By Kristin
Scores scores scores. They're everywhere. I agree with testing. I agree with using test scores to evaluate teachers. I agree with getting rid of ineffective teachers. But many of the tests currently used are shoddy assessments. As Brian's most recent post demonstrates, we are not yet to the place where test scores should mean as much as they do. In this panic-driven "race to the top" (and it's not to the top – districts are racing to prove they test) districts are whipping out tests that haven't been, well, tested.
The LA Times decided to independently evaluate teachers based on student test scores. I don't know how kids are tested in LA. The last time I witnessed a test in California it was 1983 and I was sitting a standardized test in 7th grade. I didn't care about the results and neither did my parents as long as I wasn't a total idiot. It was just something that happened every year, like getting my teeth cleaned. Not totally pleasant, but not that big a deal.
Here I am, two states and twenty-seven years later, but my students are having a similar experience in Washington State – specifically in my district, Seattle. Students in my building take the MAP test (Measurement of Academic Progress) and the HSPE (High School Proficiency Exam). The HSPE was new last year – so new that they were still writing the test a few weeks before my tenth graders took it. For the first thirteen years of my career we struggled to master the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning). But, last year, they switched us to the HSPE. My students did slightly worse on the HSPE, a test for which I was unable to prepare them, than they have on the WASL.
Why do they have to keep reinventing the test and assigning to it tongue-tying acronyms? I don't know, welcome to public education. Why did they switch from the WASL to the HSPE? I don't know that either. Teachers are not told very much about testing but the dates. I'm telling the truth about that.
For the MAP test – the one that will be tied to teacher evaluations (and may end up in the newspaper) – students are herded into the library, sat at a computer, and told to log on. Some students try, many don't. The test is not graded. Some kids have figured out that the sooner they're done, the more time they have to think about more important things, like whether they have B.O. or will be able to catch a ride to Jack-in-the-Box for lunch.
So Washington teachers have two state assessments by which the public can evaluate their teaching and neither test is an accurate capture of a teacher's effectiveness or a child's progress. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that these tests don't do it. The MAP test was designed to be a tool that diagnosed a student's skill level. It was never meant to be a tool for evaluating teachers.
I am for testing. I am for having the progress of my students part of my assessment as a teacher. But make the tests mean something to the kids, and make good tests. In Brian's math chaos, the tests have been given meaningful weight before they've been carefully created and vetted. For the MAP, the test has no consequences for students but might cause the Seattle Times to declare me "less effective" as a teacher. It does not seem to me to be so impossible to solve this problem, but districts are flailing about and blowing it. Teachers are in a panic. Students could care less. The media spotlights numbers like herpes ulcers and claims public schools are festering embarrassments.
If parents are going to be told low scores mean their child had a bad teacher, they should know how the scores came to be. And if parents want to know whether their child has a good or bad teacher then they can pay attention to their child's education. Go to curriculum night and meet the teacher. Supervise homework. Talk to your child and decide whether or not your child sounds well educated. I'm a working mother of a public school student and I find time to do it. Ensuring my daughter is having a good experience at school is easier, frankly, than getting my teeth cleaned.
Festering embarrassments. I love it!
I think people knee-jerk that teachers are against testing. Like you, I’m not opposed to testing. In fact, I am “testing” in one way or another every day when I’m in front of class. Assessment is crucial for education, but assessment must be applied properly.
Any teacher who went through teacher school can probably tell the policymakers that an assessment is only useful for measuring that which it was designed to measure, and only if administered in a relevant and authentic-as-possible context. My issue with using test scores to measure teacher effectiveness is ultimately rooted in the fact that these assessments were not designed to assess teacher effectiveness. These tests are aimed at assessing student knowledge and skills at a single point in time. Period. An assessment intended to assess teacher effectiveness would need to be (a) longitudinal within the same student sample in order to illustrate growth and (b) adequately consider the context in which the teacher teaches.
When I plan my kids’ doctor appointments or other times I must miss school, I usually plan those days to be “test” days, since tests are easy for subs to administer. The sub is in the room when the kids take the test, but the sub’s performance should not be measured by the students’ performance on the test. Similarly, a kid’s performance on a single assessment is no more a measure of my capacity as a teacher than those tests administered in my absence are a measure of a sub’s effectiveness. Kids perform on snapshot assessments as a result not of my teaching but as a result of the culmination of all the teachers they have had. Should I take credit for the fact that the 8th grade teachers sent me a bunch of awesome kids this year? Should I take the blame when the kids I get advance from 4th grade to 9th grade reading level but still don’t quite get to 10th grade reading level by the 10th grade test…despite my gains with them?