad part of all of this is the teachers (and administrators) who do really care, are being pushed out by this - they get drowned in a system where there is more and more administrative overhead designed to 'measure' everything (and do nothing), which makes is close to impossible to both do a good job and to meet 'requirements'. They tend to either burn out or give up.

      What we desperately need is:
      A return of a path for good teachers to become administrators - and a removal of 'career' administrators who are just collecting a paycheck.
      A strong message to the unions that our childrens schools do NOT exist to give their members a chushy ride, and 'think of the children' cries mixed with 'we can hold them to ransom' threats of action are not acceptible.
      A return of GENDER BALANCE in teachers - it is not healthy that 90% of lower school teachers are now female, and male teachers are being actively removed.
      A removal of teachers 'tenure', which is just an attcak on the kids, combined with:
      Active performance measurement of teachers RESULTS (not self assessed). A teacher who is not performing for her students must not be allowed to continue damaging childrens education!, and note:
      THIS is why teachers cannot self-assess their students! The good teachers judge students harshly, to motivate them, but therefore they look bad - poor teachers however are free to judge their students very easily (this is very very widely documented), making the bad teacher look good...
      And finally, school costs not DIRECTLY related to education need to be taken to, harshly. Large fancy off-site administration buildings do NOT help kids learn better.

      Teachers need respect, and teachers need to EARN respect. Teaching children is a critical role - however we seem to be doing everything possible to damage the profession in return for making teachers lives more comfortable. Imagine if we did the same for pilots or surgeons..

      Is it really that difficult?

    5. Re: Did they learn anything?? by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be fair, public schools also fail. You link to Philly.com. Philadelphia School District doubled funding over 10 years and had absolutely nothing to show for it. While I think that the way we fund schools is bat-shit crazy - giving wealthier kids more resources and poor kids less - please don't summarily dismiss just how corrupt many of our cities' school systems are. You are largely correct that charters funnel money away from kids, and yet in Newark more money reaches students at the charter schools than at the traditional public schools. Small wonder parents go to great lengths to get their kids into charters in certain districts.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    6. Re: Did they learn anything?? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You also can't do it with tests.

      For many decades, we had schools in which the teachers gave tests that they created it. They used them to grade the students. Failed students would be held back. Passing students would continue their academic career. That's how practically every education American was raised, even in the private schools. Ask yourself what happened that a complete change was required. Why is it suddenly necessary for standardized tests to be created by biased third-parties? Why is it so important that every single child advance at the same rate as every other?

  2. I know people will go crazy over this idea.... by gfxguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe education should be back in the hands of the states, like it used to be. Yes, I know that'll result in ignorant morons who will be taught to scorn evolution, or consider Pi to be 3 (that's a myth, though, but funny), but then people can choose which states to live in... which was the whole point of allowing states to operate largely independently to begin with.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
    1. Re:I know people will go crazy over this idea.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'll add in an anecdote. My mother is a substitute teacher (in Florida) for a class, and has been asked to give out this state given test. The class is something along the very bottom of the school (some kids may not speak english as one possible reason to be in it). Well, the school was asked to give an answer key for the required test, which they didn't give. So I was asked to make a key for her to grade with. The test was horrible. The most obvious problems are with the formatting. There is no clean indication of where a question ends and the next begins. Some of the questions have numbers floating above or below the parenthesis they are supposed to be inside. Some of the questions have multiple answers, which would be fine, if the wording did not seem as if it was trying to misdirect the students on what they are trying to do. It even goes so far that on the answer sheet made for this specific test, the last two questions were obviously switched, as the penultimate had 5 answer fields for 4 possible answers, and the last had 4 answer fields for 5 possible answers. Remember, some of these require selecting more than one bubble.

      There is all of that, and not to mention the copy job on making the test was even shoddy. I have no idea if the test is actually from the State, the District, or from the School itself, but the test looked like it was setup for the students to fail on purpose. Being put through things like this, I can only sympathize with the students if they are forced to act out to get any sort of attention. There is certainly a lack of care on the school's part for them.

    2. Re:I know people will go crazy over this idea.... by frnic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "but then people can choose which states to live in",

      Yeah, because no one is locked into a bad mortgage, or a bad job, or a healthcare issue that precludes moving from where they are being treated or, well, it doesn't matter. As long as YOU can move when and where you want to.

      Standards are NOT the problem, the problem is the money to be made managing education, selling tests, and books. Like everything we allow "business" to run, it runs wild putting profits above all else.

  3. 20 hours? That's nothing. by Nikkos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    9 months school x 20 days/mo x 8 hrs/day = 1440 hours.

    1.3% of their time is spent on test. So what? They spend more time than that at lunch, at recess, or even in the toilet (10min/day = 30 hours/year)

    If they're going to attack standardized tests, at least have an argument that withstands even basic contextual comparisons.

    1. Re:20 hours? That's nothing. by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Informative

      There shouldn't be any 'prepping'

      If they're teaching to the test, it's corruption and fraud. They shouldn't know what's on it, and they sign agreements not to open/look at the tests in advance.

      It's pretty obvious you don't understand how pervasive the test material stuff has "infected" everyday teaching in many states.

      You're talking about a different phenomenon of actual cheating on tests where teachers give students answers (or something close to it). That's not the kind of preparation that goes on in most classrooms.

      In many states, the standardized tests are derived from state-approved "standards" that spell out specific exercise types which are likely to occur (particularly in basic subjects like math and reading). Teachers who have any experience with these tests over the years notice certain patterns of the types of questions that always show up. (This isn't just for normal "standardized testing" -- it goes for AP tests and such as well. When I taught AP physics, there were all sorts of "lore" passed down among AP teachers because all the previous tests were available, so you knew there was likely to be a question dealing with X, a question on topic Y would probably take a certain form, etc.)

      For decades in states that have had "high-stakes" standardized testing, it has been common to have extra review sessions for students going over these clear patterns in testing, and generally to spend at least 1-2 weeks before the tests reviewing this stuff in class as well. When I taught high school math quite a few years ago in one of these "high-stakes" states (which had such testing even before No Child Left Behind), our district paid teachers extra to do evening review sessions going over such stuff.

      For example, a disproportionate number (95%+) of math problems involving right triangles would involve either (1) the Pythagorean triple 3,4,5 or its multiples, or (2) the triple 5,12,13. (It's possible that 8,15,17 could show up too maybe... but I think it was just the first two which were common.)

      Anyhow, so we'd tell students if they saw a problem with a right triangle, either to expect 5,12,13 or if they saw other numbers to check to see if it was a multiple of 3,4,5.

      Of course, this is ridiculous and antithetical to "deep knowledge" of how triangles or even the basic Pythagorean theorem works, but this is the kind of crap that would show up on tests. And teachers were strongly urged to teach these known patterns because administrators were usually under pressure to maintain certain levels of passing scores on these tests.

      It's gotten much, much worse in the past decade or so -- some states have alliances between the standardized test designers and textbook publishers, so textbooks come with practice tests bundled directly into the textbook.

      I've seen this with some kids of my friends or other family members -- it would not be an exaggeration to say that some of them spend 20%+ of all classtime doing standardized tests, practice tests, or direct prep for such tests (e.g., worksheets designed around known test prep patterns), particularly in core areas like math and English/reading. Many schools adopt "benchmark" schemes with these practice tests to check whether students are "on track" at various points of the year leading up to the actual tests.

      THAT'S what GP was presumably referring to as "test prep" and that's what people usually mean when they talk about class time being monopolized by "teaching to the test." They do NOT generally refer to illegal cheating scandals, but rather the amount that class activities and exercises are tailored to whatever stupid patterns tend to show up on these tests... and that can be much, much more significant than the couple percent or whatever of class time literally spent on taking the tests.

  4. Brought to you by the Teacher's Unions by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This report, by the Council of the Great City Schools, is brought to you by the Teacher's Unions, who oppose any attempt to evaluate teacher performance.

  5. No federal constitutional mandate for this by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Show me where the federal government is given the authority to regulate education in our constitution.

    You can't because control over education was not granted to the federal government in our constitution.

    Schools are staffed, managed and financed locally. Local control over education means that you have a say in how your kids are educated. If you are unhappy with your schools, you can elect a new school board. If that fails, you can always move to another school district.

    Federal control over education standards will be politicized like everything else in Washington. Do you really want the dysfunction that is Washington DC ending up in your kid's classroom?

    Ron Paul is right. The federal government needs to be out of the education business entirely.

  6. OMG! (Not) by kenh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On average, students will take 112 standardized tests during their K-12 education. From grades 3-11, students spend over 20 hours per year on standardized tests alone.

    30 hours a year! Why, if spread out over the 32 weeks of school (185 days = one school year, if there are 5 school days per week, then 185 / 5 = about 32 weeks) that comes out to less than 45 minutes a week, or put another way, about three full school days out of 185, or about 2% of school time per year...

    Something that occupies 2% of student class time per school year is overwhelming students?

    No, it isn't. The teachers unions have made standardized testing the only metric allowed to measure their performance, and now they want to remove even that metric.

    --
    Ken
  7. Re:Needs of the Teaching Profession by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The needs of teachers are that they remain employed with the highest salary and best benefits they can get.

    Yeah those evil profiteering teachers. Everywhere I go I see teachers in ferraris, research scientists drinking champaign!

    In the real world not everyone is motivated by greed and capitalism:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

    If teachers wanted higher salaries over all else, then why would they buy school supplies out of pocket? Many teachers, a large fraction I think actually want to teach, and teach well. That way like so many humans they can get real satisfaction out of a job well done.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.