testing vs. standards

[klycke]

Ravitch spends some time in her book saying she is against the testing movement that NCLB helped push along. Even though she does not support large-scale testing, she does seem to support national standards. What do you think are some of the tensions in these two beliefs? What kinds of standards do you think she's talking about? What kinds of assessments might these standards imply?

[dcho]

Well, as I mentioned in the other post ravitch-isu-03-27-12.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3, I believe that standards are important. They tell us what students should be aiming to attain. The testing is, of course, the assessment of students to see how close students are in reaching those standards, and Diane Ravitch herself says that she believes that testing is necessary (check out this video www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=0DA1B005-E93A-11E0-B00E000C296BA163). However, from what I can tell, the tension between standards and testing isn't really between the standards and testing, but it's really about testing policy and its influence on curriculum.

So, in the book, pertaining to standards, Ms. Ravitch believes that ANAR was really on to something when it proposed states to adopt voluntary national standards which were much more specific than the vague, vacuous verbiage that most states currently have as their pathetic so-called "standards". From her perspective, standards ought to be specific in not just skills used in each class subject, but the content ought to be specific as well. She goes into detail about this in one of the earlier chapters in the book.

So, Diane Ravitch believes that students ought to have these standards guiding their education, but she DOES NOT believe that students should be tested on them (except their final year of high school). For her, from a historian's perspective, the wide-scale use of testing of language arts and math has resulted in fabricated, inaccurate results about student achievement, it has cut out essential portions of learning (the arts, social sciences, sciences, etc.) and ultimately, it has undermined the curriculum and I think that's the big idea with her. For Ms. Ravitch, the curriculum is the driving force behind student achievement and by curriculum, I mean the content and methods of instruction. So, reason why it impacts the curriculum is that these tests are high-stakes and only test basic math and English so teachers focus on math and English and cut out the "non-essential" classes. And so, classes can end up being more about strategies in test taking rather than critical thinking and reading skills.

But my beef with what she says is that she claims that TESTING is the problem. Perhaps I haven't read enough of her work yet such that I don't fully grasp why she believes so strongly that the TESTING itself is the issue when really it seems that the IMPLEMENTATION of the tests are the culprits. I have heard it from Diane Ravitch's own mouth implying that testing is not in and of itself a bad thing. So why be so highly charged about it? Ms. Ravitch suggests that many of the proposed voluntary national standards in ANAR could have been amended by its critics, but it was nonetheless a great starting point. Why can't we say the same thing about testing? I feel as though national testing is a GREAT way to compare apples to apples especially for college admissions offices who are trying to find the best student candidates for their schools.

And just to give a clear idea on where I stand, I believe in testing in general and national standardized testing specifically, particularly when it comes to school districts vying for federal education dollars. I also believe in teacher accountability that is data-driven, but also relationship driven. That is, principals should have relationships with their faculty that promote higher student achievement and should know if teachers are qualified for the job or not and make decisions accordingly. So, I'm also a huge believer in professional development in the teaching career.

[dcho]

"But my beef with what she says is that she claims that TESTING is the problem. Perhaps I haven't read enough of her work yet such that I don't fully grasp why she believes so strongly that the TESTING itself is the issue when really it seems that the IMPLEMENTATION of the tests are the culprits"
Apparently, I just didn't read enough. In the chapter about accountability, she does explicitly say that testing in and of itself is not the issue.