Went to see Noah yesterday afternoon. I wish I were not familiar with
the Biblical story so that I could have really enjoyed the movie.
Great cast. Acting was top notch, sets and special effects amazing, and all the love
stories superbly told. Great flick, but not much like Genesis.
If you
do not know the Biblical story I predict you will really like the flick. If you
are expecting a screen version of the Biblical story you will be amazed
by all the enhancements. Felt more like Lord of the Rings meets Pirates of the Caribbean starring Erin Brockovitch. Did not feel like Old Testament come to the big screen.
Funny to me that "Divergent" was more faithful
to the book than "Noah."
A former Texas public school superintendent speaks his mind and shares his vision, albeit blind in one eye.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
STAAR Struck
Every public school in the state of Texas is rapidly
approaching STAAR test administrations.
STAAR is the acronym (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) for
the high stakes, standardized state test administered from grades 3 through 11,
perhaps 12. If you would like a
headache, check out the Texas Education Agency page on STAAR resources: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/staar/
There are several things I wish school boards, legislators, parents,
business and community members (perhaps educators!) knew about the STAAR tests:
In no way are these tests administered to help students,
teachers, or to improve instruction. The
tests are administered for the sole purpose of judging teachers, principals,
schools, superintendents and school districts.
I could live with these tests if they in fact helped kids. They do not.
Teachers and kids receive the test results so far after the test
administration that there is little likelihood of using the data to improve, to
change or to modify instruction. It is a
terminal test, meant to measure what kids know near the end of a course of
study. It is a final exam, more for
teachers than for kids.
The STAAR test does not, in fact, measure the effectiveness
of a teacher, a school, a school district.
We already know what the test results will prove in terms of
judgment: Rich kids will outperform poor
kids, property rich districts will outperform property poor school districts, and
Anglo kids will outperform Black kids.
What else do we need to know to improve public education? I know in my heart of hearts that given these
outcomes which are repeated over and over again every time we give a
standardized test that the answer to improved student outcomes is less the
result of instruction and more the result of the wealth and the demographics of
the community. We cannot change the
demographics. We can change the
wealth. We have not been willing to do
so. The test results, in my humble opinion,
confirm the failure of the legislature and other lay bodies to support public
education based on the data they require us to provide. If we want scores to improve we must spend
more money on the low performing.
Sanctions for low performing kids, schools, and staff is merely punishing
the victims of the current state school finance system, a student’s zip code,
and the wisdom the students applied when choosing their parents. Promoting charter schools and vouchers only
takes more money away from public schools.
In other words, the very folks who require the tests, use them to judge
schools, are the folks least likely to learn from the test results. That is academically unacceptable.
STAAR is the latest iteration of a series of state
standardized high stakes tests. We have
morphed from TABS to TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS to STAAR. If the TABS test was good enough to judge
teachers, schools, etc. and determine whether kids were promoted or graduated,
and determine sanctions for schools and school districts, why did we change the
test? We began TABS testing in the fall
of 1980 and continued using that instrument until 1985. Why did we stop? Why did we quit TABS and start TEAMS? Schools and kids got too good at doing well
on the test. The Legislature has no interest
in verifying that all schools are doing well.
They do not believe that is possible.
Nor do they believe that all kids should be able to pass the test. As any one set of standardized test data
begins to indicate that schools are improving because kids are improving, the
state has changed the test. Each
successive test has become more “rigorous”.
That means each successive acronym for standardized tests has become
more and more difficult, more and more challenging. (For the statistically inclined, that means
that none of these tests were truly criterion referenced. They were all designed to create a distribution. They were and are normed tests. When the test began to fail to produce a
distribution, a new test was developed to do so.) Each successive test has demonstrated what we
already know as listed above, but reduced the number of schools and school
districts who were doing well. I would
wish that governing bodies would promote school success and use data toward
that end, rather than vice-versa. When
we are all doing well on STAAR, there will be another standardized test. Perhaps we will simply call it GOTCHA (Go On,
Try to Teach Children How to Achieve).
The school reform belief that data from such tests is
meaningful is a private sector application to a public service sector institution,
and therefore, not appropriate. There
are a variety of public sector functions where we collect data: law enforcement, Child Protective Services,
state mental health services, state prison systems, public drinking water,
etc., etc. In none of these areas are
those data used to judge the provider of the service. They are used to monitor the population
served. If the crime rate increases in a
given community it is hardly argued that we must hold the police force more
accountable and possibly reduce their funding and create alternative choices to
public police departments. We do the
opposite. We seek to find the cause and
pour money into an improvement effort.
Not in schools. As our “crime”
rate increases, we blame the officers, cut their funding, create alternatives,
and assign sanctions. It is, in fact,
crazy. If collecting such data and using
it as a basis for judging public schools is in fact logical for a public sector
service provider, then let us do so across the board and respond in similar
ways.
The institution of high stakes standardized testing has made
many private sector operations millions of dollars. Pearson develops the tests and scores the
tests. They make a ton of money. They will make more money if the tests
constantly change and will make more money if Pearson instructional products
are purchased by schools to improve outcomes.
Charter school enterprises make a fortune off public tax dollars. They exist to provide parents “choice.” We do not need choice unless we have data to
show that public schools are not doing well.
On and on it goes. Public tax
dollars earmarked for public schools continue to be diverted to private sector
enterprises based on false conclusions from high stakes standardized tests.
We believe that standardized measures are descriptive of the
performance of kids, teachers and schools.
They are not. It is from the
likes of Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Broad Foundation, and others who
have convinced legislatures that such tests have meaning. Such folks totally miss the point. Yes, data is important for decision
making. Every time a teacher asks a
question in class he or she is collecting student performance data. Every time students have an assignment, a performance,
a test, a project we are collecting student performance data. We remediate instruction based on those
data. Teachers get better, schools get
better. However, to develop an external
test and use it to judge schools and kids really means little, especially if
the nature of the test is kept hidden from the teachers. Those results mean little unless the entire
instructional effort is devoted to improving test scores rather than
instruction. If all schools do that, then
test results may let us know which efforts to improve scores work better than
other efforts, but tell us little about what kids know. And, that is teaching to the test, which the
same lay people argue is not what we should do.
For those who believe the STAAR results have meaning, are
descriptive, are appropriate data by which we can judge kids, teachers, schools
and school systems there is a continue to push to raise the scores. Schools will go to extreme lengths to
increase the odds of better student performance. Schedules will be altered, kids will be
pulled from electives, teachers will be reassigned to tutor and coach, and
sessions will be conducted before and after school and even on Saturdays. All of this to improve outcomes on a test
that means little. Sadly, if every
school system in the state engages in similar practices, a school that chooses
not to do so will look worse on the distribution scores that year. In short, it is time to simply say that the
scores on a standardized test may be interesting and may inform and improve
instruction for the next school year, but in no way should they be used to
judge kids, teachers, schools, etc. If
the data from the tests mean anything they mean that we must put more money
into the learning of our poorest kids and our poorest districts. That is the one thing we have not done and is
the most obvious of all the results from the tests.
Schools are highly complex organizations. The variables in any one classroom are
astronomical. Each kid and all that he
or she knows, has experienced, believes about themselves, their family, their
values, etc. is a list longer than can be identified. Each teacher brings his or her own best
talents, knowledge, experience, expertise and values to the huge array of kid
variables. In no way can one simple
standardized test on one day in a school year be descriptive of what is
happening for those kids in that room with that teacher for the entire year,
not to mention for years to come.
We forgive weather prognosticators for errors in their
predictions. Weather people have
constant data, satellite, radar, ground station data collectors, etc. etc. All those data are constantly flowing in 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, and still the predictions are wrong. We forgive them because we know the variables
are very complex. I would argue that the
variables in any given classroom are more complex than the weather variables
for any given day. I would argue that
the variables for all the classrooms in Texas are dramatically more complex
than the weather variables for Texas on any given day. Using one test to make judgments about kids, teachers,
principals, schools, districts, superintendents is the equivalent of giving a meteorologist
one snapshot of radar, satellite, and ground station data on one day and asking
him or her to forecast the weather for an entire year. If that feels ridiculous, then know that high
stakes standardized test data feels the same way to educators.
Meanwhile, the tests are just around the corner and every
educator in the state is concerned with the outcomes. Educators are jumping through hoops to
improve outcomes on a test that should not matter. Until our lay community, parents, businesses
and our local and state leaders really understand what they are doing to kids,
teachers and schools, we will remain STAAR struck. In fact, STAAR is already GOTCHA.
That is not a good thing.
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