The Buffalo News reports that the State Education Commissioner, David M. Steiner, is concerned about too much focus on assessments. "Assessments" is the word which you use instead of "tests" when you want to pretend that there is something scientific about them. Do you know how many "benchmark" tests students in the Newburgh School District are given? Are the benchmark tests achieving their purpose? Does the Newburgh School District officially encourage any form of assessment other than tests?

Excessive testing in schools gets 'F'

Too many assessment exams can stifle curriculums, says state's new education chief

By Peter Simon

The state's new education commissioner says he wants to de-emphasize assessment testing, saying too much "teaching to the test" is going on in schools.

"In too many cases, the assessment becomes the curriculum," David M. Steiner said here Wednesday. "If the test is the curriculum, then you're tempted to teach to the test."

Steiner, who became education commissioner Oct. 1, told The Buffalo News Editorial Board that assessment testing still has a crucial role in the state's classrooms but that a more balanced approach is needed.

Robert M. Bennett, a member of the state Board of Regents who accompanied Steiner during his Buffalo visit, was more blunt in his comments, saying assessment testing "has become an obsession" in the state.
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The press release at the Newburgh Schools site about improving ELA results contains this gem:

The accountability system, which results from federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation, requires school districts across the country to assess their students in grades 3-8 and at the high school level yearly in mathematics and English Language Arts and to rate them according to Performance Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 with 4 representing advanced proficiency (85-100), 3 representing proficiency (65-84), 2 representing basic proficiency (55-64), and 1 representing basic performance (0-54). Performance Levels 1 and 2 indicate unacceptable performance.

That can't possibly be right can it? "Basic proficiency" used as a label for what old-timers would call a failing grade, for performance which NCLB categorizes "unacceptable".

According to the Accountability Peer Review document submitted by New York State Education Department and available from the federal Department of Education it is indeed possible:

The State has also defined an additional level of achievement: basic proficiency. Basic proficiency is defined as the performance of a student who scores Level 2 on the State assessments in grades 3-8 English language arts, mathematics; or scores Level 2 on a State alternate assessment; or for certain Limited English Proficient (LEP) students grades 3-8 shows Level 2 growth on the NYSESLAT; or scores between 55 and 64 on the Regents comprehensive examination in English or a Regents mathematics examination; or 65 or greater on a Regents competency test.

That about destroys any meaning "proficiency" once had.

The Times Herald-Record reports Newburgh School District improving rapidly in English Language Arts and there's a corresponding press release at the Newburgh Schools site. There are a couple of comments on the Record Forum here.

It is no doubt a good thing that a computer in Albany has churned through the numbers and categorized Newburgh Schools' 2006-2007 performance as better than its 2005-2006 performance.

Do the students, parents, and teachers in the district perceive this improvement as well? If so, to what do they attribute the improvement? If not, well, then what do we ask?

An excellent post titled Can Data Threaten Good Teaching? can be found at the Teacher Leaders Network website.

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In order for data to be meaningful, as many variables as possible need to be controlled. If you are to compare students in different classrooms, the instruction needs to be as similar as possible. So as we go forward, if we view the solution to our educational troubles as being the generation of meaningful data, then we will tend to seek to standardize curriculum, instruction and assessment as much as possible, so the data will have the greatest possible validity.

But there are some huge problems with this approach. One large problem is that we are attempting to standardize all these factors in order to generate reliable data. But it is not clear that the new data is substantially better than the data we have had in the past, or that we have interventions that are appropriate responses to the data.

But the bigger question I would raise is the hidden cost of all this standardization. From the edu-technocrats’ point of view, it is no problem to expect the teachers to follow this or that timeline, or use this or that scripted curriculum. But as accomplished teachers, we know there is a huge cost paid by the teacher and students. The teacher has lost discretion to craft a sequence of lessons that reflects her best knowledge and her understanding of her students -- and the students have lost access to her special knowledge, and her ability to respond to their interests, strengths and weaknesses.

I think the standardized teaching model is having trouble. Its flagship vehicle, No Child Left Behind, is in grave jeopardy, and the serious problems of equity in our schools have not been substantially shifted, in spite of the "bright light" high-stakes test data have shone on them. As the model begins to sputter, its proponents look to rescue it by intensifying the standardization, making the systems even more thorough and reliable, unwilling to recognize the flaw in the premise.

The flaw in the premise, from my point of view, is that we are dealing with an immensely complex human enterprise. In a single classroom with 20 learners, we have a wide range of abilities and aptitudes, interests and backgrounds. No matter how good the scripted curriculum, no matter how sophisticated the tests, the decisions made by a strong teacher based on skillful classroom assessment practices will, on the whole, be better than those that would be made as a result of the standardized system.

In order to take advantage of this expertise, of course, you must empower and trust that teacher. You must invest in that teacher (and the development of more teachers like her), and create the conditions that sustain and support her. You can ask her to be accountable, but only if you give her the support and autonomy she needs to be effective and in charge of the learning for which you are making her responsible.
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The teaching strategies promoted by the Newburgh School District Central Administration often incorporate this data driven approach. "Curriculum mapping", "Curriculum Alignment", the "Audit of Curriculum", the attempted quarterly district-wide subject tests all tend to view standardization as either something desireable or as a given. How are we empowering and trusting our teachers? How are we taking advantage of their exprtise? How are we encouraging them to develop skillful classroom assessment practices?

In a recent blog post titled The Inmates Who Want to Run the Asylum, Gerald Bracey takes to task the "idiots and professional fear mongers who are trying to control curriculum and instruction and education policy in our nation's schools..." Mr. Bracey is always worth reading carefully.

Journalist Fareed Zakaria noted that kids in Singapore score much higher than American kids on tests, but that 20 years later, it's the American kids who are ahead of the game. He asked the Singapore Minister of Education why this should be. The Minister said that while his kids had high test scores, American kids had talent. "We cannot use tests to measure creativity, ambition, or the willingness of students to question conventional wisdom. These are areas where Singapore must learn from America." Zakariya also quoted a father who had lived in America for a while and then moved back to Singapore: "In the American school, when my son would speak up, he was applauded and encouraged. In Singapore he's seen as pushy and weird. Schooling in Singapore is a chore. Work hard, memorize, test well" (the father put his kid in an American style private school).

Keith Baker, a retired U. S. Department of Education researcher got the same message from a Swedish father living in L. A.: "He holds a high position in a bioscience company," Baker wrote in the October Phi Delta Kappan. "He told me, 'There is no doubt that graduates of European high schools know a lot more than American grads, but I prefer my kids in American schools because Americans acquire a spirit that other countries lack.' Other anecdotal sources suggest this 'spirit' involves ambition, inquisitiveness, and perhaps most important, the absence of a fixation on testing and test scores."

Recall that psychologist Robert Sternberg called our high-stakes testing programs "one of the most effective vehicles this country has created for suppressing creativity."

How do Newburgh Schools promote innovation and creativity in our students?

More specifically, is promoting innovation and creativity a goal which the Newburgh Enlarged City School District Board of Education espouses?

Excellent article from the Santa Barbara Independent. Hat tip to the Schools Matter Blog.

The Failure of Testing to Address Actual Proficiency

My wife had a group of elementary school kids do a scavenger hunt at the Farmers Market to gather fruits and vegetables for a "tasting day" at school. On the morning of the tasting, big banners hung from the cafeteria ceiling for all to see--Tasting Day. A child walked into the cafeteria and visibly slumped, his smile vanished, and his eyes clouded. When my wife approached him, he said, "I thought we were done with testing."

Welcome to the post-accountability No Child Left Behind (NCLB) world, where no child is left untested. Are today’s students better readers and mathematicians than 10 or 20 years ago? Has all this emphasis on content standards, annual testing, and exit exams worked? No. It is time to recognize that the standards-based, test-driven, school-accountability movement has failed. After 10 years, these measures have not improved education.

NCLB is based on the idea that after 12 years of testing and punishment for under-achieving students and schools, 100 percent of the nation’s students will be English and math proficient. For the last six years of NCLB, national reading proficiency has remained nearly flat. Math proficiency has improved, but at the same pace as before NCLB. Now we face a balloon payment of proficiency. For the next six years, students climb the Everest of proficiency, during which all students--regardless of language, ethnicity, economic status, or disability--must rise to 100 percent proficiency.

Given that only 24-34 percent of the nation’s students have been proficient readers for the last 20 to 30 years, it would take a miracle to achieve a national policy of Only Half Our Children Left Behind. On this preposterous road to universal proficiency, we abandoned the idea that education is about more than annual test performance. Millions of tax dollars were given to private test companies like ETS and McGraw-Hill. Art, music, and shop classes vanished. Average class size grew. More kids dropped out.

In 2005, Harvard’s Civil Rights Project conducted a study that tracked California 9th graders during four years to gauge how many received their diploma by the end of 12th grade. Only 71 percent of these 9th graders graduated with their peers. Twenty-nine percent--nearly a third--had disappeared from public school four years later. Minorities fared worst: 42 percent of African Americans, 40 percent of Latinos, and 48 percent of Native Americans did not graduate high school.

No one noticed that the blind academics-only routine was driving fragile, disadvantaged teens out onto the streets. Consider the schedule of a below-proficient high school student: two English classes, two math classes, a science, a history, maybe physical education, and no electives, sports, art, shop, or music. Or consider the teacher--required to teach only specific standards at a mechanical pace. The pace dictated by the "if it’s October, this must be Standard 5" calendar. No adaptation was made for the learning needs of individuals. Teachers were told to teach the test, not students.

Decoupling what is taught from what students know is the single greatest flaw in the accountability movement. Having a common set of standards for every subject makes some sense. It is easy, however, to list everything we’d like kids to know. The hard part is getting them to care about learning it.

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The Sentinel published a not so well reasoned editorial on October 26. This prompted a spirited response from an elementary school principal in the Newburgh School District on November 9. The Sentinel deserves credit for publishing such a critical response, and for their usually more supportive attitude toward educators, which the response letter acknowledges. The principal has provided a necessary dose of reality and reason to the conversation, well worth a read.

An article in The Guardian, reports on "pervasive anxiety" experienced by youngsters and cites national tests as a cause. The article does suggest some steps which might help alleviate stress...

Researchers found that pupils in schools which tackled the problems they worried about, such as those with eco-clubs and recycling schemes to teach children about environmental problems, were happier.

"Where schools had started engaging children with global and local realities as aspects of their education they were noticeably more upbeat. In several schools children were involved in environmental projects and the sense that 'we can do something about it' seemed to make all the difference," they write.

School staff told the researchers that some parents were not involved enough, while others were too "pushy" and demanding of their children academically. The General Teaching Council for England opposes national tests for seven, 11 and 14-year-olds, the results of which are published in league tables and scrutinised by parents when choosing a school. Wales has scrapped them. Ministers in England are adamant that they will remain.

Hat tip to Schools Matter Blog.

At a dedication ceremony last week for a new playground at Horizons-on-the-Hudson Magnet School a student is quoted:

"At first there was nothing out here," said sixth-grader Savannah Ordonez, a member of the school's "Gardening Option" program, "and then we started clearing it out and planting. Now it's the most beautiful part of the school."

As she, and all students in grades 2 through 11 thoughout the district suffer the first bout of new district mandated "benchmark assessments" this week, we hope that Savannah remembers that there was at least one time when she and her classmates took a place where there was nothing and created something beautiful. And there was at least one time when teachers took the risk to try something with no guaranteed outcome. And there was a time to design, create, build, and accomplish something real.

We hope she remembers, yet we fear that by the third or fourth bout of "benchmark assessments" (there are four scheduled this school year!) she may succumb, and be tricked or brainwashed into thinking that filling in bubbles with a number two pencil is as important as having planted a seed.

Thanks to the staff of Horizons-on-the Hudson and all the volunteers who helped, for teaching creatively; thank you Senator Larkin, for finding funds for this project; and thank you to the Record for reporting this story.