If you question education reform efforts, the replies from legislators and educrats are often the same:
I don't know.
We'll fix it later.
It's going to be expensive.
We have a crisis.
We can't compete.
If you persist in questions, you get these responses:
You prefer the status quo.
You are a skeptic.
You believe in conspiracies.
You are an enemy of education reform.
I declare to the world that I am a NUT and a follower of the NUT principles of Stephen Krashen. The No Unnecessary Testing (NUT) principle, first proposed in 2008, avoids the $4.5 billion investment in new standards and testing. It cuts back testing rather than adding more.
"Every minute testing and doing "test preparation" (activities to boost scores on tests that do not involve genuine learning) is stolen from students' lives, in addition to costing money that we cannot afford these days."
There are already indications from those charged with publishing tests that they do not have sufficient funds, time, or resources to meet the expectations.
NUT should be a movement.
Not to mention the valuable information that could be taught rather than teaching to a test. Many years back, even the ACT and SAT were deemed to discriminate. We have to have some means of identifying success & failure, but I do not think a standardized test is the answer. Especially when an army of bureaucrats are employed to justify their own existence.
ReplyDeleteI've heard a few people that won't encourage people to Teach To the Test. Seems completely counter intuitive to me.
ReplyDeleteWe need accountability and a test is one way to get information, but the current plans are obsessive. My NUT leader suggests the NAEP, which is a standardized test that kids take. There are other tests with long track records. I can understand computer adaptable tests, but how many and how often is necessary. Yep an army of bureaucrats and testing companies.
ReplyDeleteFollow the money and the evidence is there. More testing, more money for the testing companies. More standards, more money for the publishers.
ReplyDeleteAlso, need to watch out for Value Added Measures and formative tests on computer. Theses are not really formative. The term formative assessment has been hijacked.
I am all for NUT: No unnecessary testing. Testing is NOT learning.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan
Yvonne - Thank you for commenting on formative assessment. For non-educators, this is complicated enough without educrats making new stuff up. They can change the word "formative" to anything they want to, but the bottom line it's a computer-based test delivered at specific intervals and certainly will drive intruction. Sounds like more of the same plus-sized and no transformational change at all.
ReplyDeleteSandra - Thank you back. You are right when you wrote, "The bottom line seems to be computer-based test delivered at specific intervals and certainly will drive instruction.
ReplyDeleteTo me formative assessment has traditionally been used to refer to teacher-generated assessments that are part of their teaching practice. Teachers have always read student papers, engaged students in academic conversations, payed attention to students’ non-verbal responses to instruction, used questioning techniques in class to gain insights into student learning.
The term "formative assessment" ala computer-based tests has been hijacked.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan
OOPS, let me write what formative assessment means to me. I misspelled a word.
ReplyDeleteFormative testing has traditionally been used to refer to teacher-generated assessments that are part of their teaching practice. Teachers have always read student papers, engaged students in academic conversations, paid attention to students’ non-verbal responses to instruction, used questioning techniques in class to gain insights into student learning.
The term "formative assessment" has been hijacked.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan
In my opinion, these conversations are important for non-educators. Teachers have always checked on their student learning in just the ways you describe, it is part of the job! To present formative testing as some "new generation" to silly...the outcome is still teaching to the test, and the next, and the next. There is no justification for this expenditure.
ReplyDelete