Another issue to consider is whether school districts in low-income areas will be at a disadvantage when competing for “Race to the Top” grants. Parents in affluent communities can hire tutors and purchase additional study aids to give their children a boost. Some students in low-income areas lack basic school supplies.

The “Race to the Top” program has the potential to penalize teachers and schools for circumstances beyond their control, even though the intention is to motivate them to succeed.

Natalie Schwartz
Author, “The Teacher Chronicles: Confronting the Demands of Students, Parents, Administrators and Society”

I have been following the debate that has been going on in this blog and have found it very interesting. I am new to teaching but not too new to know what people think of teaching at a career. Many people that I have come to know do not think of teaching as a very professional or complicated career. I live near a college that is known for its teaching program. Many of the freshmen entering the program do not think it is a complicated program (which is why some of them are entering it). Perhaps if there were more rigorous requirements to teach, we would receive the best of the best. I do agree, as many of you have already mentioned, that becoming an effective teacher does require on-the-job-training. However, because of the standards set in place, you could have a teacher nearing retirement and still be an ineffective teacher and he/she has had years of on-the-job-training. Changing the opinion that teaching is an extremely professional career and is in-need of effective teachers and is not willing to except just anyone with a four year degree is the goal.

I haven’t meant to be hostile or snide. I’ve seen my comments as Old School jabbing an elbow in the ribs, with maybe a little street ball trash talking, but not something dirty like taking out an opponent’s knees.

I am hostile to the IDEA that the seemless web of knowledge and learning can be cut up into measurable pieces.

I am not hostile to PEOPLE who use teach-to-the-test methods in their own class.

I am hostile to people who want to impose data-DRIVEN, as opposed to data-INFORMED, methods into MY class.

Having come back yesterday from a seminar where the Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, and an incredible variety of business, community and political leaders (though not many educators) have united to use the best social science to invest in kids, I am still not hostile to those who reject social science. (after all, most people in my state reject evolution).

I am a little bit hostile to the new think tanks that use the latest marketing techniques and data to frame the political debate in a reductionistic way. I am not hostile to TFA, KIPP, or other charters, but neither am I friendly towards the indoctrinating of young educators into the idea that data and expectations are enough.

I don’t think Adlai Stenvenson was snide either when he said, “I find St. Paul appealing and St. Peale appalling.”

Linda said: “Suppose the SAT had many of the same items each year, were left in teachers’ classrooms for a week and were administered by the classroom teacher. What do you think might happen?”

Were the tests identical, and I mean word-for-word, questions simply repeated year after year, then yes, that would be troubling to the test’s validity, but the easy fix to this, as I wrote, is to vary the content assessed and the specifics about it, along with question/answer wording, among other things.

Your anecdote about how test scores varied as you taught in different schools does not help support your side of this debate. That is an obvious effect of the differences in ability and understanding of students from different communities. There certainly are achievement gaps in this nation that we rightfully recognize. That you would feel bad because your students tested at 10% is understandable, I’d feel bad if my kids didn’t do well either.

However, in your role as the teacher, you have the power to help your kids increase their scores and increase their chances to do well on such a test. If very poor students in Cleveland test on average at the 10th percentile, it is your duty as their primary educator to get them higher that that, to change the status quo and help them experience success.

If we are responsible for our students’ learning and desire to learn, and we feel that if we put our hearts into teaching then we will help our students learn better, why then aren’t we also responsible for their improvement on standardized tests?

Kelly: I totally agree, standardized tests do not really show us all of what students can do. Students who do awful at testing still have the potential to succeed, and their teachers know exactly how intelligent they really are.

Standardized tests, however, can give some very helpful data to compare our students’ success on tests with others in the school, district, and state. These tests can objectively compare students’ understanding of content matter as well as critical thinking, language fluency, even ability to write essays. They should not be a teacher’s only tool for assessing student learning, yet the data they give is quite useful for informing instruction on a classroom, school, and district level.

The lightbulb in my head just went on when I read John Thompson’s post.

When I was a new teacher, my affluent fifth grade students scored above the 90th percentile and I thought I was a natural born, gifted teacher (I had an emergency credential). At my next school I taught very poor children in Cleveland and their scores were below the 10th (Yes, the tenth percentile!). I felt so bad and assumed I was a terrible teacher so I went to grad school and became a reading specialist. Next, I taught in a middle class school in Iowa where my students scored around the 50th. Finally I knew the test scores had little to do with me!!! It took me about five years to realize that. So………You must be a new teacher! Am I right?

I support standardized testing but I want these tests to be administered in a secure and proper way. The above situation is not acceptable to me. I am not an expert so the only “evidence” I have is what I have seen with my own eyes. Of course, I can’t give you the names of the schools and the teachers involved. However, many experts have written on this topic. Perhaps they can give you the evidence that you want. Refer to the writing of James Popham, professor emeritus of UCLA. If you are a graduate student, ask your professors about this. Read what people like Diane Ravitch have to say about it and talk to elementary school teachers in low-income schools. From what I’ve read, test invalidation is not occurring much at the high school level because (perhaps) older students become witnesses.

Surely you’d like to retract that statement wouldn’t you?

I argue it does not apply in the same way as it does to teaching, as I reasoned in my last comment.

Linda said: “Drilling on the exact items of a test (whether old or new) invalidates the test.”

Were the tests “exactly the same”, meaning questions were word-for-word from previous tests? If that is the case, that is the fault of whomever issued the tests, since that obvious flaw introduces many problems with validity. Validity can be protected year-to-year if each year a new version of the test is made that included different possible questions on a number of different topics. “Drilling” from such tests would not invalidate the test, as previous years’ tests can offer a framework in mind of how content might be presented to students and such a framework can be emulated with teacher tests.

Linda said: “As I said, the differences in the scores of the NAEP and state tests are not proof of cheating but it has raised the suspicions of many people, including me.”

The differences in scores can be attributed to dozens of different explanations. There are too many alternative hypotheses explaining the difference in data to assume that one single possibility, that there was cheating, deserves merit.

Linda said: “You said, “Your assertion of widespread cheating is without merit.” Isn’t that just another version of “You are wrong about cheating.””

No. You assumed cheating with faulty logic, that’s why I stated the assertion was without merit. When I mentioned that, you said I was wrong but are unable to give better evidence for your claim, so whatever.

You really can’t debate this issue by doling out anecdotal evidence. If you are claiming that testing leads to widespread cheating, produce the actual evidence for the claim. If you are asserting that sometimes, in certain schools, there are incorrect choices made that ruin a test’s validity, fine (although I’d like to see some evidence if you want to define what “sometimes” means), but that doesn’t preclude the usefulness of standardized testing in general.

A good idea isn’t impervious to flaws, but if its flaws are minor and seldom happen, why trash the entire concept, particularly when the essence of the idea is benign?