- Image courtesy of shutterstock.com
A principal in Brooklyn, NY, doesn’t much like the Common Core tests her students had to take. She’d like to tell you why, but she can’t.
I’d like to tell you what was wrong with the tests my students took last week, but I can’t. Pearson’s $32 million contract with New York State to design the exams prohibits the state from making the tests public and imposes a gag order on educators who administer them. So teachers watched hundreds of thousands of children in grades 3 to 8 sit for between 70 and 180 minutes per day for three days taking a state English Language Arts exam that does a poor job of testing reading comprehension, and yet we’re not allowed to point out what the problems were.
She can’t talk about specifics, but . . .
In general terms, the tests were confusing, developmentally inappropriate and not well aligned with the Common Core standards. The questions were focused on small details in the passages, rather than on overall comprehension, and many were ambiguous. Children as young as 8 were asked several questions that required rereading four different paragraphs and then deciding which one of those paragraphs best connected to a fifth paragraph. There was a strong emphasis on questions addressing the structure rather than the meaning of the texts. There was also a striking lack of passages with an urban setting. And the tests were too long; none of us can figure out why we need to test for three days to determine how well a child reads and writes.
I’ve looked at some practice test questions, and they validate the principal’s concerns. My sense is, the people who created the tests are trying to be too clever by half. They’ve constructed complex questions that demand students go through a number of conceptual steps, then bubble in the one “right” answer. It’s good to encourage high level thinking in young children, but the process needs to be more open ended, where children are allowed to use their own powers of logic and perception, which may be valid but lead to conclusions different from an adult’s predetermined answer. Trying to turn a fill-in-the-bubble test into an instrument to measure conceptual thinking in young children is like trying to make a pig to stand up on its hind legs, flap its arms and fly.
You can take a sample PARCC test, which is the exam that will be given to a sampling of Arizona children soon. English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics tests are available at a variety of grade levels. I haven’t had a chance to take one yet, but I plan to. I’ll probably try the 8th grade version. I’ve been out of school for awhile. I’m not sure I’m ready to be tested as a high schooler.
This article appears in Apr 10-16, 2014.
We are raising a group of test takers, not critical thinkers. As a proctor of standardized tests I can echo the sentiment that the results are more about how well they take tests not what they know. It is also a test of their ability to sustain interest while taking a “mind-numbing” test.
Meanwhile, art, music, PE and vocational education programs will continue to be slashed so we can prepare for these “college and career ready” tests. There is no such thing as a test that will ensure you are college ready. Same with career ready. And a single assessment that tests both at the same time? LOL! Common Core is a corporate attempt to sell a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist (our country isn’t good enough…it’s not keeping up). Big lie. A lot of folks don’t know much about Common Core, and that’s not an accident. I recommend this documentary as a starting point… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01j…
Kudos to Ms. Phillips, the principal who wrote this op-ed piece for the New York Times. An earlier, and even more effective, critic of the Common Core is Carol Burris, another New York principal who was a recent Principal of the Year in New York. You can find Ms. Burris’s commentary in the Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” column, written by Valerie Strauss. Unlike her better known Post colleague Jay Matthews, Ms.Strauss is actually in the business of critically examining education issues. Sadly, Mr. Matthews has degenerated into a pimp for the Education Testing Service and its main product, the College Boards.
Any multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank test is virtually useless. We need citizens who can think.
Just noting, the article here and the quotes do not specify multiple-choice nor fill-in-the-blank, and the photo is from shutterstock. I agree that MC and filling blanks can be of low use, but it would help if this article had noted if the principle had stated the formats of the questions, which could be found elsewhere, and which would not be confidential–some may be written responses, for “authentic testing” (which is another discussion about the quality of test item creation.)