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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Education The New Yorker on Seattle's MAP Boycott

Posted by Anna Minard on Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 8:42 AM

I can't believe I missed this: The New Yorker picked up on the Garfield High School teachers' boycott of the MAP standardized test last week, and among the wordy meandering on pineapples (a former testing controversy), they come down hard:

In sum, students are taking an exam that doesn’t really count, on material that may or may not be relevant, and producing results that may have nothing to say about them or their future. If you subscribe to the notion that education is preparation for life, then these students have received their first primer on the soul-crushing routines of bureaucracy.

And:

And so the MAP brings us to the very point at which teaching and testing have diverged. When students are forced to take an exam like the MAP two or three times a year so that they can be better prepared for other, more important exams, the assessment is no longer a partner to curriculum. The assessment has become the curriculum.

Preach!

h/t Melissa Westbrook at Seattle Schools Community Forum.

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Standardized tests are for evaluating the school, not the students. They measure the school's ability to get students to score highly on standardized tests, relative to other schools. Schools that do well get more money because whatever they're doing is "working", and those that don't get more money because they need to improve.

Posted by pox on March 20, 2013 at 9:18 AM

This is truly one of the best articles on this topic. Read it. It is more fair than most, but still comes to the correct conclusion: standardized testing, in its current form, is a waste of time, money, and energy that could be better spent elsewhere in the education system.

Posted by paulus22 on March 20, 2013 at 9:36 AM

What really matters here is that Bill Gates, in his fancy new foundation building, has bet the farm on scholastic testing as the be-all and end-all of school performance. It's exactly the kind of data-driven, results-oriented critical thinking that he and his entire class of tech plutocrats grew rich on. It doesn't matter that it doesn't apply to education -- it certainly doesn't apply to Bill Gates's own education. But he's the man in charge of the universe.

Posted by Fnarf

on March 20, 2013 at 10:05 AM

OT, but the NYT has an op-ed this morning in which we're told that the Gates Foundation is funding a campaign to have every sub-Saharan African male circumcised, ostensibly to help prevent the spread of AIDS (although the article allows that the campaign may well end up increasing its incidence, especially among women). The campaign is "voluntary" — so far.

Posted by cheakamus on March 20, 2013 at 1:32 PM

@1, even if I accept your conclusion, this particular test, the MAP test, is NOT a national test. It is applicable to the Seattle school district only. They don't use it to compare themselves to other schools or other districts. It isn't even meant to perform the function you describe.

Posted by Reverse Polarity on March 20, 2013 at 2:33 PM

The MAP's purpose is supposedly to demonstrate student growth. They are given the same test twice a year through elementary school through the 9th grade. It used to be three times - Fall, Winter and Spring, but it was found that scores dropped from Fall to Winter so now it is given in Winter and Spring. Go figure. It is an adaptive test, so the questions change depending on prior answers. This is supposed to - magically - demonstrate levels of proficiency in several "bands" of related skills, for example, algebraic skills, geometry, numeracy etc. There are about 47 questions they have to answer in Math. However the results are not applicable to any specific skills, just generic areas. If a student's score is expected to be at about 220 (top of range is about 150), their score typically jumps by 20 points from test to test. This is not a demonstration of ANYTHING statistically significant, except in aggregate, and is NOT USEFUL for the intended purpose of demonstrating a single student's improvement. Let alone the curriculum in high school is not related to the test.

Posted by p_hen on March 22, 2013 at 8:33 PM