A sampling of fourth graders in countries around the world took the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) test in reading in 2016. If you want to see the numbers broken down into all kinds of subunits, here they are. But the bottom line is, U.S. scores are flat. Actually, they dropped back to 2001 levels after going up a few points—not a whole lot, just a few points—on the 2006 and 2011 tests. Twelve countries outperformed us. You can find the top twelve list at the end of the post. Another fifteen differed by a few points, but the difference isn’t statistically significant.
So, we’re back on the same square we were sitting on when our barrage of high stakes testing began in 2001 with No Child Left Behind. All that testing, all that test prepping, all that time taken away from other subjects, open-ended discussions and the chance for children to be children out on the playground, and we’re back on the same square we started on. It’s possible the whole Common Core thing brought down the small gains we made from 2001 to 2011, but that’s a tough one to assess, especially with such the small upward bump. The important takeaway for me is, testing was supposed to prod teachers to teach better and administrators to administer better, and the differences would show up in the test scores. After fifteen years, that looks like a false promise.
So, do we scale back testing to a more reasonable level—say, take a snapshot at a few grade levels every few years rather than testing every student at every grade every damn year? Sounds like a good idea to me. Unfortunately, it’s not likely in the short term. The educational/industrial complex makes all kinds of money from selling tests and materials related to testing, and it’s not likely to give up its cash cow without a fight.
The Top Twelve: Here are the top twelve scoring countries, starting from the top and working down: Russian Federation, Singapore, Hong Kong CHN, Ireland, Finland, Poland, Northern Ireland GBR, Norway, Chinese Taipei CHN, England GBR, Latvia, Sweden.
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2017.
Good points you make here, David Safier. I agree with you, from the perspective of a teacher.
But from the perspective of a parent, the question of why the over-use and mis-use of testing has become so pervasive seems related to this question: “Can I trust administrators to make decisions that are in my child’s best interests every year, in every classroom?”
Mistrust develops in many ways. Your child has a poor year of learning, and you find out the teacher isn’t credentialed, or is related to an administrator. You notice the school district making decisions that satisfy in-groups but don’t result in good services being delivered to children in your school. Seeing test scores every year starts appealing to you as a way to document inequities and hold those making decisions accountable. Yes, the testing companies benefit, but they benefit from failures of responsibility that have destroyed trust. Before the testing companies started lobbying and marketing, the mistrust was already there in the community. Their agenda plays on it, but it didn’t create it.
In the end it always comes back to whether the institutions delivering instruction can be responsible and responsive to all populations. And unfortunately, many large urban public districts cannot. Recent local case in point:
http://tucson.com/news/local/tusd-consolidation-plan-pits-high-schools-against-one-another/article_8d0f9c51-c55c-5c8d-b825-846e3029555c.html
“Sandy Elers, president of the Catalina High Foundation and a Catalina alumna, said the way the Governing Board authorized UHS to pursue [taking over Catalina High School’s site] without having consulted the Catalina community was unfair and shows the boards biases. ‘Due process was not used at all. And everyone was horrified at the suddenness and the finality of the move. The kids basically found out on the internet. And they feel defeated. Why should we bother? Why not drop out now instead of waiting until next year when we lose our school?’ she said.”
The disadvantaged have always had good reason to distrust districts like TUSD. And as long as that is the case, it seems unlikely that a program of testing every three or four years rather than every year could win broad support.
Why have US teachers become ineffective? Talk amongst yourselves….
US teachers have NOT become ineffective, Wayne Olson. Using up vast quantities of instructional time on test prep and testing itself, tying scores to teacher and administrative pay and advancement possibilities and other toxic intrusions on a teachers’ ability to actually teach have always been ineffective, and now we have a decade and a half of proof that that is the case. Teaching to the test has become the mantra, and the kids’ education be damned. And of course we are so “data driven” that we just ignore the data that has been showing us that for all these years.
Obvious question…what are Singapore, Russia, Ireland, Finland, and Poland doing that we’re not ? These are the countries cited as out scoring the US. Do they do less/more testing than the US ? Are their teachers better trained or motivated ? Do the students come from more stable 2 parent households ? Do they go to school more days per year than the US ? It would seem to be a good idea to start with the facts before venting prejudices.
No coincidence that the percentage of foreign born is the highest in American history. It’s tough to make progress when you can barely tread water getting 41 million immigrants and their children up to speed.
Looking at the data, American white and Asian students are doing just fine. Indeed, the white PIRLs and ePIRLs averages are higher than the averages for all the countries listed above except Singapore and Russia, blowing all their other European peers out of the water. Stagnant educational performance data is just measuring changing U.S. ethnic demographics. And that means it’s just going to get worse.
These are all good reasons why US teachers have become ineffective. Why is it that we have people in leadership positions that are causing this to happen? Affirmative action hires?
Talk amongst yourselves…
Who does the evaluations in PIRLS? What do the tests look like? When I saw that RUSSIA, and CHINA are in the top TWO I immediately became suspicious that there is money under the table or some kind of mismanagement of the test scores because neither of those countries ever goes into a contest without knowing they are going to be First or Second. It’s going to take more than the PIRLS judges to convince me that American kids are not at a reading level comparable to Russians and Chinese. Stop blaming the teachers or the students and take another approach .
Ms. Putnam-Hidalgo writes, “tying scores to teacher and administrative pay and advancement possibilities and other toxic intrusions on a teachers’ ability to actually teach have always been ineffective, and now we have a decade and a half of proof that that is the case. Teaching to the test has become the mantra, and the kids’ education be damned.”
Some thoughts on this, in increasing order of importance.
First, if teachers are “teaching to the test”, why aren’t the test scores better?
Second, whenever I see this particular complaint by teachers, my reaction is always, “gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a job where I could claim that it was impossible to objectively measure my performance or effectiveness? That must be nice.”
But third, maybe Ms. Putnam-Hidalgo has a point, although it’s one she would never articulate in these terms. As Bslap above points out, we have the highest percentage of foreign born people in our country (or nearly so) in U.S. history. 10% of everyone alive today who was born in Mexico and 20% of everyone alive today who was born in El Salvador lives in the United States. But the United States is not built on magic dirt. So, why would we expect that we can educate those people better here than they can be educated at home? Maybe it’s unfair to punish teachers when they cannot do that.
You have your story but it only partially matches the data. Go back to Figure 3 on page 23.
Average scores aren’t flat from 2001 to now, they are up slightly, but all of that improvement comes from the 2006 to 2010 period, when we had no large central programs in place.
All of the analysis of No Child Left Behind came to the conclusion that not only was it worthless, it did some damage, average scores down. All that phonics helped kids at the lower end (up ten points), but the interference hurt the upper end of the spectrum (down 9 points).
Then from 2006 to 2011, we had a gilded age of no new fads and interference from the center. Reading scores up across the spectrum, the upper end and lower end both up 17 points.
Then from 2011 to 2016 we had the devastation of “Race to the Top.” Scores down across the spectrum but particularly for low-end kids, down 12 points.
Lesson to be learned? Washington D.C., leave us alone.