Middle School Suicides Double As Common Core Testing Intensifies

theatlantic.com

by Steven Singer, Common Dreams: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/07/24/middle-school-suicides-double-common-core-testing-intensifies

Here’s a high stakes testing statistic you won’t hear bandied about on the news.

The suicide rate among 10- to 14-year-olds doubled between 2007 and 2014 – the same period in which states have increasingly adopted Common Core standards and new, more rigorous high stakes tests.

For the first time, suicide surpassed car crashes as a leading cause of death for middle school children.

In 2014, the last year for which data was available, 425 middle schoolers nationwide took their own lives. To be fair, researchers, educators and psychologists say several factors are responsible for the spike, however, pressure from standardized testing is high on the list.

In fact, it is a hallmark of other nations where children perform better on these tests than our own. In our efforts to emulate these countries, we’ve inadvertently imported their child suicide problem.

In South Korea, one of the highest performing nations on international tests, youth suicide is a national epidemic. According to the National Youth Policy Institute in Korea, one in four students considers committing suicide. In fact, Korea has the second highest youth suicide rate among contemporary nations.

For several years, the Korean school system has topped the roughly 70 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) educational league, which measures 15-year-old students’ knowledge through the PISA test, an international student assessment exam within OECD member states.

However, the system is roundly criticized for its emphasis on memorization and test prep with little real-life application. In fact, 75 percent of South Korean children attend “cram schools” where they do little else than prepare for standardized assessments.

Likewise, Chinese students suffer similar curriculum and rates of child suicide. Though Shanghai students have some of the highest scores in OECD, abuse runs rampant.

According to the China Daily, teachers at Hubei Xiaogan No 1 High School in central Hubei province actually rigged their students up to IV drips in the classroom so they could continue studying after being physically exhausted.

Brook Larmer of the New York Times reports visiting student dormitories in Maotanchang, a secluded town in Anhui province, where the windows were covered in wire mesh to prevent students from jumping to their deaths.

In the United States, education “reform” hasn’t reached these depths, but we’re getting closer every year. Efforts to increase test scores have changed U.S. schools to closer resemble those of Asia.Curriculum is being narrowed to only the tested subjects and instruction is being limited to testing scenarios, workbooks, computer simulations, practice and diagnostic tests.

A classroom where students aren’t allowed to pursue their natural curiosities and are instead directed to boring and abstract drills is not a place of joy and discovery. A school that does not allow children to express themselves but forces constant test prep is a lifeless environment devoid of hope.

But that’s not the worst of it.

American students are increasingly being sorted and evaluated by reference to their test score rather than their classroom grade or other academic indicators. Students are no longer 6th, 7th or 8th graders. They’re Below Basics, Basics, Proficents and Advanced. The classes they’re placed in, the style of teaching, even personal rewards and punishments are determined by a single score.

In some states, like Florida, performance on federally mandated tests actually determine if students can advance to the next grade. Some children pass their classes but don’t move on purely because of test scores well within the margin or error.

The results are devastating.

Marion Brady tells a gut-wrenching story on Alternet about a 9-year-old Florida boy who tried to hang himself after failing the state’s FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) by one point. His mother explains that he had to take a summer remediation course and a retest, but still failed by one point. She couldn’t bear to tell him, but he insisted that he had failed and was utterly crushed.

After a brief period where he was silent, alone in his room, she became apprehensive:

“I … ran down the hall to [his] room, banged on the door and called his name. No response. I threw the door open. There was my perfect, nine- year-old freckled son with a belt around his neck hanging from a post on his bunk bed. His eyes were blank, his lips blue, his face emotionless. I don’t know how I had the strength to hoist him up and get the belt off but I did, then collapsed on the floor and held [him] as close to my heart as possible. There were no words. He didn’t speak and for the life of me I couldn’t either. I was physically unable to form words. I shook as I held him and felt his heart racing.

“I’d saved [him]! No, not really…I saved him physically, but mentally he was gone…The next 18 months were terrible. It took him six months to make eye contact with me. He secluded himself from friends and family. He didn’t laugh for almost a year…”

The boy had to repeat the third grade but is haunted by what had happened as is his mother. And this is by no means an isolated incident.

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, the suicide rate for 5- to 14- year-olds jumped by 39.5 percent from 2000 to 2013. The rate for 15- to 24-year-olds, which was already 818% higher than for younger children, also increased during the same time period by 18.9 percent. That’s more than 5,000 children and rising each year taking their own lives.

Again, high stakes testing isn’t responsible for all of it. But the dramatic increase along with a subsequent increase in high stakes testing is not unrelated.

The Alliance for Childhood, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advises on early education, compiled a report from parents, teachers, school nurses, psychologists, and child psychiatrists noting that the stress of high-stakes testing was literally making children sick.

On testing days, school nurses report that their offices are filled with students complaining of headaches and stomachaches. There have even been reports of uncontrollable sobbing.

In 2013, eight prominent New York principals were so alarmed by this increasing student behavior that they wrote a letter to parents expressing their concerns:

“We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up. One teacher reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, ‘This is too hard,’ and ‘I can’t do this,’ throughout his test booklet.”

And they’re not alone.

In fact, student anxiety is so common on test day that most federally mandated tests include official guidelines specifically outlining how to deal with kids vomiting on their test booklets.

School counselors note increasing student anxiety levels, sleep problems, drug use, avoidance behaviors, attendance problems, acting out, etc. that increase around testing time and during test prep lessons. This is a major contributor, they say, to the unprecedented increase in the number of young children being labeled and treated for psychiatric illnesses ranging from learning disabilities and attention disorders to anxiety and depression.

And the psychological trauma isn’t limited to the students, alone. The adults also suffer from it.

In 2015, Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, a West Harlem elementary school principal, took her own life by jumping in front of a subway train to escape a standardized testing scandal. Under intense pressure from the federal and state government to improve academic achievement, she had allegedly instructed her staff to change students’ answers on a new Common Core aligned high stakes test.

But the trauma isn’t always so dramatic. Teachers and principals often suffer in silence. And when it affects the adults in the room, imagine what it does to the children. It isn’t that teachers aren’t trying to teach or that students aren’t trying to learn. It’s that the expectations and testing are developmentally inappropriate.

Middle school children’s brains are still growing. They are only physically able to learn certain concepts and skills, but we’re forcing them to deal with increasingly advanced and complex concepts at younger ages. And when expectations and high stakes consequences come crashing down on children, they can feel there is no way out.

This is why thousands of parents have refused to allow their children to take high stakes standardized testing. This is why there is a growing grass roots movement  against these sorts of assessments and other corporate school reforms. 

It’s time the media connect the dots and report these sorts of stories in context. Don’t just shrug when reporting on child suicide rates, if you report it at all. Give the microphone to experts who can point the finger where it belongs. And the rest of us need to make sure our representatives at the state, local and federal level know where we stand.

High stakes testing is child abuse. We should not emulate other nations’ scores especially when they come at such a cost. The fact that we don’t engage in the worst abuses of Asian schools should be a point of pride, not jealousy. We should cherish and nurture our children even if other nations sacrifice theirs on the altar of competition and statistics.

Academics Warn International School League Tables are Killing ‘Joy of Learning’

neatoday.org

by Schools Improvement Net: http://schoolsimprovement.net/academics-warn-international-school-league-tables-are-killing-joy-of-learning/

The Guardian is reporting that nearly 100 educationalists from around the world sign letter attacking the OECD’s PISA rankings and say the next round of tests should be cancelled.

Nearly 100 leading educational figures from around the world have issued an unprecedented challenge to PISA - and what they call “the negative consequences” of its rankings - in a letter to its director, Andreas Schleicher.

The signatories include top academics from Cambridge, Oxford, London, Bristol, Stanford (California), Columbia (New York), Ballarat (Australia), Canterbury (New Zealand) and Stockholm universities.

The OECD, the letter says, has “assumed the power to shape education policy around the world”. Using “tests widely known to be imperfect”, it encourages governments to seek “short-term fixes” to climb the rankings; narrows our ideas of what education should be about; and kills the “joy of learning”, turning it into “drudgery”.

PISA, the signatories argue, dramatically increases the reliance on “quantitative measures” to rank and label pupils, teachers and heads. It is distorting the curriculum, reducing teachers’ autonomy and increasing stress levels in schools.

The letter points out that the OECD - which has 34 member nations, most of them European - is focused on the economic role of schools.

The 1,300-word letter to Schleicher - described by Gove as “the father of more revolutions than any German since Karl Marx” - is published on Tuesday on the Guardian website and on Global Policy, an online hub for leading academics and teachers.

The letter argues that school reforms should not ignore the “paramount” role of socio-economic inequality in influencing pupil performance.

It also argues that the OECD’s growing influence over how schools are run and what they teach is profoundly undemocratic. Unlike UNICEF and UNESCO, it has no “legitimate mandate” in education.

Read the letter from the academies in the Guardian here: OECD and PISA tests are damaging education worldwide - academics 

Your reaction to this letter from the group of academics? Fair comments made or jealously at the role of the OECD in driving education policy? Please give us your feedback in the comments or via Twitter.

Reforms Based on PISA Tests Alone Won't Fix GCSE Standards

PISA test documents (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Jo-Anne Baird, University of Oxford

With the creeping rise of exam results over the past few decades, many have questioned whether standards are really as high as they were in the past.

More worrying still is whether pupils in the UK can maintain pace in educational standards compared with other countries.

After all, we operate in a global knowledge economy, in which the competition is tough in terms of supply of workers for top-end companies.

And so it is in this climate that Michael Gove has announced changes to GCSEs that will toughen the standards to reflect that of high-performing countries.

International tests like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are used to compare the performance of students. PISA mainly tests reading, mathematics and science, but it has recently also tested problem solving.

In fact, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) run other tests in mathematics, science and literacy, but Gove rarely quotes their findings because we have done rather better on those tests than on the PISA tests and this does not suit his political narrative.

Ofqual, the examinations regulator, has indicated that the new, tougher GCSEs will have a numbered scale instead of letter grades and that grade 5 will be internationally benchmarked. Grade 4 will be equivalent to the old grade C at GCSE, with grade 9 being the highest grade.

We can look at examination standards in a couple of ways - in terms of what people have to do to get the grades (content standards) or how many attain the grades.

Ofqual conducted some research comparing the content standards of A-level equivalents across countries and A-levels came out pretty well, but the same exercise has not yet been carried out for GCSEs.

In any case, we can safely assume that a new Ofqual consultation on its proposals means that fewer students are expected to get grade 5 or above in the toughened GCSEs of the future.

So who are these high performers that we need to benchmark with? Taking the PISA 2012 results, the top five performing jurisdictions in mathematics were Shanghai-China, Singapore, Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei and Korea.

Japan and Finland are also regular top performers in these league tables. In comparison, the UK generally performs very averagely in PISA, although we typically do better than average in science and did well in problem solving. As we invest an average amount in education compared with the other countries included in these studies, our average results are a typical return on investment.

One issue for the government will be just which of these high performers we want to set our new standards by. For the sake of argument, let’s choose Shanghai-China and see where that takes us.

The difference between our average score in mathematics and Shanghai-China’s was 119 points for the 2012 PISA test. In a little-known 2011 department for education (DfE) report, a DfE researcher had a go at translating that into what would need to change in terms of GCSE point scores.

To match Shanghai-China’s outcomes, a student with 8 grade C GCSEs would need to pull her socks up to 3 A* and 5 grade As; an improvement of 19 grades overall.

One could quibble with the methodology of that paper, but however we look at the outcomes, it looks like we would have to raise the bar quite a lot to match the maths performances of 15-year-olds in Shanghai.

Or would we? Can we rely on PISA to tell us this? It turns out that comparing educational outcomes across nations is not as easy as pie. There are many controversies about the tests and how they are conducted, including the effects of test translation, how motivated the students are and how well the tests match the curriculum.

To make the comparisons you have to be pretty sure that you have a representative sample of students from each country. OECD’s Andreas Schleicher has recently admitted to Parliament’s Education Select Committee that the PISA coverage of 15 year-olds in Shanghai was only 73%, whilst the figure is more like 90% in other countries.

Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institute in the US has explained how poor, migrant workers originating from rural China have trouble getting their children into school in Shanghai.

So it is highly likely that the missing 27% are children from economic groups that we know do worst at school, statistically speaking.

So what should we make of this? Do we want higher standards in our education system? Of course. It is worth looking to these international tests for the information they provide, but they should not be the only measure Ofqual uses to set its new standards.


Jo-Anne Baird gives assessment consultancy advice to, and receives research funding from, governments and commercial organisations, including Ofqual and Pearson.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

These Seattle Teachers Boycotted Standardized Testing - and Sparked a Nationwide Movement

by Diane Brooks, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/pencils-down#comment-1291048083

Life felt eerie for teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High in the days following their unanimous declaration of rebellion last winter against standardized testing.

Their historic press conference, held on a Thursday, had captured the attention of national TV and print media.

But by midday Monday, they still hadn’t heard a word from their own school district’s leadership.

Then an email from Superintendent José Banda hit their in-boxes.

Compared with a starker threat issued a week later, with warnings of 10-day unpaid suspensions, this note was softly worded. But its message was clear: a teacher boycott of the district’s most-hated test - the MAP, short for Measures of Academic Progress - was intolerable.

Jittery teachers had little time to digest the implications before the lunch bell sounded, accompanied by an announcement over the intercom: a Florida teacher had ordered them a stack of hot pizzas, as a gesture of solidarity.

“It was a powerful moment,” said history teacher Jesse Hagopian, a boycott leader. “That’s when we realized this wasn’t just a fight at Garfield; this was something going on across the nation. If we back down, we’re not just backing away from a fight for us. It’s something that educators all over see as their struggle too. I think a lot of teachers steeled their resolve, that we had to continue.”

Parents, students, and teachers all over the country soon would join the “Education Spring” revolt. As the number of government-mandated tests multiplies, anger is mounting over wasted school hours, “teaching to the test,” a shrinking focus on the arts, demoralized students, and perceptions that teachers are being unjustly blamed for deeply rooted socioeconomic problems.

“You’re seeing a tremendous backlash,” said Carol Burris, award-winning principal of South Side High School in New York City and an education blogger for The Washington Post. “People are on overload. They are angry at the way data and testing are being used to disrupt education.”

Last spring, New York became the first major state to implement Common Core State Standards testing, a key element of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative.

Burris has compiled data showing a dramatic increase in the time children and teens spend taking New York state tests. Fifth-graders are the hardest-hit, with testing time ballooning from 170 minutes in 2010 to 540 minutes in 2013.

Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University in New York City, estimates that parents of about 10,000 students across the state joined the “opt-out” movement in April, refusing to submit their youth to Common Core tests. “Probably the largest test revolt in modern American history,” he said.

Inspired by New York’s grassroots revolution, Naison co-founded the Badass Teachers Association (BAT), which by mid-January had 36,443 members and chapters in all 50 states. Florida has the largest representation, with more than 1,575 BAT teachers.

“It takes a lot of courage to speak out. This group says, ‘You’re not alone.’ If we stand up for one another, we can speak back,” Naison said. “We have brilliant people who know how to create websites, fan pages, a YouTube channel. We’ve got this amazingly flexible organization.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave the opt-out movement a public-relations gift in November, when he labeled the emerging bloc of mainstream opponents to Common Core testing “white suburban moms who - all of a sudden - their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

Duncan previously had blamed Tea Party extremists for Common Core’s bad rap. And indeed, conservative Republicans are among the program’s greatest critics.

They see an alarming federal usurpation of control over local schools and are deeply suspicious of standardized curriculum requirements that they fear promote a liberal agenda.

But on this issue, they’re joined by progressive Democrats - including the BAT contingent - who are outraged that teachers and schools might be blamed and punished for low test scores.

Multiple-choice tests on a handful of subjects can’t measure a teacher’s impact on students’ lives or provide meaningful insights into student learning, they say.

“Instead of dealing with issues of poverty, racially isolated schooling, a lack of social services in communities, this [policy] is built on test scores,” said Burris.

Or, as BAT co-founder Priscilla Sanstead says in her Twitter banner: “Rating a teacher in a school with high poverty based on their student test data is like rating a dentist who works in Candyland based on their patient tooth decay data.”

How did we get here?

David Labaree, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, traces the federal government’s creeping control over classrooms back to the Cold War era, when the Sputnik launch triggered the Space Race.

In the ’70s and ’80s, fears that the Russians were getting ahead of the United States gave way to worries about the Japanese and Germans. Now it’s the Chinese, he said.

The ’70s marked the first time “high stakes” tests began to emerge, with impacts on grade promotions and graduation requirements, Labaree said. Until then, teachers had a great deal of autonomy over textbook selection and classroom practices; schools were considered successful if graduates found jobs and social mobility was taking place.

The standards movement promoted a narrow emphasis on academic curricula - mostly math and English, plus some science and social studies - as a key element of the U.S. race for economic and political supremacy in the international arena, he said.

The modern trend toward “high stakes” tests, which can carry significant impacts on teachers’ careers, has profoundly changed what is - and isn’t - taught.

“It broke down the classroom door,” Labaree said. “It puts a huge pressure on teachers to toe the line and start teaching to the test. It’s changed the nature of a teacher’s work in a way that’s quite devastating. ‘Look, I’m part of a machinery here to raise test scores. I’m not really a teacher any more, I’m just an efficient delivery system of human capital skills.’ That’s the new language.”

Race to the Top

The “accountability” movement got a big boost in 2002, when President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act.

For the first time, all public schools receiving federal funding were required to test students every year in grades three through eight, plus once during high school, using standardized state tests in math and reading.

President Barack Obama and Secretary Duncan unveiled the Race to the Top contest in 2009. To be eligible for a share of the program’s $4.35 billion in grants, states were required to adopt the Common Core standards for math and language arts.

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia fully signed up. Texas, Virginia, Alaska, and Nebraska declined any participation. Minnesota partially joined, rejecting the math standards. Among the requirements: using test results to evaluate teachers.

Now many states are rethinking their commitment to Common Core. Eight states have reversed, suspended, or significantly delayed implementation. Legislatures in other states continue to debate the issues.

Some states are backing out because of technology issues. Oklahoma, for instance, found that just one in five schools had enough Internet bandwidth and computers to administer the tests, a state official told Education Weekly. And the state projected that classroom time devoted to taking the tests would jump from two or three hours to nine hours.

Seattle’s Garfield High teachers cite similar technology issues in their litany of testing complaints. The MAP test, for instance, forced the closure of all three Garfield computer labs for four months of each school year.

Seattle teachers’ contracts allow MAP results to be used in their evaluations, even though an official from the company that created the test has expressed concerns about the appropriateness of such use. The school district administration says teacher evaluations do not currently include MAP scores.

Garfield’s testing coordinator, Kris McBride, planted the seeds of revolution in December 2012 when she told frustrated remedial-reading teacher Mallory Clarke, “You can refuse to give the test!”

The two women first sought - and won - support from the language arts and math departments, then asked for the backing of the entire teaching staff. With a few abstentions, Garfield teachers unanimously voted to support a boycott of the January-February cycle of MAP tests.

“This was the crux: It was just immoral to rob the students of that [classroom] time,” Clarke said. “The feeling in the building was just simmering under the surface, waiting for something to do about it.”

Garfield teachers sent Banda’s office multiple letters, emails, and voicemails after their December vote, with no response, McBride said. So on Jan. 10, 2013, they staged their press conference.

Support for the boycott

The national ripples were immediate. “Bravo to the teachers of Garfield High. We support you and thank you for your courageous stand,” wrote Jane Maisel, a leader of the anti-testing group Change the Stakes, in an email to Hagopian.

A February 6 National Day of Action in support of Garfield teachers inspired rallies across the country. In Chicago, for instance, parents at 37 schools gathered signatures on anti-testing petitions. Banda’s office was “bombarded” with emails, Hagopian said.

An International Day of Action on May Day brought support from teachers and parents in Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom, he said.

In the weeks and months following the Garfield declaration, teachers at six other Seattle schools joined the MAP boycott. When Banda’s office ordered school administrators to give the test anyway, local families added power to the revolt, with about 600 students opting out of the winter tests.

Banda convened a task force to study the issue, and in May he announced a partial reversal of district policy: MAP testing now is optional for the district’s high schools. Despite the early threat of 10-day unpaid suspensions, no teachers have been punished for refusing to administer the MAP.

“This wasn’t just a victory against one test,” Hagopian said. “This was a victory for a key concept: that teachers should be consulted about issues like testing and what kinds of learning are best for our students - before districts go to high-paid consultants and billionaires for solutions.”

In January 2014, Hagopian announced he was running for president of the Seattle teachers union to build on that victory.

Meanwhile, Education Spring was busting out across the country, with rallies, marches, test boycotts, and teach-ins. The most dramatic: an estimated 10,000-plus educators and parents from all over New York converged at the state capitol in Albany for a June 8 “One Voice United” demonstration.

Hagopian has been sought out by schools and local unions across the country; he has traveled from Hawaii to Florida telling the Garfield story and helping other educators resist standardized tests.

More effective assessment

During his travels, Hagopian learned of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a coalition of 28 high schools across the state. Coalition schools track student progress with performance-based assessments.

Rather than take standardized tests, students do in-depth research and papers; learn to think, problem-solve, and critique; and orally present their projects. He says this approach not only provides more effective student assessment, but also emphasizes critical-thinking skills over rote learning.

Last fall, two Garfield teachers and principal Ted Howard visited consortium schools at the Julia Richman Education Complex, in Manhattan, and returned inspired.

Successful students have a true joy for learning, Howard said, which the modern focus on testing has stripped from classrooms. Consortium schools support teaching as an “art form,” he said, rather than a robotic exercise to raise test scores.

“We’re dealing with human beings and human behavior, and sometimes that’s not quantifiable,” Howard said. “Students [at consortium schools] are saying, ‘Hey, I really want to be here.’”

In February he plans to send two more teachers to New York to visit another, larger consortium high school.

“I got into education for the long haul,” Howard said. “Hopefully, we can get together to change education, to make it better. It won’t change overnight, so we have to stick with it. We speak for students who don’t have a voice, so we have to hang in there.”

Next fall, Washington will be among many states launching the Common Core standards and tests. Opt-out activists across the nation predict that a second, even more vibrant Education Spring is nigh.

"It’s gonna to be huge,” said BAT’s Naison. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 100,000 [students opting out] in New York next spring.” He also predicts significant uprisings in California, Florida, Illinois, and perhaps Texas.

Now he’s planning an epic March on Washington - an upbeat three-day event culminating with a July 28 march to the U.S. Department of Education.

“It’s going to be a very festive,” he said, with flash mobs, plays, songs, and a band. “Imagine 10,000 teachers, parents and kids - some in costumes, some playing instruments, with huge banners - demanding that teacher and student creativity be unleashed.”

“It’s going to be the party of the year,” Naison said. “It’s to celebrate what teaching and learning can be, and to shame the people who are taking the fun and creativity out of it.”

---

Diane Brooks wrote this article for Education Uprising, the Spring 2014 issue of YES! Magazine. Diane is a journalist and communications consultant.  She was a newspaper reporter for many years in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area, and now lives in Everett, Wash. priestdi.com.

VIDEO: Students of New York City Tell their New Mayor how Standardized Testing Squashes the Learning Bug

by Mischa Nachtigal, Upworthy: http://www.upworthy.com/students-of-new-york-city-tell-their-new-mayor-how-standardized-testing-squashes-the-learning-bug-2?c=upw1

I was never a good test-taker when I was a student. And when it came to standardized testing, I simply hated it.

They were always boring, and it was impossible to get excited or all that creative about a test. But the school kept forcing us through hours of preparation nonetheless.

Well, some parents and students in New York City are taking a stand. Watch the message they have to say to their new mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Disarming the College Degree Arms Race

Decoration of two cranes on the chest are a "rank badge" that indicate that he was a civil official of the first rank (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Christopher Glazek, UTNE Reader: http://www.utne.com/politics/college-degree-arms-race-zm0z13sozlin.aspx

 

In 605 CE, a year after murdering his father and seizing the throne, the Chinese emperor Yang Guang established the world’s first meritocracy. 

 

Weary of making bureaucratic appointments solely on the basis of letters of recommendation, Yang set aside a number of posts for applicants who performed well on a new system of imperial examinations. 

 

In theory, any peasant who took the trouble to memorize 400,000 characters  -  which is to say, anyone who conducted six years of study with an expensive tutor  -  could join the country’s political elite.

 

Over the centuries, as China’s scholar-bureaucrats grew more powerful, their metrics of assessment became increasingly intricate. Those who passed were stratified into nine grades, and each grade was further divided into two degrees. 

 

Exam performance corresponded exactly to salary, denominated in piculs of rice; the top brass received more than 17 times as much rice as the lowest tier. 

 

But the true rewards of exam success were considerably higher: besides the steady salary, bribe collection made it very good to be a bureaucrat.

 

As time went on, more and more people took  -  and passed -  the exam’s first round.

Test prep academies proliferated. Imperial officials started to worry: there were now more degree-holders than there were positions, which threatened to create an underclass of young men with thwarted ambitions.

When the Ming dynasty fell in 1644, their successors, the Qing, resolved to make the test more difficult. By the middle of the 19th century, 2 million people sat the exam, but just over 1 percent passed its first round; only 300 candidates - .016 percent - passed all three.

Failure could be discouraging. In 1837, after botching the exam’s second round for a second time, Hong Xiuquan, an ambitious 23-year-old from a village near Guangzhou, suffered a nervous breakdown.

The precocious Hong had come in first on the county-level test, but after he turned 15 his family could no longer afford the customary tutor. Nor could Hong afford to bribe the examiners, as many test-takers did.

The notional possibility that anyone could pass the test concealed a bitter truth: for a poor countryman like Hong, making it past the second round was all but impossible.

Sick and delirious, Hong began to see visions. While in the provincial capital, he had encountered missionaries from the U.S. who gave him a tract on Christianity.

It made a big impression: soon Hong had a dream in which he saw the Christian God remonstrating with Confucius about his faithlessness. In another, angels carried Hong to heaven, where a man with a long golden beard presented him with a sword and instructed him to rid China of its demons.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/politics/college-degree-arms-race-zm0z13sozlin.aspx#ixzz2eSFeKdsE

Why I Got a Bad Score on the GRE - on Purpose: Taking a Stand for Real Education

Dan destroys a book for practicing the GRE (Pic: Kristin Hugo)

by Dan Marion, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/why-i-got-a-bad-score-on-the-gre-on-purpose-taking-a-stand-for-real-education 

What I learned from saying what I really thought in the essay section of an important standardized test.

Recently I took the GRE and failed the Argument Essay section. On purpose.

Many - including my parents after learning about this - will ask why.

Because I don’t like standardized tests.

Not just because I’ve had to take so many of them, but because of what they stand for. How they relegate people into scores. How they’ve transformed classrooms into test preparation centers. How they’ve undermined  art, music, and the inspiration of learning.

Every year more than 700,000 people take the GRE - a test used as a prerequisite for applying to graduate school.

They pay $185 to the Educational Testing Service, or ETS - whose revenue in 2011 was over $1 billion - to be subjected to trap answers (ones that are half right but considered entirely wrong), pedantic vocabulary, and an entire superfluous section that does not count towards one's score but assists ETS with company research.

ETS even has the audacity to suggest that the gaps in their testing can be remedied by another one of their tests, the ETS PPI, which supposedly evaluates one’s creativity, resilience, and ethics. It all felt wrong. I wanted to prove that it was.

I looked over the practice materials and found that the best place to make my stand was the "Argument Essay," which tests whether one can insightfully evaluate the argument in a piece of writing called a "task" and communicate one's evaluation in writing.

I studied numerous samples of good responses. I decided that I would do exactly what they wanted, but would create my own prompt that would allow me to criticize the GRE itself.

I wanted to test whether I would be truly evaluated for the quality of my thinking and writing, or punished for not following their rules.

When the GRE gave me the prompt, I began with this salutation:

Dear ETS Grader,

I think the best way to prepare myself for critical graduate-level work is by attempting to analyze the type of survey we as students have been forced to take our whole lives. In order to call attention to the inadequacy of the GRE as a measure of a student’s quality of thinking and writing, I will risk my own grade and make an argument I actually believe in. Like Malcolm X once said, "A person who stands for nothing will fall for anything."

Then I gave them the "task" I created and would examine:

The Educational Testing Service argues that the GRE "demonstrates that you are ready for graduate-level work." The GRE tests individuals on verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing, and "provides a common measure for comparing candidates' qualifications." Doing well on the GRE can "give you more opportunities for success." Therefore, graduate schools should require that applicants submit GRE scores and use those scores to determine who is and who is not qualified for their programs.

Then I responded:

The argument is not convincing because it relies on three questionable assumptions.

First, the argument assumes that the GRE demonstrates that one is ready for graduate-level work. However, it does not explain how a test only four hours in length proves that one is capable of the rigors of graduate school, which include in-depth research, multitasking, and focused attention over long periods of study. Research suggests there is widespread disagreement about the correlation between GRE scores and graduate achievement.

Second, the argument assumes that verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing are the only requirements for success in graduate school. It ignores other skills necessary to navigate today’s increasingly technological, globalizing, and complex world, such as creativity, passion, and the ability to negotiate conflicts and form meaningful working relationships with others.

Finally, the argument assumes that GRE scores and admittance into graduate schools are correlative. However, a student may get a high score on the GRE, but not be accepted into selective graduate schools if she has no relevant experience on her résumé, comes off exceedingly bombastic in her personal essay, or has failed classes during her undergraduate experience.

After writing this, I also responded to ETS’s original prompt. The score I received wasn't exactly terrible, but it also wasn't very good. Because the score is an average of the "Argument Essay" and one other section, it's likely that the ETS gave me a low score on my essay.

By doing so, the message ETS seems to send is this: "Because you didn't follow our rules - and decided to be creative and criticize the system - you will be punished."

Imagine if a teacher said that to you, or to your child, or to a fellow colleague, or to anyone with half a brain. Would you be OK with that? And if we wouldn’t accept this attitude in a teacher, why do we accept it from a testing company? Why do we let our colleges and universities endorse it?

Cracking the GRE 2013, a book that's widely used to practice for the test, says that "You’ll do better on the GRE by putting aside your feelings about real education and surrendering yourself to the strange logic of the standardized test."

I’m tired of doing that. I’m through having to jump through hoops just because they’ve been ingrained into our society. I’m done being a name on an application. And I’m sick of how the focus on tests, statistics, and problems draws attention away from our students.

Although I may be frustrated, I’m actually thankful that I had to take the GRE. Before, I was a recent graduate trying to discover something to fight for - something to be truly passionate about. Now, I’m on a mission.

I will use my score on the GRE to apply to master’s programs in education policy and management. Once I'm enrolled, I'll work to end our current means of measuring students. Watch out, standardized tests. I - and many others with the same mission - am coming for you.

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Dan Marion wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Dan is an educational intern at YES!

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Runaway Train!

by Christine A Pierz

Standardized testing has become a runaway train. What once served as a tool for schools to measure Student's progress has become the be all and end all of the educational world.

Now we want to use these "tools" to decide whether or not a child should be promoted to the next grade, how much funding school deserves, how well a teacher teaches, and whether or not a principal is effective.

I remember taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) when I was in elementary school. We took them at the very end of the school year. There was no review, no special preparation for them. We just took the test. There was no pressure. I even remember them being fun. Now, testing has become more involved and complicated.

When I started teaching in the New York City public schools back in 1996, there were the "citywides", taken by Students in Grade Three and up. There was a test for Reading and a test for Mathematics.

The tests consisted of multiple choice questions. Students were told to take the tests seriously. Preparation began about a month prior to the tests. Scores were a percentage, the perfect score being 100%.

These scores would likely decide whether or not Students would be placed in the "top" class or "bottom" class, as children were "tracked" according to ability, but their scores were not the main factor as to whether they were promoted to the next grade.

The following year, New York City introduced the PAL (Performance Assessment in Language Arts). They were preparing Students for the testing revolution. This test was in addition to the Citywide Reading test. It was given to Grade Four Students. This was a two-day affair.

Day One involved reading a story, filling out a graphic organizer, and writing a response to a comprehension question.

Day Two involved listening to a story read aloud by the Teacher, taking notes on the story, and writing a response to a comprehension question based on that story.

Then there was a "Linking Question" asking Students to draw comparisons between the two stories. Students were given to separate grades; one for content and one for mechanics (grammar).

The powers that be liked the assessment so much, that they created the E-PAL (Early Performance Assessment in Language Arts).

The E-PAL was (and still is) administered to Students in Grades Two and Three. It has the same structure as the PAL, with grade-level appropriate stories. The PAL and E-PAL are scored by teachers according to a rubric (a set of pre-determined criteria).

Scores for the performance assessments range from 1 to 4 (4 being the highest) for content, and 1 to 3 (3 being the highest) for mechanics. We prepared for these assessments by taking practice tests a few weeks prior to the exam.

By 2006, citywide exams were a combination of the old multiple choice test and the performance assessment, including a section testing Student's knowledge of grammar rules.

The Mathematics exam had an overhaul as well, including questions where Students not only had to solve problems, but show all their work, and explain how they arrived at their answers. Students who did not score a 2 or better on either test would be "invited" to go to Summer School.

At the end of the summer session, Students were given an opportunity to take another test. If they scored 2 or better on the test, they would be allowed to move on to the next grade. If not, they were retained.

Preparation was, in a word, intense. I taught Third Grade in the 2006-2007 school year. I taught Reading and Writing with a little bit of grammar thrown in (ELA), Mathematics, and Social Studies.

Science was left up to the Science Cluster (or "Special Teacher"). Periodic Interim Assessments in ELA and Math were administered.

However, after Thanksgiving Break, my classroom was transformed into a test prep center. It was all Reading all the time. I had three different books for ELA Test prep. Take out a Mathematics book? God forbid!

After Christmas Break, the countdown to the test was posted on the chalkboard. Practice exams were administered and reviewed at least once per day.

After the ELA exam had come and gone, it was time for Math. We switched to all Math all the time. Again, I had three different types of materials for Mathematics test preparation. Reading? ELA? Been there. Done that.

Now it was Pre-March, Post-March. "Show your work!" became our mantra. After the tests were over, it was time to teach again.

The year was far from over, yet my Student's fate had already been sealed. We were teaching to the test, teaching them how to take a test; but were we teaching them what they needed to know?

Then there is the issue of what the test is actually measuring. I remembered telling a parent that his daughter could not read a First-Grade level book. The girl was in Third Grade for the second time! I expressed my concern that she would not pass the tests; her promotion to Fourth Grade was in doubt.

Didn't I look silly when she scored a 3; meets standards! Word got out that the tests were not actually measuring progress for two grade levels below, so they made the test harder. They made a big deal of it too.

A true standardized test would be a tool that accurately reflected progress. There are so many other ways we can measure Student progress. What happened to portfolios and authentic assessment? Why do we put so much emphasis on something that is inaccurate or flawed?

High Stakes Testing is something that Big Business created to appease those who think the educational system is failing the children. We need to stop this "runaway train" before it derails.

Christine Pierz is a New York State certified Teacher. She has had several articles about educational issues published by EzineArticles.

Christine has 15 years of experience teaching, mainly in urban schools. To learn more about Christine, please view her personal web site at http://www.christinepierz.weebly.com.

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