Teachers refuse to give test, but aren’t there some tests that are worth giving?
Teachers in Seattle are taking a stand against standardized testing by refusing to administer a required district-wide test.
What’s odd to me is the test Seattle teachers are choosing to protest, which is the Measure of Academic Progress. The high performing City of Decatur Schools uses MAP testing as well, giving it three times a year to see where students begin, where they are mid-year and where they are at the end of the year.
My kids attend Decatur schools and are not intimidated by MAP testing as it has been part of their education for a long time. Nor are they overly concerned with the scores, which they get instantly as the test is taken on a computer. I would be interested in what other Decatur parents out there think about MAP.
As to the comment within the news story below that algebra students see geometry on the test, my kids tell me that the challenge of the questions on the MAP test increases depending on how well a student is doing. If they get a question wrong, the test adapts and provides an easier question. Each time students answer a question, the test considers all questions taken so far to generate the next question. The tests respond to the achievement level of the student.
So, a student who is doing well will get harder and harder questions, including some that contain material they may not have seen in class. Decatur uses MAP scores to accelerate kids as well as remediate them.
I see the main value of MAP as diagnostic, allowing teachers to know where students are when they walk in the door. Teachers have told me it is valuable to get the information early in the school year.
I understand that schools are test weary, but question condemning test that measures student progress and pinpoints where students are falling behind. I would prefer that we focus on repetitive tests that give no new information.
I also think we have to be careful not to denigrate testing without acknowledging that testing also helps students recognize their own potential. I have interviewed people over the years who first considered college because of how well they scored on some test. In most cases, the people came from families without a history of college attendance and weren’t raised from the cradle with the expectation that they would earn a college degree.
Students in Seattle Public Schools take a test called the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, up to three times a year, from kindergarten through at least ninth grade. The school district requires the test to measure how well students are doing in reading and math — in addition to annual standardized tests required by the state.
The MAP test is used as part of the teacher-evaluation process, and it’s supposed to help teachers gauge students’ progress.
“We’ve lost a whole lot of class time. I don’t know what the test was about, and I just see no use for it at all,” says Kit McCormick, who teaches English at Garfield High School.
McCormick says teachers are never allowed to see the test, so she has no idea how to interpret her students’ scores.
“So I’m not going to do it. But I’d be happy to have my students evaluated in a way that would be meaningful for both them and me,” she says. Instead of this kind of high-stakes testing, teachers at Garfield propose that student learning be judged by portfolios of their work.
The school’s academic dean, Kris McBride, was supposed to administer the test this week. Instead, she’s standing behind the teachers. McBride says a major problem with the test is that it doesn’t seem to align with district or state curricula.
“In fact, our Algebra 1 students go in and sit in front of a computer and take this math test. It’s filled with geometry; it’s filled with probability and statistics and other things that aren’t a part of the curriculum at all,” she says.
Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda says the teachers are expected to fulfill their responsibilities.
He says the MAP test’s frequency is useful in making sure students are learning what they should be but has invited teachers to take part in a formal district review of its effectiveness. That still doesn’t let them off the hook from administering the test, though.
“In the meantime, they have duties they’re supposed to complete, making sure that this assessment is given,” he says. Banda says instead of boycotting the MAP test, teachers should work with the district to find solutions to their concerns.
–from Maureen Downey for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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114 comments Add your comment
testing needs to be vetted
January 18th, 2013
10:59 am
But Maureen – the test is measuring elements that are not addressed in the curriculum. The main point that has been expressed in multiple articles about this schools is not that the teachers don’t want testing – they want tests that reflect the curriculum. They also want tests to be vetted for strong questions – our own CRCTs and EOCTs contain flawed questions. On top of that, there is the opening a can of worms idea that tying a teacher’s pay to a test containing questions about topics they don’t teach is horrible at best.
The teachers are not boycotting all tests; they are boycotting this one for strong reasons. Why can’t teachers be more involved in making the state assessments they are being evaluated on? The idea of a test that my kids take at the beginning, middle, and end is awesome – if it’s vetted properly, contains topics I follow from the curriculum, and can provide timely and well-defined reports that can show me where my students’ weaknesses are.
Stand Strong Seattle Teachers
January 18th, 2013
11:10 am
Who knows the students best?
Who has to deal with the student’s daily?
Not these jerks making a fortune from the for-profit educatonal world!
How much does this MAP testing cost, per student, per year? Who gets the kick-backs?
I wish more APS employees would step up and stop putting up with the BS, like their collegues in Seattle!
Maybe then we would have received 24 checks for the 2012 school year!
Maybe then we’d still have a day off in February to handle personal issues rather than going to another poorly executed teacher “training” day!
Maybe, just maybe, we’d all band together and argue for a cost of living pay increase, which we haven’t seen in over 5 years!
Last time I checked, groceries and gas hasn’t gotten any cheaper since 2007.
Sadly, our only option is to walk away….It’s your children who suffer because of this Atlanta!
paulo977
January 18th, 2013
11:25 am
DO READ MAUREEN ….”http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ftt.htm
paulo977
January 18th, 2013
11:33 am
Stand Strong Seattle
Teachers …
_________________________
Great great post !
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/tcast.htm
d
January 18th, 2013
11:43 am
1) I think the tests that we give in Georgia need to be written by Georgia teachers. DeKalb paid $1.2 Million to Pearson to write their benchmarks (from RTTT funds). Why not pay DeKalb teachers who know the curriculum to write the questions – and put that money into the local economy?
2) We need to require that students pass EOCTs to actually graduate – 20% of the grade isn’t that big of an impact so starting with the class of 2015, students only need to pass one exit test – the state Writing test. I’ve seen students pass that test who still cannot write a complete sentence.
3) I actually like what we are doing in the classes that have SLO tests. Pre-test, post-test. We actually get to see if the student made progress in the course rather than how I am evaluated – did a student “grow” between two totally unrelated courses.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
11:45 am
The way it used to be done was one test at the end of the year to track / record progress, show standing. The was considerable autonomy, like when you go to the doctor and get an annual blood test and then the results, “Maybe less salt, lay off the parmesan cheese?”
_____________
Today, in lower socio-economic environment schools, kids are threatened with testing. Literally, as a part of instructional time or learning, “if you do not pass the test, required score of 815 (or somesuch) THIS will happen.” Kids are threatened with testing. It’s like… there’s a term for it, emotional coercion, “Pedagogic coercion may be applied within a strictly educational context, and it is then mostly directed towards children.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercion
Actually, the word I was thinking of is “extortion.”
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
11:48 am
This fits and, in my experience, is accurate: “Emotional blackmail is a form of psychological manipulation – it is “the use of a system of threats and punishment on a person by someone close to them in an attempt to control their behavior” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_blackmail
“”emotional blackmail” is a powerful form of manipulation in which blackmailers who are close to the victim threaten, either directly or indirectly, to punish them to get what they want.”
“Emotional blackmailers use fear, obligation and guilt in their relationships, ensuring that the victim feels afraid to cross them, obligated to give them their way and feeling guilty if they don’t”
BehindEnemyLines
January 18th, 2013
11:54 am
Seems like pretty obvious grounds for dismissal, and with all due haste.
Centrist
January 18th, 2013
11:55 am
Teachers get to override policy made by school boards and professional administrators who hire them?
If this stands and they are not fired for gross insubordination, other school boards and administrations will be challenged on this and many other grievances – until there are swift and certain repercussions.
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
11:59 am
Cannot we all realize how out-of-control this standardized testing craze is going?
We have…… end-of-course testing (these are State required multiple tests for different subjects), checkpoints testing which is a pre-test and post-test (to see how students are ‘progressing’ required by our school system), SAT (for students wanting to get into college, ACT (for students wanting to go to college), PSAT (for students getting ready for the SAT), etc.
These are on top of the regular class tests and regular final exams each semester.
Issues:
1. Too much time simply TAKING tests rather than learning.
2. Tests that are not properly aligned with what we are told to teach.
3. Cost associated with tests (creating test, grading test, etc.).
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
11:59 am
Here is a little puzzle I have spent no lack of time contemplating: Teachers do not know what is on the tests. Teachers are prohibited from viewing the test. There are very few prior tests to be in the hands of teachers and you have to be connected to even gain access to prior tests to see the concept.
Basically, there’s three parts to it.
1. That state standards, common core, whatever: the content guidelines per subject / grade.
2. the content materials the teacher uses for teaching, often assembled by the teacher due to no provision.
3. the test.
Do the three line up? Which one is the outlier? It is an awkward thing.
Another aspect, with tests be “secret” and no access based on the rational of cheating, there is little scholarship on what is in the tests. This includes, are their psychologic monitoring questions? Do the test questions even make sense, what is the quality of the presentation? Any responsible educator would want to know this. Currently it is like giving kids a vaccination and you do not know what is in the syringe. Teachers are prohibited from even looking onto a students desk at the test. Teachers are not to see the content of the tests. This must too apply to academics wanting to do scholarship on it. Off-limits, not to be accessed.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:08 pm
When I recently tutored an adult student in math for an online class with Peason brand software (Peason is a UK and also now owns the Georgia teacher certification testing, which they did not write, they bought the fomerly independent company that used to provide it), in the online math class, the test questions were all over the place and, in my opinion – and this is with one package course all provided by the same company, the test questions did not well match the unit activities. Additionally the included “e-book” textbook was not searchable and did not have an index, either, and the chapter headings were not very specific. This was a train-wreck from a big company, THE big company.
Pearson is doing what Microsoft used to do at software writers’ conventions, go around with a checkbook and buy up other companies / providers.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:10 pm
pardon the typos. this laptop is fried. the keyboard is uneven and now the display is out / using outside monitor. ‘already ordered a different machine.
Cindy Lutenbacher
January 18th, 2013
12:15 pm
Maureen, I’m glad that your kids and others you’ve interviewed seem unharmed or even “helped” by some tests. I really am. I wonder if you have sought out kids and families who’ve been harmed by some tests? I’m thinking right now of two of my daughter’s best friends. Have you read the many, many reports and tomes by independent scholars about such tests?
Remember, friends, I absolutely believe in authentic assessments. Standardized tests don’t measure up. At all.
Thanks for the link, Paulo977.
Lee
January 18th, 2013
12:18 pm
Several adages come to mind:
“The boss is not always right, but he is always the boss.”
“He who signs the paycheck gets to make the rules.”
“Choose your battles wisely.”
My guess, after the first pink slip is handed out, there will be a flurry of test taking in Seattle.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:18 pm
Point is, too, there is a style to presentation and questions. I’ve seen where different textbook publishers present the same “standards” information in different ways, even using different terms for the same content. Before, I had taught a concept using three different sources and this is how I saw different concept presentations from different publishers. So who even knows what is on “the test.” I think it is a weird experience for kids to taught one way and then testing using voice / presentation that is from an uncoordinated outside source from the classroom materials. Someone needs to locate a “tell all” book from someone working in a testing company. More than a decade ago I had dinner with a friend who worked in one of the major school textbooks publishing houses and she said, “There is not a person in that building who makes less than $75k/yr” and this was a decade ago. And she’s buying the big jumbo shrimp and driving the new Honda car and taking her little dog for hiking trips. -Not exactly a teacher’s life.
Attentive Parent/Invisible Serfs Collar
January 18th, 2013
12:18 pm
I read this as wanting to go ahead and shift to performance assessments aligned with Grant Wiggins Understanding by Design template.
There is a great deal of hostility among certain teachers and administrators to ANY test of decontextualized knowledge. John Goodlad has been at U of Washington preaching his vision of education for about 25 years now. If those teachers were not taught by him they were trained by someone who was.
I think Washington is like Georgia and is scheduled to start piloting those performance assessments next year. The mentioned portfolio would be a performance assessment. Task, activity, project, paper. No disembodied facts.
Lucky me spent part of yesterday reading reports from UCLA’s CRESST center, especially from Eva Baker. To say I have a solid understanding of what is coming and why under PARCC and SBAC would be putting it mildly.
Until I did that though I had not grasped the connection of CRESST to Goodlad’s days as DEan of the ed school there. His desire for alternative measures to show what students can do, instead of what they know, is about to be fully nationalized. He must be pleased.
So these teachers think MAP does not matter for the same reasons Beverly Hall and her staff ignored allegations of cheating. They did not think Georgia’s CRCT measured what they wanted going on in the classrooms. These Seattle teachers feel the same way.
We are truly in the twilight of widespread knowledge unless parents understand that and intervene.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:27 pm
Centrist Time for to read the essay “Civil Disobedience” by Thoreau. “Walden” is not just the name of an apartment complex of condominium development. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html
“I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”;(1) and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.”
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:37 pm
Looks like “testing” might work in a small sophisticated district where the whole concept of gluing together the standards / source materials / testing is done in a competent manner by sophisticated managers.
Unfortunately, there is little consistency across the state and these are hardly the conditions many places, something woefully lost on the national and state leadership.
_____________________________
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance
________________
Let us not forget than Finland has zero macro-testing and they have the highest performance in demonstrated competence of students.
“Testing culture” seems like food culture. In one country, noodles in the thing, in another, potatoes, in another, lentils and curry, and in another, everybody loves fried chicken.
In the U. S., testing culture seems to go well with money / power / domination / directing people what to do and keeping power structure as a norm. That’s really what it is about, power and who has it. Whose on the bottom., whose on the top, who gets the money, and who is forced to role-play.
FlaTony
January 18th, 2013
12:40 pm
The unfortunate thing about these tests is the misuse of the information after the tests are given. Teachers will be required to develop reports and lesson plans to show how the results are being used to differentiate instruction – even when it makes no sense to spend time doing that. The testing company makes an easy profit each year when we renew our contracts/license agreements for these “progress monitoring” tools, too. They are a waste of time and money.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
12:42 pm
Lee, Washington state also just legalised marijuana. Don’t be surprised if they do something progressive regarding testing. Are they politically alive there?
Go back to sleep now, Georgians. It’s got nothing to do with you and you’ll be glad to know that you’ll keep it that way.
Just Another Teacher
January 18th, 2013
12:44 pm
I sort of go the other way on this. First of all, testing may not be Man O’ War, but may still be the best horse on the track. It has its purposes. Though certainly it does seem lately to be used as a crutch by systems and politicians who are out of ideas. If you can’t control the students or the parents, create a test and apply the fulcrum under the teachers’ behinds, so to speak.
That being said, a lot of teachers are clamoring for tests they themselves create. That is a decidedly bad notion, I think. First of all, most systems want to apply the normal grading scale to teacher generated assessments, which doesn’t really work.
There is a reason why 50% is a decent score on most standardized tests. Even people with PhD’s and world enough and time to create “ideal” assessments don’t create assessments featuring novel material that would pass the accepted 70% for a passing grade standard. Furthermore, most systems can’t afford the time it takes to continually assess and rewrite assessments to eliminate bad items.
The truth is, almost no teacher gets adequate training on how to create objectice assessments of novel material. Many of us don’t consistently create great assessments of material we have already taught. And this doesn’t even factor in the grading component of the equation, which is another elephant in the parlor no one wishes to address. I know of many students who ace standardized tests created by outside sources and fail every single teacher generated districtwide test. You don’t know how the sausage is made.
Michael Moore
January 18th, 2013
1:02 pm
In Georgia, the schools that have bought into MAP (and it ain’t cheap) give at minimum the three MAP tests during the year. Then there are the quarterly CRCT tests. the ONLY reason we aren’t testing K-2 is because we ran out of money…seriously. Add the occasional ITBS and the mandatory technology test and you have what Smagorinsky estimates as a 20-60 billion dollar business nationally. We are on a year to year with McGraw Hill who has made our tests for the past seven years at least. Add in all the test prep time and the test pep rallies and this problem increases exponentially.
Education is a developing market and the state has been replaced by entrepreneurs who who make fracking look like a kid playing in the sandbox. Testing, remediation, teacher development and materials and you have a wild wild west in education. Anyone who has ever done a textbook in the last ten years simply pasts a “Common Core Ready” sticker on it and off it goes.
The question isn’t whether some tests are worthwhile…the real question is whether any test should be high stakes by itself.
Lee
January 18th, 2013
1:16 pm
@PC, re “That government is best which governs least…”
I prefer the following:
“Government is like fire. A useful servant, but left unattended, will leave ashes and bodies in its wake.”
LD
January 18th, 2013
1:24 pm
@ Michael Moore – CRCT is administered once per year in the spring, not quarterly.
And after speaking with teachers and administrators in my children’s schools, SOME standardized tests are useful in determining strengths and weaknesses of not only individual students, but also of teachers. I do think we need to ensure that assessments are relevant, but we also need to stop using standardize tests as the end all be all of assessing students, teachers, and schools.
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
1:38 pm
@LD -
No test taken by students can measure a teacher. This has been proven repeatedly. There are many explanations as to why. Some include:
1. Students have different maturing rates. Obviously girls mature faster than boys. But, some girls mature faster than other girls. Are we really saying that to measure the effect of a TEACHER may depend on how mature the students are taking the test? Remember that an immature student might decide to not pay attention, not take the test seriously, and so on.
2. Students may intentionally submarine the test. In other words, for whatever reason, students may purposefully mark wrong answers. Maybe they think it is funny. Maybe they are having a bad day. Maybe whatever – they are kids. Are you saying that THESE test results are a measure of teaching?
Tests results ONLY can attempt to measure what the test TAKER does. Period.
There is no analogy to this in industry. In the corporate world, you are measured on what YOU do – not on someone else (unless you are the big boss or the like where you are managing adults – but then you get to fire them if they are not performing).
Grumps
January 18th, 2013
1:50 pm
There has to be an objective measurement. Test when they start, then test when they leave. Otherwise, how do you know what or if they’ve learned? Oh, you say, they’ve learned because I, the teacher, say they’ve learned. Trust me………
10:10 am
January 18th, 2013
1:55 pm
Time for Seattle parents to send these militant teachers, and their union reps, back to their prior jobs waiting tables.
Grumps
January 18th, 2013
1:58 pm
In addition, don’t use the tests to evaluate the teacher.. except maybe as a statistical whole. For example, if the tests show that nobody improved at all, doesn’t that indicate a problem somewhere?
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
1:59 pm
@Grumps -
Why do think that there MUST be an objective measurement? Can you explain?
We are talking not just about people in general (which have enough variables in them), but about children.
And, not just children. Think about how different the children are in the northern suburbs of Atlanta compared to the inner city. Do you REALLY think that there is a single test that can be given to account for that variability?
The SAT and the ACT are given to high school teenagers trying to go to college. These tests have been around for DECADES. Even though these kids are generally older, even these tests have flaws in them. And, even these tests do not claim to meaure the teacher AT ALL! They measure the test taker.
However, we in Georgia (of course) think that the State DOE can whip up some multiple choice tests given to all different ages of kids from all backgrounds to measure the teacher – give me a break!
indigo
January 18th, 2013
2:04 pm
And the social experiments just keep coming.
Have teachers finally had enough of this?
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
2:04 pm
What if…… (and stay with me here)
A school administration has a cousin as a teacher – such as in my school. Do you REALLY think that when it comes to assigning classes to teachers that they will give that cousin ‘bad’ or ’stupid’ kids? Heck no!
So then, here comes your test. Her ‘good’ or ’smart’ kids take the test and ace it! This means she is a GREAT TEACHER?
Or how about the reverse? What if the administration hates an individual teacher? To get rid of her, won’t they just assign her the ‘bad’ or ’slow’ kids?
Here comes your test. And her kids score low. Does this mean she is a BAD TEACHER?
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:04 pm
The last school test calendar I saw (many districts publish these – someone should link to a .pdf) had, like, 20 days of testing. In my former environment, there were tests during the year, prior to the end of year. That’s when it gets weird, when “test culture” becomes the culture in the school, through the speakers, through the announcements. I did not like it at all, it is a form of domination, it is distracting, it is mono-culture and takes up a lot of bandwidth.
When I was in high school we had one test at the end of the year. I scored around 92% in my subject area. Otherwise, there was no testing and there was never an administrator in the classroom, in fact, there were hardly no administrators. There was a headmaster and one counselor and the counselor did not have to hand hold people about their future. If you wanted to go to college, hey – pick your college and apply.
In class, we sat around and read and stuff. And did lots of math, sequentially, not mixed up. And had both visual art and music as electives. And good food and lots of quiet. I recall students had to buy their own paperback novels for English class, were given a list. Made sense – all the way around. Administrators? I can only recall one headmaster, one counselor, and a school secretary, for about 400 students. Distance learning degrees, for-profit and leadership degrees did not exist. There was basically no outside propaganda, none. No one was trying to “change how we thought.” Teachers were not harassed and were a pretty loving jovial bunch. There was basically zero stress in the school environment.
Sandy Springs Parent
January 18th, 2013
2:06 pm
It is just like it is absurd to do Homework questions in Physics in an A B C D format on a computer format. Now my daughter is dual Enrollment at Georgia Perimeter and the Algebra teachers are being required to have the students do their homework in the same stupid on-line program where you answer A,B, C, D. The answers are so close, it brings doubt. Both of these subjects the homework should be graded on how the student sets up the work and works through the problem. Partial credit should be given. My daughter’s math Professor says he hates this on-line system, but he is forced to use it.
Now my daughter wonders why, I wanted her to go to a small private college. Not only are their more scholarships and grants, but Professors are allowed to teach and grade.
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
2:07 pm
@indigo – Yep. I’ve had enough. I’ve already resigned for next year. I’ll no longer teach in Georgia. EVER!
Just A Teacher
January 18th, 2013
2:10 pm
“Seems like pretty obvious grounds for dismissal, and with all due haste.”
“Time for Seattle parents to send these militant teachers, and their union reps, back to their prior jobs waiting tables.”
What people who post comments like this don’t realize is that replacing thousands of teachers overnight is impossible. This is why we teachers in Georgia need unions; not to boycott tests, but to let the state government and our local school systems know that if they mess with one of us, they need to be prepared to run their schools without any of us. Teachers need collective bargaining rights in Georgia NOW!
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:11 pm
I’d say there is no question that testing culture displaces learning priority / time. If you’re teachers are so sorry that they require testing domination, that’s an entirely different matter.
So you master what’s on the test? What about the rest of life? Knowledge is not pre-pack like Big Mac. Have you ever eaten a Big Mac lately? It’s a ball of mush. “It’s a good time for the great taste of McDonald’s” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UWq26V01po
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:14 pm
The other part is that the “everybody must go to college” theme in the U. S. is clearly a feeder system to debt slavery. Current existent education debt is one trillion dollars. Let us not forget it is an investment banker that initially appointed Arne Duncan to power (truth and fact).
Folks, it’s so simple to see through, even a child could do it.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:18 pm
10:10 a.m. You did not get the same schooling that I got. We were not taught to belong and behave. But I can probably run circles around you in calculus and physics, no disrespect intended.
HS Public Teacher
January 18th, 2013
2:19 pm
@Sandy Springs Parent – I hate it as well. However, it is a necessary evil in high school. The reason is because the job requirements for a teacher in high school have become out-of-control. Most teachers of math and science in high school work 12 to 14 hours a day.
During school hours, any time we are not with the students, we are in meetings – and this includes our lunch time. We have no real ‘planning period’ because we have meetings, and other duties. Before school and after school we have bus duty and my school requires us to sponsor a club after school. So, teachers get home at around 6 or 7 PM. THEN we get to plan for the next day’s lessons. How do we have time to actually go through and evaluate each students each problem in order to give partial credit????
Science teachers also have the joy of finding lab equipment, preparation for labs, and then breaking down the labs and cleaning the equipment. Can you imagine?
Oh yeah – and we do have our own families, too. But too bad that they are an after thought!
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:22 pm
abstract note: hey, I made an “A” in a graduate-level statistics course and the professor’s resume was 25 pages long. Boy, that guy had some kind of resume.
v
January 18th, 2013
2:25 pm
These test were installed by politician in a desperate effort to address a false idea that US students were somehow less well educated than students internationally. Recently those who always knew all of this was completely bogus have been vindicated by a serious study of the international test. In many areas around the world education ends for students who are unable to move forward in their grade. When you exclude all of these students and then compare that system to the US system of educating everyone of course they will look smarter. But they are not. That is why requiring attendance for twelve years actually made the problem appear worse. The train wreck that is US education was caused by politicians. The endless assessment tests, state, local, whatever, whoever wants one this time cost 10 or more days of instruction each semester. In the Seattle situation teaching to the test is necessary which takes away even more instructional days. My kids are out of school now but a few years back they seemed to spend about half their time at school preparing for and taking these tests. Fortunately they succeed anyway. They did learn a lot about test taking strategies. One or two assessments per grading period is enough, and that should be available to students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Everyone else should be looking at sanitized data to determine the progress of the school. The testing craziness needs to end. NOW is a good time to end this contrived solution to a contrived problem.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:26 pm
“During school hours, any time we are not with the students, we are in meetings”
Yes, what the hell is that about? It’s like there’s no gatekeeper, and there’s ten tons of this peripheral brain-washing stuff. Teacher-core is used as an on-demand audience for all kinds of crap profiting somebody else. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. The rock rolls back down and crushes Sisyphus.
Michael Moore
January 18th, 2013
2:34 pm
In many districts in georgia, like Chatham County, the crct is given quarterly. It is a version of the test designed to give administrators a heads up on what to expect at the end. It is part of the McGraw Hill package and many places give it at the end of each quarter.
teacher&mom
January 18th, 2013
2:35 pm
Another viewpoint regarding standardized testing and the unintentional consequences of the testing movement:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/18/whos-next/
Natalie
January 18th, 2013
2:36 pm
Read more in-depth explanation from one of the teachers leading this movement at http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2020158085_jessehagopianopedxml.html#.UPmidPUTNTw.facebook. Note that this is not just about a few “rebel” teachers who refused; they went about this in a ‘democratic’ fashion, the teachers voted, the PTSA and student governments voted to support them. While they have objections to the testing culture and to the MAP specifically, their concerns are also also about the cost of the test and the fact that the former brought the MAP to Seattle at a cost of some $4 million while she was serving on the board of the company that sells it. They’re also concerned about the fact that computer labs are taken up for weeks, taking away from academic opportunities for kids who need them (especially those that don’t have kids at home)… in other words, the testing – by costing so much, by using resources and times – causes harm.
10:10 am
January 18th, 2013
2:42 pm
Hey, Private Citizen, why not find a second hobby? Maybe get off your mom’s computer and even make some outside friends?
Would be healthy for you … and give the rest of us a welcome break.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:45 pm
This started out as fun, but I think there is something to it. If you think about McDonald’s is one of the biggest restaurants in the world re: market penetration, I seriously believe testing is being applied in the same way and education is the platform for this business strategy. If you see it any differently, I think you may be a little naive. Point is, testing is not to enhance education, it is a business exploit.
Here is a YouTube video critical of McDonald’s. I used translation link to translate the comments from Portuguese into English. Warning: strong language. Do not watch if you have an aversion or objection to expressive use of strong language. http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3FNR%3D1%26v%3DLIUN87xkC-I
Globalization, baby! Testing included.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
2:55 pm
10:10, I think you’ve got the “rest of us” part backwards. I’m a licensed teacher. You’re welcome to participate, and generally I do not play games with territoriality.
touché (a formal term from fencing).
Maybe you should get a teaching license. I bet your fuses would be blown when you started to encounter the process. ‘Not trying to be a wise guy. Maybe I’ll just shut-p for a while. The question remains, though. Who defends the public good?
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
3:03 pm
teacher&mom that’s a very smart Washington Post article describing externalities (invented costs) of testing culture. I read about 1/3 of the article and had to stop. It really hits home, leaves you stunned. Good find and “too real.” Can’t say enough about it.
abcd
January 18th, 2013
3:18 pm
Principals in Clayton County are crazy!!!!
Mary Elizabeth
January 18th, 2013
3:21 pm
Several sentences in this article concern me. I will address those concerns in a moment.
First, as an overview statement, I support testing students for diagnostic purposes so that instruction can be more precisely targeted to the each student’s correct instructional placement throughout the school year. If we had not used test results in the high school, in which I led the reading program, we might have erroneously placed some students in Personalized Reading who should have been correctly placed in Advanced Reading, and, likewise, we might have erroneously placed some students Advanced Reading who were not ready, yet, to take that course. Those misplaced students might have failed that course, as a result, and through no fault of their own, but simply through teacher/counselor error in placement of the student, to begin with.
Most people would never recommend that doctors should not order tests for their patients in order to formulate an accurate diagnosis of the patient’s medical condition. Likewise, citizens should support teachers’ using educational tests in order to assess correctly the accurate placement of the students and so that teachers can have the precise knowledge to teach correctly specific instructional skills to specific students.
Notice that the purpose of the testing that I suggested, above, is to use testing as a diagnostic tool to aid the teacher in ascertaining the correct instructional placement for each of his/her students. English teacher Kit McCormick in Seattle’s Public Schools is a teacher who is refusing to give the MAP test. From the article, above: “McCormick says teachers are never allowed to see the test, so she has no idea how to interpret her students’ scores.” “So I’m not going to do it. But I’d be happy to have my students evaluated in a way that would be meaningful for both them and me,” she says. From the article: “Instead of this kind of high-stakes testing, teachers at Garfield propose that student learning be judged by portfolios of their work.”
McCormick says teachers are never allowed to see the test so how could that test help pinpoint her instruction as she teaches, from day to day?
The article above states that “(t)he MAP test is used as part of the teacher-evaluation process, and it’s supposed to help teachers gauge students’ progress.” I suppose “gauging students’ progress” means “after the fact,” but “after the fact” does not help teachers’ pinpoint their instruction in the process of their teaching.
When we had tested all of the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students in the high school in which I worked on the Nelson Reading Test, we shared those test results with teachers, parents, counselors, and even students (when appropriate) immediately the results were ascertained. In my workshops with parents after school, I further instructed parents in how to interpret their children’s standardized test scores, such as their children’s percentile scores on the CAT, so that these parents could ascertain their children’s academic progress from year-to-year. We used test results to inform and educate all, not to evaluate teachers.
Not to show teachers the test results until after the fact and to use the test results as a vehicle primarily to evaluate teachers is not the way to go in testing, imo. Did the Seattle school system, also, weigh each student’s IQ score before evaluating teachers on their students’ test results on the MAP? If the system did not also consider students’ IQ scores, then those administrators have done their teachers a disservice by not evaluating teachers comprehensively, nor fairly, because the degree of students’ progress has many variables, such as IQ, beyond teacher instruction, and especially if the teacher has not been shown test results, initiallly, in order to ascertain correct starting points of instruction for each student. (See my link below for more detail on this.)
In summary: In my opinion, testing of students should be used for the diagnostic purposes of determining students’ correct placement in instruction, and as not as a single means of evaluating teachers. Teachers should be given a fairer, and a more comprehensive assessment of their effectiveness than a single showing of test results of students, which should be weighed thoroughly and effectively against other variable factors, such as I.Q., if it is to be used in assessing teachers’ effectiveness.
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/about-education-essay-5-assessing-teachers-and-students/
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
3:37 pm
Mary Elizabeth, Reading level test is sensible to place students in correct reading class, however, you are extrapolating this niche and specialised test to support the greater culture of what I call saturation testing. Please read the article from teacher&mom. Maybe you can make a response to this article, in addition to your experience with a reading test for purposes of gauging placement in reading instruction. As I posted above, I can relate to the teacher’s basic consternation of “We can not see what is on the test.” My main point is that when testing culture takes over a school and is promoted ad infinitum by administration that has gotten into a pattern of creating noise and requiring something to promote, it is a significant disruption to the integrity of a school and acts as a form of distraction and domination. This may be a factor underlying the Seattle teacher who is in consternation about not being able to see “the test.” I could go with a reading test at the start of the year and a final comprehensive test at the end of the year and no “noise” in-between. Or even teachers using, at the their discretion, provided pre and post tests if they choose to do so. But who am I kidding in these regulated environments. I have often thought it would make more sense to get the teaching supply materials standardised prior to leaping ahead to “test emphasis.” But who am I kidding in these regulated environments.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
3:49 pm
Most people would never recommend that doctors should not order tests for their patients in order to formulate an accurate diagnosis of the patient’s medical condition.
But there are not enough hours in the day to both teach and “diagnose” ad infinitum. Your logic-conversion is in direct opposition to teaching environment where the focus is organic teaching, and testing is held in check, if used at all. Most capable teachers do not require outside testing to know where their students are at or what they need, or what is the appropriate method to “teach” them and develop both capability/process skills and informational knowledge. It makes sense to have some sort of annual monitoring for sorting and placement of students, but otherwise testing-culture is highly intrusive to actual teaching environment. It is also highly significant that testing treats students as objects, whereas teaching and real learning treats students as individuals.
Hey Teacher
January 18th, 2013
3:51 pm
The problem at the high school level with any kind of diagnostic test given several times a year is that the students don’t take it seriously unless — like the SAT — that test gets them something for doing well on it. IMHO a test like the MAP loses its effectiveness with all but most highly motivated kids after about the 9th grade — and seems like a large waste of money.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:06 pm
There is a difference with the SAT test which is given at the conclusion of high school and is useful for students going somewhere and testing all the way through K-12 which is used as surveilling, a form of surveillance.
Therefore I suggest there are at least three types of / functions of “testing.”
1. Placement tests used for basic sorting of students to appropriate learning environment.
2. testing throughout the school year, rationalised by supposed need for “status information / feedback / know your students”
3. destination test to be used at conclusion of schooling for purpose of applying to college.
#2. is the concern and the one that has been growing like kudzu and mandated into the fabric of the school house / school year, whether the teachers want it or not.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:11 pm
The other part is that emphasis on surveillance testing is a real fine smoke screen / work-around for ignoring organization and supply of curriculum materials. Basically, “testing” has supplanted and replaced former attention to curriculum materials. It is highly dysfunctional, like taking the food out of the restaurant and replacing it with “satisfaction surveys” about “how did you like the food?” but there is none. Yes, it really is that stark. Teachers are forced to use their own time and money to work alone making teaching materials. It’s completely crazy.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:19 pm
10:10, When’s the last time you make a 10 page “packet” for 120 students at a photocopying machine? Better hope you’ve got that “auto-stapler” thing figured out. That would mean 2.5 reams of paper available at $5.99 http://www.cvs.com/shop/product-detail/Georgia-Pacific-Copy-&-Print-Paper-85-In-X-11-In?skuId=206417 = you just spent $20. and you better hope the single photocopy machine for teachers is working because that machine is under heavy load, And then there is the time aspect, after school wait in line. Don’t try and do it in the morning (6:30-7 a.m.) because you’re in a fix if the machine is out of service. This is called “teaching without textbooks.” And there’s only so much eye-fry the kids can take from a projector.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:26 pm
Oh and then the building admin. switches around half the teachers every year, mean you just lost the thousand hours you put in authoring materials to teach your class. ‘Would love to see some “data” on teacher displacement in Georgia and how many teacher and admin. are moved around each year, per school, per district. This would be highly useful information re: quality of management and management method and ethos.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:28 pm
And if the school photocopier is out of service, you just spent $50.+ at the FedEx Kinko’s store doing photocopying. Consider this to be a weekly event, budget $200./month personal funds for such activity.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
4:32 pm
$200./month, you know, after taxes. The IRS “Educator Expense Deduction” is $250. for the year. http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc458.html
Is that from Arne Duncan’s cousin at the IRS, who came up with that?
Mary Elizabeth
January 18th, 2013
5:01 pm
Private Citizen, I do not have time this afternoon to write a well-structured, cohesive response to your posts to me, but I will try to give you a response because you have raised valid concerns of me.
You must consider my background. From the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, I was an Instructional Lead Teacher for a principal (former Superintendent of Instruction) who had formed a continuous progress model school, without walls. It was based on mastery learning. Students advanced as rapidly as possible through 21 to 24 levels in reading and mathematics for grades 1 – 7, at their own rates to achieve mastery. We had to administer pre and post tests on each level in order to know if each child was properly placed. Monitoring all the children in the school in reading and math levels was a vital part of my job. Some children might advance only 2 levels in a year, and have spurt of growth the next year. Another student might advance 4 or 5 levels in a year. Children were neither bored or frustrated because our goal was to keep them all moving at their optimum levels of advancement according to their individual abilities to advance. All students were correctly placed at all times. Grade demarcations were not rigidly adherred to. On a given level – say level 8 – a 2nd and 3rd grade student might be in the same reading group on that Level 8, in reading.
Next, I went to a major suburban high school in the mid-1980s, I had had this sophisticated instructional background behind me. Therefore, as the Reading Chair for that 1,800 population high school, I wanted to give the Nelson Reading Test in-house to all of the students so that teachers and counselors would have current test results for accurate placement for instruction. I worked with all English teachers to accomplish this goal. Over the years (I retired in 2000), invariably 500 receiving 9th grade students would score on the reading vocabulary and comprehension parts of that test in the range from 4th grade level to grade level 16, with 1/2 of those 9th graders scoring on 6th grade level and below. We had a sprinkling of students even on 3rd grade level in 9th grade.
Many teachers thanked me for this knowledge. The French teacher and Foreign Language Chair, said that it was inaccurate for counselors to place students who were reading on 4th and 5th grade levels in French I in high school. She said that they should be taking the Personalized Reading course for remediation before being assigned to a foreign language course. That is why so many had failed freshmen French I in the past, she said. Likewise, poor reading scores, effect the students’ abilities to read accurately science textbooks and even math textbooks. The Mathematics Chair worked closely with me, and she found that beginning 9th graders, like beginning reading/English students, also had a wide range of mathematical skills mastered from the past upon entering 9th grade. Our reading program had schoolwide impact on all curriculum areas not only through our reading test results but also through my inservices to teachers (and parents) in how to teach reading in the content areas, thereafter.
From 33% to 40% of high school students presently drop out of school. Many have been taught on their frustration levels for years, not identified as such. 90% of prisoners in Georgia are high school drop outs. As educators, we must not put “our heads in the sand” regarding precise instructional placement throughout every student’s tenure in school.
That being said, I believe in balance. I started out as a Drama major, became an English major, and later earned an M.Ed. as a Reading Specialist. Thus, I believe in creativity in instruction as well as testing for precision so that we can turn around our poor showing with our school drop-out rates in Georgia. I am not “for” or “against” one mode of learning over another. We need both the precise and the creative in teaching. Teaching is both an art and a science. Perhaps, because of the pressure of “Race To the Top,” an over-emphasis is being placed on too much testing – and testing for the wrong purposes, i.e. to evaluate teachers and schools, instead as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint instruction. Even in the model continuous progress school in which I served as ILT, social studies classes and science classes did not incorporate the continuous progress, continuous testing model that I described for reading and math advancement. Courses are varied, and we must allow for creativity in education as much as for testing as a diagnostic tool. Too much testing is used wrongly now, imo, as a punitive vehicle instead of as an enlightening aid to foster more excellent, targeted instruction.
Reading effects every subject area. We must find a way in traditional public education to stop the drop-out rate among so many students. I believe I have shared information that could help curb this unacceptable drop-out rate, if those in positions to change public eduction will heed my thoughts which come from years of firsthand experience in which we had excellent results. The reading program in the high school in which I served as a teacher and Reading Department Chair was – at one time – the largest secondary reading program in the state of Georgia. We had 3 fulltime reading specialists and 2 reading paraprofessionals who served over 600 students daily counting our before and after school programs, and the lunchtime reading activities also. Most of our students elected our courses and programs and were not assigned to them. Our community/school outreach was to all interested parents and to all 100 teaching staff members.
This post is not as cohesive as my posts usually are, but I have no more time to edit it and to make it moreso. I hope I have addressed most of your inquiries of my thinking. We must reform public education so that we are not losing a third of our students as drop-outs. And, we must not allow schools to become places of fear for teachers and students because of the threat of tests to job security. Testing should be done for diagnostic purposes to enhance instruction, with teachers being a part of the process, and not intimidated by it. Teachers and students work best in a nurturing, creative environment. We must value teachers and treat them with respect and allow them some degree of instructional autonomy because they are professionals with unique knowledge not only of academics but also of human nature and of what fosters growth.
10:10 am
January 18th, 2013
5:13 pm
Private Citizen, we can’t (sigh!) help noticing all the free time your oh-so busy “teaching” schedule leaves you with.
Lucky you’re not employed out in the real world—eh?
(though unfortunate for any readers who haven’t fled this column twenty of your comments ago!)
Wilbur
January 18th, 2013
5:15 pm
If you don’t allow testing, it’s not possible for an outsider to evaluate the teacher. That is the goal…not that they really care about the test. Teachers do lots of things that they might not think make sense. They are taking this particular stand for a reason.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
5:35 pm
10:10, I see you have a “fun nature.” Well and good. I am currently not teaching, however I have recent experience that I think is relevant. For example, please read that Washington Post article it pretty much describes my previous work environment – it is eery, so similar. My prior year, I went from 7 to sometimes 5 hours of sleep a night. If I was teaching, I would not be reading this weblog. Thank for your genuine concern and insight. One of the things about this type discussion weblog is that there are so many different school house environments. I hope to provide some awareness about at least one type systematic environment, which seems to be a norm in some places, according to the WP article. Ciao.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
5:36 pm
Real world? You’re right, I’ve never worked on an offshore oil rig.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
5:43 pm
ME, Allow me to recognise your service to students and community. Thank you. You’ve written a thorough and well-expressed essay. I will read it a few times for thorough understanding before reply. Please give a look at the Washington Post article, which is much resonant of my current experience, practically describes it, the testing rhythm during school year. We have different work experience and I recognise your “voice” and makes me to think of an experienced, conscientious and valuable staff member I did much work with who did similar work to yourself. Anyway, I look forward to some cogent dialogue on your post, though I want to read it more than once so that I have solid bearing. Thank you again and allow me to recognise your level of service to all of us and to the state and future of the young people you shepherded with care.
Mary Elizabeth
January 18th, 2013
5:51 pm
@ Private Citizen, 5:43 pm
Thank you for your gracious and kind remarks to me. I will be sure to read the Washington Post article which you have recommended to me, but it will have to be later – over the weekend – and, then, I will respond to it.
Thank you again, and enjoy your weekend!
csdparentteacher
January 18th, 2013
5:52 pm
Hi Maureen -
I teach in CSD and I have a child in the system, as well. I worked in Dekalb for 23 years until this past May when an excellent opportunity in CSD opened up. I’ve only been in the system since July, but I’ve given the MAP twice and I like it much better than the meaningless tests we were constantly giving in Dekalb. As a Special Educator, it gives me much more information than I ever received from the other tests. I, too, believe assessments must be authentic, and the MAP is much more authentic than any pre- or post-test we gave in DCSD. I was able to pinpoint exactly where my students were at mid-year and use it to plan for their individual needs at the beginning of this semester.
10:10 am
January 18th, 2013
5:55 pm
ZZzzzzzzzzz …
Advanced students
January 18th, 2013
5:58 pm
We take an adaptive test similar to the MAP. Basically, it asks the students harder and harder questions until they don’t even understand what the question means.
When your kids ace the CRCTs (generally 0 to 2 questions wrong on each section), that test becomes irrelevant. This year, my 5th grader tested at an average 8th grade level on our “MAP.” I don’t know if that means that he’s super smart or that average 8th graders are daft. But if I look at his scores from year to year, then I do have a good idea of his progress.
Jerry Eads
January 18th, 2013
6:01 pm
Looks like your ears have been pinned back sufficiently. Bracey would have had your hide. A test is worth giving when it provides information to the teacher that’s usable to help the student. Your MAP might do that if it meets conditions as noted by others above. Otherwise, it’s wasted time. You already know what I think about the utility of the state’s testing.
I was given a testing schedule for a large metro district a few years ago. I added up the time taken for the local and state tests being given, and estimated the additional amount of instructional time lost caused by inane scheduling problems with state test administration (e.g., if a herd of students is off taking a math EOCT, they’re not in their math or science or English class that period, so teachers have to modifly their instruction that day because of the testing absences). I didn’t add in any estimate of real teaching lost to desperation test prep. Kinda boiled down to not much teaching going on after March. Looked like we lost about a month of learning out of the nine. Teachers risking their jobs by standing up to such destructive practice, in my book, is a good thing for our kids and the future of our society.
Point is, teachers “test” all the time. They’re ALWAYS assessing their kids. Hundreds of times a day. Those data taken together are far, far, far, far more accurate than the single shot in the dark of an high-stakes test required from above. I’d argue for using the money wasted on state testing to help teachers improve their classroom assessment practices.
Lee
January 18th, 2013
6:07 pm
Holy cow, methinks someone needs to get out of the house more – or is it get back to work?
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Home-tutoring parent
January 18th, 2013
6:15 pm
HS Public Teacher,
I wholeheartedly agree with you that mass standardized testing has gotten completely out of hand. Students need to be evaluated by their teachers, and deficiencies can be addressed in the classroom and/or (if money or volunteers are available) after school. I find fill-in-the-bubble rapid-read/rapid-response multiple choice tests to be vexing, if not reprehensible.
When I went to school, we took state tests once a year in 3rd through 6th grades. These were substantially IQ tests used to place students either in the first, second or third track, or beyond-regular-first-track “gifted” classes.
We took SAT in fall of 12th grade, and some of us took three 11th-12th grade subject-aligned “Achievement Tests” the Saturday after the SAT. One time. Some of us took the PSAT. One time as well, in 11th grade.
Not living in NYC, we didn’t have Kaplan’s SAT-prep courses, we just took the tests, largely unprepared, except for English teachers’ vocabulary teaching and quizzing.
Our home-taught kids didn’t take mass-administered tests until they were applying for summer enrichment programs as teenagers, when it became necessary for them to take the SAT for enrollment, so we went to B&N and got test-prep books and old-SAT practice tests. (Test-prep courses were available, but we did not avail ourselves of them.)
As an at-home tutor, it was necessary to “validate” my kids’ “education” by sending them to expensive distant “summer schools” so they could demonstrate their knowledge among conventionally schooled college-prep students and begin acclimating to classroom instruction, as well as experience dormitory-living.
The SAT (or ACT ) was required by the colleges and universities they applied to, as well. So we prepped for both, working 3 hours, three days a week for about 6 weeks, and my kids took both tests, as well as four 11th-12th-grade-level College Board Subject Tests: Writing, US History, Physics and Math Level II.
Test-prepping worked, as pre-prepping practice-test scores substantially rose for “the real thing” tests.
But I can’t countenance this as an every-year regimen for any young person (and I would note, private schools are exempted from this mandatory testing scheme, so their teachers can focus on what they believe is important for their students to learn).
On the PSAT, SAT and ACT:
The PSAT is not actually an SAT-preview test. Probably nearly half the kids who take PSAT never take the SAT, but they take the ACT, which is very different from the SAT.
The PSAT is a 1 hour test that contains a reduced-sampling of old otherwise-discarded SAT questions. It’s approximately one-third the length of the SAT, and is scored the same, with end-score SAT zero’s lopped off, e.g. a PSAT 195 score is the shorter test’s equivalent to the longer test’s 1950. PSAT is given, at no cost to students (whereas students have to pay to take the SAT, if not socioeconomically disadvantaged and eligible for fee waiver, which waiver is good for one SAT only, not repeated test-takings, in most cases), to the top 40% of public school students, who are selected by their enrollment in college-track classes, and their course grades.
Private schools often administer PSAT to most or all of their students, but private schools must pay fees to the College Board for the test’s administration, and parents are either charged by their children’s schools, or the fees are included in tuition.
The PSAT’s purpose is to identify students who “academically merit” National Merit Scholarship awards, originally funded solely by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), but nowadays by many colleges and universities as well.
In a nutshell, the top 2% PSAT-scoring students are named “Semifinalists”. Their schools then submit information on the Semifinalists’ extracurricular activities, primarily in-school (school newspaper, yearbook, school-led community service, interscholastic sports, et al.), along with narrative comments by these activities’ faculty supervisors, and by any other teachers who know the Semifinalists and want to comment, as well.
The NMSC then picks “Finalists”. The Finalists school-submitted materials are scrutinized, and a small percentage of Finalists are hand-selected to receive NMSC-provided college scholarships, and be named National Merit Scholars.
In recent decades, the NMSC has encouraged colleges and universities to provide their own scholarships under the NMSC-authorized title “National Merit Scholarships”, thus greatly expanding the opportunity for beyond-NMSC’s-funding-limits Finalists to become college-grant-receiving National Merit Scholars.
The PSAT is administered in the vast majority of public high schools coast-to-coast, including thousands of high schools in ACT-primary states (today ca. 25 mostly inland states), so hundreds of thousands of students take the PSAT, and then take the ACT for college application purposes.
Practice testing is always beneficial. The NMSC allows schools to administer the test repeatedly, and so many private schools have been giving it to their 10th graders since the 1990s (in some schools this is most of their 10th graders), and a goodly number of private schools now even give it to many or most of their 9th graders, so that the “real thing” 11th grade administration is the second or third go-around for these students. (The College Board makes a lot of money from repeat testing, so it completely condones private-schools’ scores-boosting.)
Students are encouraged, but not required, to list colleges they are interested in in their pre-test form-filling out, and their PSAT scores are sent to these institutions of higher education. This generates slews of glossy brochures and “We hope you will consider visiting us, we encourage you to contact us,” boilerplate letters being sent to higher PSAT scorers.
For the SAT and ACT, it’s “standard practice” in “better” private schools for most, and often all, students to take either the SAT or ACT at least twice. Long ago, some private schools “picked up on” the fact that their moderate-ability students, and less-able students often earned higher “percentile scores” on ACT than on SAT, because the ACT was “aligned” with standard college-prep curricula (the reason for its original invention in the 1950s was to test students’ subject knowledge, when the SAT was substantially an “IQ test”.) In many communities, in SAT-primary states, public schools’ guidance counselors also began recommending the ACT to non-top students, and today this practice is widespread.
Some 15-20 years ago, researchers at the University of Texas-Austin performed a statistical evaluation of SAT and ACT scores for ca. 100,000 students who took both tests. This was done because the state was considering switching from the ACT to the SAT as its primary college-entrance test, due to the fact it was making a major push to expand College Board AP programs, and also because the College Board offered sub-AP 11th-12th grade level Subject Tests (formerly titled Achievement Tests, then SAT II Subject Tests), that more-prestigious colleges (e.g. Rice University and many outside-of-Texas private colleges) required, and it seemed sensible, in order to “coordinate” testing, to use only one test source. (This may have also saved money, ala modern telecommunications “service bundling”.)
But, the question was, would switching hurt students? UTA researchers were able to develop a scores “concordance” scale (essentially an SAT/ACT scores inter-conversion table), that the College Board and what is now ACT.org (its predecessor’s name eludes me) evaluated and supported.
UTA researchers statistically demonstrated that a large population’s mean 4-subject ACT score of 21, for example, concorded with a 990-1010 SAT M+V score. (Readers here can Google “SAT ACT scores concordance” to see the complete scores-comparison table).
As the concordance scale has been universally accepted, all colleges today that formerly required the SAT exclusively now accept ACT scores, and those that formerly required the ACT exclusively now accept SAT scores.
However this large-population statistical scores’ correspondence does not hold for many individual students, as significant numbers of individual 21 ACT takers score as low as the mid 900s and as high as 1100.
This is why many kids today take both the SAT and the ACT, then send their “best scores” to the colleges they apply to.
Colleges and universities are given ALL SAT results less than 5 years old for students who choose to have SAT scores submitted, while ACT.org allows students to personally select “their best” ACT result for ACT.org to submit to colleges, and thus any other ACT results are not seen by the colleges being applied to. Students can alternatively have ACT.org send two (or more) different-date results, as an option, as well.
Today, even though colleges receive all of an applicant’s different-date SAT scores, if a student selects to have SAT scores submitted, instead of ACT scores, the very-competitive colleges’ admissions office staff circle the highest component-test scores, and rewrite a “best composite score” for the admissions committees to evaluate. Hence, if test-date-1 has a 720 M, 690 V, 660 W, test-date-2 has a 700 M, 710 V, 690 W, test-date-3 has a 670 M, 690 V, 720 W, the admissions committee sees 720 M, 710 V, 730 W, and 2160 combined score, even though actual individual-date scores are substantially lower: 2070, 2100 and 2080.
These institutions do the same for multiple-date ACT scores.
The old days of “one and done”, little or no prep ACT/SAT taking, are quaint anachronisms for modern upper-middle-income and affluent families. The College Board maintains that repeated SAT-taking doesn’t boost scores significantly, but informed college counselors and families believe differently. They “get” the value of increasing their children’s familiarity with the test’s format, and students’ developing time-management strategies to complete the test, or as much of it, as is feasible, including skipping questions that students cannot quickly knowledgeably answer. These scores-boosting factors represent learning by doing repeatedly.
Moreover, the SAT deducts fractional points for wrong answers, relative to making no deductions for unfilled bubbles. The ACT does not impose this penalty, it only tabulates total correct answers. Naive first-time test takers often “get bogged down” on hard questions, and find that they haven’t gotten to the end of the test when the proctor shouts, in drill-sargeant fashion, “STOP! ALL PENCILS DOWN!
Princeton Review, which administers several practice tests trains students that if they can knowledgeably eliminate two wrong SAT choices on four-choice questions , then guessing between the remaining two choices is smart practice. In essence, if students face two questions like this, simple chance generates a mean outcome of one correct and and one incorrect choice. The former choice generates +1 point, the latter deducts .33 point, for a net +.67 point benefit.
The disadvantage to this stratagem is the time taken to tackle such questions, so PR trains students to run through all the questions that can be readily answered, then if time remains, go back and use the partial knowledgeable-elimination/ partial-guessing method on as many initially-skipped questions as possible before the proctor announces that time is up.
Finally, I was a cheater on the SAT. I did not higher a ringer, or look at other people’s test. I was A TIME CHEATER. They gave the SAT-M and V tests in a single booklet, and interspersed 2 M tests with 2-3 V tests. I zipped through the V sections long before time was up, and turned back to unfinished M tests. I knew math, but was “slow”. Actually, I was deliberate in doing math.
The College Board insists that extra time doesn’t help students, but yet CB now “accommodates” LD students with extended-period test-taking, for example ADD students, provided that their doctors’ supply proper documentation. In truth, SAT has always implicitly rewarded fast-reading skills, even on the M test which has “trick questions” that “trip up” students who in a rush make answer choices that appear to be “right” at first glance, but are not upon full consideration. (Kaplan noticed this perversity 6 decades ago.)
I believe that all students should have extended time, if they want it. My kids’ lowest SAT-family scores were 700-710 on the SAT M (94th-95th percentile among all SAT takers, including future humanities and arts majors) but they scored 780-800 on Level II Math, which was 95th-99th percentile among a far smaller test-taking population comprised almost exclusively of future STEM- major students.
The L2 Math test had, primarily Algebra II, Trigonometry and Precalculus functions course-aligned questions, generally multi-step, with much more time given to answer them. Basically SAT-M was a read-fast, eyeball-recognize, and choose the correct answer test, while the L2 Math test was a “Here are some complicated problems, solve them” test, which included a number of free-response questions that required more than “educated guessing” to get right.
L2 M is a sound mathematics-knowledge-and-skills assessment test. SAT M is not a sound mathematics-skills-assessment test, because it would be ludicrous to say that my kids didn’t have superb “basic” pre-algebra, algebra I, and elementary plane geometry level math skills, but they possessed superb “advanced high school math” skills. You can’t develop superb advanced-subject math skills without possessing superb more-elementary-subject math skills.
For example, in timed-at-home testing emulating “real test” conditions, my kids missed some problems. But in marking misses, and revisiting the questions, they readily corrected all their errors, on their own, without utilizing any textbooks, me or other resources. They knew the math, but the time-constraint and “trip up the unwary” format did not allow this knowledge to be properly demonstrated.
Machine-scored mass standardized testing applied to all public schoolchildren, and to nearly all 4-year college hopefuls (a few “elite” liberal arts colleges don’t require SAT or ACT for admission, but they do require transcripts and recommendation letters from people who have taught or supervised and know the applicants and can present them as persons, not test-performance statistics) is deeply flawed.
It is also deeply flawed that we have huge public “higher education” institutions that have historically only looked at applicants’ GPAs and SAT/ACT scores to make admit/reject decisions.
I attended such an institution. My kids went to colleges that required narrative evaluations for admission (which credible summer-school instructors were happy to write on my kids’ behalf.)
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
6:18 pm
10:10 These are the “real world” workers I admire. For real. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSw1BihUO5Q
Broken system is broken
January 18th, 2013
6:25 pm
Let’s to kid ourselves anymore: high stakes tests are designed to show what teachers didn’t teach, not what students did or didn’t learn. The punitive nature of basing teacher evaluation on tests that are not properly vetted to ensure content/curriculum alignment demonstrates just how far the public impression of teachers has fallen. No other public or private sector career field has to endure this kind of humiliating, demeaning, and downright grossly unprofessional evaluation methodology with so remuneration.
Broken system is broken
January 18th, 2013
6:27 pm
Let’s not kid ourselves anymore: high stakes tests are designed to show what teachers didn’t teach, not what students did or didn’t learn. The punitive nature of basing teacher evaluation on tests that are not properly vetted to ensure content/curriculum alignment demonstrates just how far the public impression of teachers has fallen. Students are absolutely not getting anything out of this testing process other than having to deal with stressed-out adults.
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
January 18th, 2013
6:45 pm
I have mixed feelings about the MAP test.
CONS:
-It costs a great deal for the district to purchase – money that could have gone elsewhere.
-It can take over an hour for a child to take one subject. If they take the three subjects (Reading, Math, ELA) we administer, that is almost three hours of testing. Administer it three times a year, and you are looking at nine hours or more on this test – and then ITBS, Cog AT, CRCT and unit tests on top of that.
- Some students do not take it seriously, and their scores are not particularly useful.
-Teachers and schools are judged by test results, which can be problematic, taken the point right above concerning student motivation to do their best.
-It books up our computer labs for three weeks straight, three times a year. That is nine weeks of the year when the computer labs are unavailable for anything else.
-It can be very difficult for struggling students to make it through the lengthy test.
-There is a real possibility of burning out children on high stakes test taking while they are still in elementary school.
PROS
- *IF* students take it seriously, it can provide some very detailed information about student strengths and weaknesses.
-*IF* students take it seriously, it can assist teachers in differentiated instruction and flexible grouping.
-*IF* students take it seriously it can assist in identifying students who might benefit from gifted instruction or support services.
-*IF* students take it seriously it can help schools determine overall areas of weaknesses in instruction.
-*IF* students take it seriously it can help identify teachers with higher scores in particular areas, so that those targeted teachers can share their particular instructional strategies with colleagues.
-*IF* students take it seriously, it can be used to provide parents with specific skills to target to help their children improve academically.
In short, it can be a very useful tool, if used appropriately – it can help guide instruction and target areas of strength and weakness. However, it only really works if children put forth effort and do well, and many will not bother as there are no consequences for them. There can, however, be serious consequences for the teacher.
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
7:49 pm
I scored 15/21 on this test without looking anything up. Not bad. The price is right. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/0107/How-well-do-you-know-India-Take-the-quiz/City
Private Citizen
January 18th, 2013
7:51 pm
PS The Hindu spring festival of colors is known as: Holi. (There’s one for you. -I had that one wrong.)
Goodteacher
January 18th, 2013
8:49 pm
How do we measure if they have learned anything? Why not try talking to them or listening to them read (elementary school). Give them a few words and ask them to use them in a sentence. The tests are not child friendly..they are very deceptive. They take time away from the business at hand…teaching and learning. Just like testing is big business, with lots of shady characters.
Momof2
January 18th, 2013
9:15 pm
I’m not sure if anyone has already mentioned the following, but it bears a thought.
“McCormick said she was particularly dismayed when a district staff member told her that the test’s margin of error is greater than the gains her students are expected to make.”
If the district staff member is correct, then I would think that it would be difficult to figure out how much knowledge your students really did gain. It would also concern me if this were part of my professional evaluation.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020106684_notest11m.html
Dr. Monica Henson
January 18th, 2013
9:44 pm
The problem I have with the MAP tests, which we do not use in our school, is that they are generic and nationally normed, not specifically designed for Georgia (or any other state’s) curriculum standards–although NWAC, the purveyor of the tests, will tell you that they are “correlated” to state standards wherever they are trying to sell them. And to a limited degree, that’s true. A question about algebra can be said to “correlate with” the math standards in just about every state. However, the way the question is asked is where the rubber meets the road. Some states are heavy on multiple-choice tests for state exams, and the types of question stems vary widely from state to state.
Assessment is supposed to inform instruction as well as reflect curriculum design. Mass-produced, generic tests normed nationally and sold across the country provide a measure of assessment that isn’t particularly useful to classroom teachers. I can understand the teachers’ frustration that they aren’t able to use the tests to inform their classroom practice. That’s the reason why we don’t use them.
Former Georgian
January 18th, 2013
10:26 pm
As a teacher, I am fine with giving legitimate standardized tests and using them as part of the teacher evaluation as long as the students are also held accountable for their performance on the tests. However, when I taught in SC and gave a test that was going to be used in the future to evaluate teachers, I had 2 students who proudly showed me their answer sheets 5 minutes after testing started so I could see the Christmas tree they had made with their answers. And I’m supposed to be accountable for the results on their tests?
Truth in Moderation
January 18th, 2013
11:37 pm
@Lee
This is his job. He’s a paid obstructionist. Seriously. I think he hails from the Emory area…..
Truth in Moderation
January 18th, 2013
11:46 pm
Home Tutoring parent is not. Sounds too “PC” to me.
We can now assume the testing industry is well represented on today’s blog.
Ron
January 18th, 2013
11:50 pm
The point is there is way too much testing going on, and for what purpose?
Truth in Moderation
January 19th, 2013
12:38 am
@Ron
For mind control. Choker collar was correct to bring up CRESST and Eva Baker. Her tax payer funded group has been working on computer based assessments since the EARLY 90′S!
Here’s a detailed account of their work toward this goal of a “MAPS” type test from 1997:
http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/TECH459.pdf
Truth in Moderation
January 19th, 2013
12:46 am
More:
“Model-based Performance Assessment”
Eva L. Baker
CRESST UCLA 1998
http://www.cse.ucla.edu/products/reports/TECH465.pdf
lance manion
January 19th, 2013
8:02 am
This is not about testing, rather it is an issue of employees not doing as instructed. It is not the teachers’ call as to what tests should be administered. They work under the direction of the school board and must do as they are instructed. I would fire them at the end of the year and replace them with good young teachers who have just graduated and would appreieciate the opportunity to teach. My guess is these teachers are all union members, and that would say it all.
Whirled Peas
January 19th, 2013
8:31 am
The public schools in our country are a mess. They are a black hole down which politicians pour our tax money.
It is time for vouchers. Let the parents decide the school they want to send their kids to, not the politicians.
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
9:34 am
Lee / Truth, The question is are we getting anything done? That is my objective, real meaning. Posting times? Html and servers do not change in cost if you post ten words or a thousand. Fine with me if a discussion thread turns to 20 pages, I wish it would. Hey, here’s something I stumbled upon, God knows why. It’s treatment videos from a doctor at Medical College of Georgia (Augusta area) (one of the state’s few medical schools/ main public treatment medical school for the state) (there’s five medical schools total and maybe three main and two peripheral). Hey, learn about your state and real conditions. http://www.youtube.com/user/lmellick?feature=watch I, for one, vote for more dentists and doctors and have done my best, boots on the ground, to make that foundation.
I Teach Writing
January 19th, 2013
9:40 am
@Mary Elizabeth (5:01 pm) Wonderfully cogent thoughts on how testing, judiciously deployed at the local level, can be a boon to all. I also greatly appreciate the practical evidence of disciplinary interpenetration, which demonstrates that effective school organization and effective teaching affect ALL classrooms, not just “subject” classrooms.
I see the effects of poor K-12 reading instruction daily in the college classroom, so I can only imagine how poorly students read who don’t make the college move (or don’t even finish HS). That’s not an education problem. That’s a “prevent the predatory-lending-fed housing bubble, and thereby perhaps a massive recession” problem.
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
9:43 am
Lance, This is not about testing, rather it is an issue of employees not doing as instructed. It is not the teachers’ call as to what tests should be administered.
But that’s the point, it should be. Lance here is how it works, vertical column of power:
1. the people at the top are entwined with business interests / conflict of interest. Gates probably owns shares in the testing company. You need to see this. They’re doing a corporate motive and a lot of checks are paid to corporate companies. “Race to the Top” “award” money is then paid out to the corporate entities.
2. the state level middle managers are not the decision makers who decide the testing that is needed. They are doing nothing more than following orders from central power and making people do things. This is a big change is how things are done or have been done in the United States. It is a radical development, this level of central command, and it is central command that is connected to corporate business interests. This is being done when 10% of the populace (the owners) has more wealth than the other 90% of the people. USA is at the top right now of income disparity in developed countries.
3. Teachers are the actual professional practitioners. They’re the ones who are trained licensed professionals and know their job. Their voice counts and should not be dismissed.
If you have been conditioned to obey while ignoring income disparity and where the money is going, you are exactly the kind of adult these folks desire to produce.
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
9:53 am
Lance, This is really about teachers being denied the ability to run their classrooms to meet their mission.
Repeated testing of kids during the school year is really intrusive and changes the tone of everything. If the same people demanding the testing also provided teaching materials to match the tests, that would be different, but they don’t. That’s what’s foul about the whole thing. At least in Georgia where is are so few teaching materials in many subject areas.
The ought to have a law to only allow testing where they provide the teaching materials to go with the testing.
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
10:00 am
NEW IDEA
The problem with the testing is that there is no market environment to assure quality.
bootney farnsworth
January 19th, 2013
10:58 am
people seem to forget the original purpose of standardized testing was to establish baselines on matters of common knowledge. kinda to get a sense of what most people knew at a particular level.
Iowa, being the vaunted middle America we all were told to aspire towards, was the standard.
again, standard. not the remarkable extremes, standard.
where standardized testing fails is it has been warped from A diagnostic tool into THE alleged diagnostic tool.
when you go to the doctor, they tend to do certain standardized things. height, weight, BP, temp, ect to see where you are on a baseline. they how you vary off the baseline is how they help determine what’s going wrong. or right.
it was supposed to be the same thing.
standardized tests are not wrong nor right, any more than a day is good or bad based on sunrise.
Dr. Monica Henson
January 19th, 2013
11:01 am
It’s not an either/or proposition. It’s an issue of whether the testing administered accomplishes a sufficiently useful purpose to justify the class time that must be appropriated for it (MAP does not), AND whether employees of the state have the ability to determine whether they will obey the direction of those charged with administering their employment (they do not).
Simple civil disobedience lesson: you can stand up for your beliefs all you want, but you must be prepared to pay the price for doing so. If a classroom teacher refuses to administer a test as directed, then s/he runs the risk of losing the job. If enough teachers refuse, en masse, then the situation may or may not change. They have to decide if the risk is worth the potential reward.
bootney farnsworth
January 19th, 2013
11:06 am
to me, the big issue is: has this been an ongoing debate, or was this a knee jerk reaction?
if there has been a long back and forth with both sides working towards a solution, then I can reluctantly agree with the decision not to offer the test.
if it was a snap decision to say no, I ain’t gonna – perhaps some people need to be removed from classroom duties.
my suspicions went up when I saw the “academic dean” bit. there is not a public system in the US which is so damn good it merits giving someone the title dean. this bit of grandstanding makes me suspicious of the faculty
Dr. Monica Henson
January 19th, 2013
11:45 am
Actually, outside the Southeast, many public schools have deans. It’s just a matter of terminology. Deans can be compared to assistant principals. I was a Dean of Curriculum & Instruction when I worked in New England.
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
4:11 pm
Heyey Truth, Shooey, I guess remote viewing is not going to be on the “common core” -may be difficult to “test.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3-kQbNCVOI it’s based on “absolutely no prior knowledge.”
Private Citizen
January 19th, 2013
4:30 pm
This is actually a pretty interesting counterpoint to “testing” rationale: Applied Nonlinear Dynamic Systems http://lhscientificpublishing.com/journals/JAND-Default.aspx
Truth in Moderation
January 19th, 2013
8:21 pm
“Washington Post story for Aug. 7, 1977 (”Psychic Spying?”) explained how the CIA beamed signals to Stanford University at the very time researchers there conducted remote viewing experiments. Were images beamed to the heads of the participants?”
“Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A. (Paperback) by Alex Constantine”
Truth in Moderation
January 20th, 2013
12:10 am
A different kind of test…
“CIA Must Disclose Data on Human Experiments”
By ANNIE YOUDERIAN
“(CN) – A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the CIA to produce specific records and testimony about the human experiments the government allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.
Three veterans groups and six individual veterans sued the CIA and other government agencies, claiming they used about 7,800 soldiers as human guinea pigs to research biological, chemical and psychological weapons.
The experiments, many of which took place at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick in Maryland, allegedly exposed test subjects to chemicals, drugs and electronic implants.”
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/11/17/31924.htm
Truth in Moderation
January 20th, 2013
12:15 am
Feinstein blogwashing: COMPLETE
Truth in Moderation
January 20th, 2013
12:51 am
WOW WOW! Rick Brant spills the beans on remote brain control research in 1957!!!!!!
CHAPTER XV
A Matter of Brain Waves
“On the evening of the cereal fiasco, Parnell Winston returned to Spindrift after another visit to Dr. Chavez. He called Steve Ames and spent a long time talking to the JANIG agent. Then he called the project team and the boys into the library.
“We’re on the track of something,” he reported. “At least we think we are. It’s so incredible that I simply can’t believe it. If true, it means some unfriendly nation is so far ahead of us scientifically that we should all be trembling in our boots.”
Rick had realized that only agents of a hostile country could be involved in the actions against the project team. Everyone present had known as much, without a word being spoken. Only another country could gain from disruption of the project.
“Chavez and I have run a series of EEG’s on Marks. We now have the records of EEG’s on the other two team members, and Steve has managed to turn up a pre-project EEG on one which gives us a basis of comparison. Now, to comprehend our tentative hypothesis, you must understand something of what is known about the brain.”
Rick prepared to listen without much understanding. The field in which Parnell Winston worked was new and strange to him, and while he understood some of the basic theories, he got lost when Winston got highly technical.
“Our understanding of the human brain is fairly[156] recent,” Winston began, “and we’re still only on the threshold of knowledge. In a way, we’ve just discovered the tools of research. The principal tool, of course, is electricity. Through it we can explore the electrochemical nature of brain processes.”
Rick was with him so far. He concentrated hard, not wanting to miss a word.
“There’s no point in reviewing the entire history of brain physiology. You all know of Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes. And you all know that Fritsch and Hitzig demonstrated that, when electrically stimulated, certain portions of the brain show a response. You also know that Caton discovered many years ago that the brain itself produces electric currents.”
Rick didn’t know, but he intended to find out. There must be some works on brain physiology in the library.
“However, the important modern work started with Berger in the late 1920’s. He found that the brain emits a definite pulse of activity, which was then known as the ‘Berger rhythm.’
“Since then, Berger’s work has been very much refined. We now know that the brain actually produces a number of clearly defined electrical rhythms. These rhythms have been used in medical diagnosis of brain injury. Walter, in England, has even developed a machine that will show whether or not people will get along with each other, by analysis of their wave patterns.”[157]
This was interesting, and Rick intended to find out more about it. But he began to wish Winston would come to the point.
“I might add that the rhythmic brain patterns seem to be highly individual. No two are alike, even in identical twins. However, each person shows a pattern that remains fairly constant, even over a period of years.
“With this background, you will understand when I report that the EEG’s taken of our colleagues brains are completely abnormal. The EEG’s were taken while they were awake. Yet, the most prominent pattern is the delta rhythm that is universally associated with sleep and some types of damage to the brain.”
“Are there any other signs of physical damage?” Hartson Brant asked.
“No. All tests are negative. Spinal taps show no concussion, and there is no evidence of trauma of any kind other than psychic. Yet, the delta rhythms persist. In the one case where we have an EEG taken before the—incidents, let’s call them—the pattern is entirely different. The scientist had a pattern of a well-known type which bears no resemblance to the EEG taken after the incident.”
Dr. Morrison leaned forward. “What is your conclusion?”
“That our mysterious enemy has somehow caused damage of an unknown kind, by remote means. And that can mean only one thing: The damage was[158] caused electronically, probably by transmission through the air.”
“Incredible,” Weiss muttered, and the sentiment was reflected in the astonished gasps of the others.
“Let’s consider the implications of Parnell’s statement,” Hartson Brant said slowly. “If he is correct, then the enemy has devised a means for causing brain disruption in an individual. A transmitted signal would inevitably strike countless others; there can be no such thing as a beam of radiation that strikes one person at a distance while missing all others. Therefore, this beam must affect only one person among many.”
“But how can a beam be tuned to one person?” Rick asked.
“I don’t know, Rick.” Hartson Brant turned to Winston. “Do you?”
“No. I have only a hypothesis, and one so far afield from what we know of the brain today that I even hesitate to suggest it. Let me ask a question. If the enemy could have access to the brain pattern of an individual—and remember such patterns are no more similar than fingerprints—could the enemy then transmit a signal that would affect only that pattern?”
Julius Weiss objected. “The supposition is based on scientific knowledge that does not exist.”
“So far as we know,” Dr. Morrison added.
A RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE STORY
THE
ELECTRONIC
MIND READER
BY JOHN BLAINE
© BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1957
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28813/28813-h/28813-h.htm#CHAPTER_XV
p. 154
Our family loved reading these books together. AT THE TIME, I HAD NO IDEA THE GOVERNMENT WAS ACTUALLY DOING SOME OF THIS!
This must have been cover, to make kids believe it was just fiction.
Truth in Moderation
January 20th, 2013
7:39 am
MORE MILITARY GUINEA PIGS FOR MIND CONTROL EXPERIMENTS!
Now, using “CRISIS ACTORS!”
I’m not making this up!
“MARINES STUDYING MINDFULNESS-BASED TRAINING”
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MEDITATING_MARINES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-19-14-32-11
Truth in Moderation
January 20th, 2013
8:18 am
One reason teachers WON’T be getting raises….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/lloyd-blankfein-pay-raise_b_2507012.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
Private Citizen
January 20th, 2013
9:39 am
New vocabulary for USA 2013: crisis actor
N. GA Teacher
January 21st, 2013
12:47 am
The teachers are not opposed to testing, but rightly opposed to issuing standardized tests created by outside agencies which may or may not match the curriculum. Let me give you two perspectives. First, think of the great private schools in your city. There is NO doubt that academic excellence and rigor is a priority, right? Yet they issue no “state standardized test” at the end of regular courses ( AP courses have such tests, but they are for COLLEGE credit). Teachers are responsible for making up tests and other evaluations that make sense. The second perspective is historical for public schools. Prior to the 1990s, teachers were treated as professionals whose judgement of student accomplishment was trusted. Things worked! We had to EARN our grades. It was only when some politicians and social engineers got involved that schools got out of control and standardized tests were installed as “watchdogs”. And then schools figured out how to get around these. Go figure.
Truth in Moderation
January 21st, 2013
5:17 pm
Forget assessments. Some “scientists” are going straight for MIND CONTROL:
Alzheimer’s patients are the next lab rats for electrode brain implants. This time, thanks to the wonder of miniaturization, the jolts can be delivered continually FROM A BATTERY PACK INSIDE THE BODY. REMEMBER RICK BRANT’S WARNING!
“The research is in its infancy. Only a few dozen people with early-stage Alzheimer’s will be implanted in a handful of hospitals. No one knows if it might work, and if it does, how long the effects might last.”
“The new approach is called deep brain stimulation, or DBS. While it won’t attack Alzheimer’s root cause either, “maybe we can make the brain work better,” he said.
Implanting electrodes into the brain isn’t new.”
Read more: ‘Brain Pacemakers’ Offer Hope to Alzheimer’s Patients
Important: At Risk For A Heart Attack? Find Out Now.
Read more: ‘Brain Pacemakers’ Offer Hope to Alzheimer’s Patients
http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/health_stories/alzheimers_pacemakers_zap/2013/01/20/492712.html?promo_code=EACE-1&utm_source=GatewayPundit&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1
Pride and Joy
January 23rd, 2013
3:43 am
Incompetent teachers will ALWAYS clamor for no standardized or other testing because it reveals something about their work that they don’t want others to know.
Competent teachers and logical, educated people welcome standardized tests.
I am a parent. I pay twice for public schools AND pay the private school tax.
You can bet your butt that I DESERVE to know what I am getting for my hard-earned tax dollars.
Eveyr parent, rich or poor, and every income between, deserves to know how their child’s school is performing compared to other schools.
We middle class parents choose our homes based mostly on the test scores of the schools.
We look for the best school district we can afford to live in and then look for the best house we can afford. Those test scores are absolutely critical.
If any teacher doesn’t want to give a standardized test, he or she doesn’t have to. She can just walk right out of that school and get herself a different job…
and we PARENTS and TAXPAYERS — who pay for those teachers’ salaries…DEMAND accountability.
flipper
January 25th, 2013
10:21 am
MAP results are supposed to be made available to teachers . If they are not, it’s a complete waste of time. In City of Decatur, I think that the MAP is well used and much more informative than the CRCT and EOCTs. MAP measures progress throughout the year and gives teachers a great deal of information about what each kid knows and doesn’t know. MAP is designed to have questions that are beyond the curriculum for a given grade. It is designed to keep asking more and more advanced questions until it gets beyond a particular kid’s level of knowledge. There are a lot of kids here in Decatur with knowledge that extends well beyond their grade level. If MAP stopped at the end of each grade level, teachers would have no idea how advanced their high achievers are. In fact, Decatur uses MAP testing as a factor in deciding to grade advance math students in upper elementary and middle school.
MAP is also very useful to admins and parents who can see if a teacher is ineffective because his or her students will show little or no growth over the year. Maybe that’s why the teachers in the article above dislike it… it’s showing them up as sorry teachers!
I say get rid of the CRCT and have every system use MAP instead.
decatur teacher
January 26th, 2013
5:58 pm
I have found that a lot of the data generated by MAP is very useful. This is especially true for the more advanced students. These kids can pass the state tests on the first day of school. We realized that teaching them only grade level standards was not enough (mainly because they already know the stuff). Now we have more specific information about topics to work on that are often two or even three years beyond grade level. These are kids who otherwise would get bored with school because it was too easy. Now we can provide them with the challenges they need and keep them engaged in real learning. The test is also aligned with the new Common Core Curriculum, so not sure where comments otherwise are coming from. It would be great if everyone just “trusted” us as teachers to do a fantastic job, but accountability is a reality and rather than resist it, we should look for assessments like MAP that at least measure student growth.