#Testing

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Thinking and Linking

Testing basic skills leads to two-tier system

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 31, 2018
1 min

Testing basic skills leads to two-tier system

Schools serving mainly poor and minority students end up teaching the basic skills and schools serving more advantaged students, knowing their students will do fine on the accountability tests, will teach a richer curriculum matched to the original intent of the Common Core Standards. In this way, the use of standardized tests that test just the basic skills produces an environment in which, once again, the schools have different expectations for different groups of students,

Show me the test scores

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 30, 2018
2 min

Show me the test scores

You want my kids to go to your schools? Show me they’re learning, writes Citizen Stewart in a defense of test-based accountability. The anti-testing suburban opt-out movement is fizzling, reports Ed Week, but Stewart remains upset that testing is seen as an “obsession” rather than a reasonable way to evaluate school performance and progress. The fact that test results are used for accountability is a feature, not a bug, he argues. . . . a big value of test scores is to give

More states rely on robo-graders for essay tests

Joanne Jacobs

Jul 11, 2018
2 min

More states rely on robo-graders for essay tests

Pearson’s “automated scoring program graded some 34 million student essays on state and national high-stakes tests last year,” she writes, and there are competitors. Computers analyze essays graded by humans to “learn” how to grade, says Peter Foltz, a Pearson vice president and a University of Colorado professor. “We have artificial intelligence techniques which can judge anywhere from 50 to 100 features,” Foltz says. That includes not only basics like spelling and grammar,

22% of Pomona students are ‘disabled’

Joanne Jacobs

May 31, 2018
2 min

22% of Pomona students are ‘disabled’

classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety,” reports Douglas Belkin in the Wall Street Journal. Under federal law, that entitles them accommodations such as more time to take exams or a private, distraction-free testing room. At Pomona, 22% of students were considered disabled this year, up from 5% in 2014. . . . At Hampshire, Amherst and Smith colleges in Massachusetts and Yeshiva University in New York, one in five student

We’re teaching reading wrong

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 15, 2018
2 min

We’re teaching reading wrong

We’re teaching reading wrong, writes Natalie Wexler in The Atlantic. U.S. schools spend a lot of time on reading skills in the early grades, very little teaching history, science or the arts. If students struggle with comprehension, “history and science may continue to be relegated to the far back burner through middle school.” Reading proficiency hasn’t improved in 20 years on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), writes Wexler. The latest results showed gain

Nation’s report card shows ‘lost decade’

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 10, 2018
2 min

Nation’s report card shows ‘lost decade’

Reading and math proficiency isn’t improving for fourth- and eighth-graders, according to the 2017 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card.” The best students did better and the worst students did worse, widening achievement gaps. Except for a slight uptick in eighth-grade reading since 2015, scores remained about the same. It’s been a “lost decade” for educational progress, writes Mike Petrilli. Hechinger’s Jill Barshay calls it a

SAT/ACT may replace state test in California

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 28, 2018
2 min

SAT/ACT may replace state test in California

California may let schools replace 11th-grade Smarter Balanced tests with the SAT or ACT, reports CALmatters’ Felicia Mello. That might encourage college-going, but erode accountability for the state’s high schools. More than 30 California districts offer a college admission test for free during the school day, to encourage students to apply to college. Some offer test-prep help as well. But they’re also required to give 11th graders the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced t

Who’s college ready? Let’s find out

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 12, 2018
1 min

Who’s college ready? Let’s find out

States vow to graduate students who are college- and career-ready but have no idea if they’re succeeding, writes Checker Finn. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should test 12th-graders’ academic skills. In addition to reading, writing and math, “how great it would be also to report 12th-grade state results in other core subjects, particularly science and history!” Requiring high school to take the SAT or ACT, instead of standardized state tests, would en

To get to equity, teach ’em to read

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 23, 2018
1 min

To get to equity, teach ’em to read

Kate Walsh of the National Council on Teacher Quality is tired of apologizing for her “narrow-minded” focus on academic goals as the way to “lift children out of poverty.” Education conferences now specialize in berating reformers for putting education — not “social justice” — first, she writes. (I don’t go to these conferences myself.) Try suggesting to any audience these days that a school’s first obligation to young children is to teach them to read, write, and become num

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 28, 2017
2 min

Atlanta’s cheated students

Ten years later after the Atlanta cheating scandal broke, “educators continue to fight to clear their names and the district attempts to give extra support to some of the students who were impacted,” reports Corey Mitchell in Education Week. The Atlanta Promise Academy, an effort hatched to find dropouts who were harmed by the cheating and offer them GED classes or job training has failed to get off the ground. In the two years since Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howar

Testing empowers parents

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 27, 2017
1 min

Testing empowers parents

Testing enables social justice, argues Keri Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Massachusetts Parents United in CommonWealth Magazine. Minority and low-income parents need to know how their children are doing in school, she writes in response to an anti-testing piece by Lisa Guisbond, who represents FairTest and Citizens for Public Schools. Testing has helped improve achievement in Massachusetts schools over the last 25 years, argues Rodrigues. The state ranks first in the nation i

If at first you fail the test …

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 7, 2017
2 min

If at first you fail the test …

When students are allowed to retake tests for a better grade, what do they learn? Julie Scagell, a Minnesota mother, wonders if her district’s liberal retake policy teaches kids they’ll always get a “do-over.” Asked if he’d finished studying for the math test, her 12-year-old son told her “it doesn’t even matter. If I don’t do well I’ll just retake it.” Retake proponents “believe they allow students who struggle with test-taking another chance to master the material, and say

Testing pushes weakest teachers to K-2

Joanne Jacobs

Aug 13, 2017
1 min

Testing pushes weakest teachers to K-2

How should an elementary school deploy its best teachers? Many would argue that first grade is the most critical grade — or maybe kindergarten, now that children are expected to learn to read at five. Instead, schools are placing the least-effective teachers in the early grades to boost scores in grades that are tested, according to a new Vanderbilt/Stanford study of Miami-Dade County public schools. The study, published in the American Educational Research Journal, covers 20

Indiana: Private schools test for vouchers

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 20, 2017
2 min

Indiana: Private schools test for vouchers

Indiana’s private schools now “live or die by test scores,” reports Dylan Peers McCoy for Chalkbeat. If schools don’t score well enough to be redeem parents’ vouchers, they risk folding. Central Christian Academy in Indianapolis boosted its enrollment when vouchers enabled students from low-income families to enroll. But test scores were low. The school earned two D’s in a row, lost eligibility for vouchers and nearly closed. Then Indiana began giving credit for improvement.

Work, study, dream — and stay poor

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 23, 2017
1 min

Work, study, dream — and stay poor

Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Photo: Linda Lutton/WBEZ “School is what makes the American Dream possible,” writes WBEZ reporter Linda Lutton in The View From Room 205. That’s what desperately poor kids are told. But is it true? On the first day of school, September 2014, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, then head of Chicago Public Schools, told Penn Elementary students they could achieve anything. “No matter where you’re from, what neighborhood you call home, and no matter what

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