State’s second graders get a STAR
They'll continue to take standardized test
A third attempt to end second-grade testing in California has fallen short. The Assembly Appropriations Committee placed Sen. Loni Hancock’s bill under submission, blocking it from consideration for the remainder of this session.
For a while, SB 740 seemed to be on a winning path, clearing each legislative hurdle with few tribulations and many powerful supporters. So advocates for SB 740, all of them thoroughly familiar with the vagaries of the legislative process, were understandably caught off guard by the appropriations committee’s action.
When we first wrote about it last June, the bill had the backing of the California PTA, both state teachers’ unions, and the California School Boards Association. Since then, Tom Torlakson, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has signed on, sending a letter to the chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee that urged him to support this “much-needed measure.”
Torlakson’s letter summed up the primary arguments for the bill.
Committee action is baffling
Hancock’s bill also appeared to have, if not Gov. Brown’s blessing, then at least his belief in the concept. In the May budget revision, the Governor wrote that “testing takes huge amounts of time from classroom instruction,” and said he would reform the state’s testing and accountability system by engaging “teachers, scholars, school administrators and parents to develop proposals to reduce the amount of time devoted to state testing in schools.”
“We are baffled as to why this would not get out of the Appropriations Committee,” said Sandra Jackson, spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association. “There was a lot of support for the bill. There was cost savings. There is plenty of formative and summative testing already.”
Savings may be outweighed
There was also mounting opposition and doubts – doubts about the efficacy of waiting too long to test students on state standards, unintended financial consequences, and timing.
“Under the guise of saving a small amount of money, SB 740 eliminates an early assessment that helps schools identify kids who need extra help and use best practices to give them the additional assistance they need to reach grade level expectations,” wrote EdVoice, a nonprofit organization working for school reform in California, in a call to action on its website.
EdVoice has been an unwavering and vocal opponent of Hancock’s legislation.
However, it’s a misnomer to paint all supporters as opposed to testing and accountability. They say they want appropriate and useful testing, and contend that the California Standards Test, which is part of the Standardized Testing and Reporting system or STAR, is neither.
“The California State PTA believes early assessment is critical to improving public education for all children, helping them to reach grade level proficiency, and to provide services needed for success,” wrote Patty Scripter, the California State PTA’s Legislative Advocate, in a letter of support last June. However, she said that if the goal is to understand students’ strengths and weaknesses in order to give them individual attention, then standardized tests are ineffective.
Scripter said that while the committee’s action was disappointing, it’s also understandable in light of the coming switch to Common Core standards that will revamp the state’s entire testing system. “Some people thought this wasn’t the time to be making changes,” she said.
Analysts for the State Department of Finance and the Assembly Appropriations Committee also suggested that that the money saved by eliminating the test could have backfired on school districts and the California Department of Education.
Even though Finance didn’t take a position on SB 740, in its analysis of the bill Department officials pointed out that any money saved by doing away with the second grade test would revert to the Proposition 98 General Fund and that’s off limits to the CDE to use for state operations.
Meanwhile, school districts that decided to give their second grade students other diagnostic tests in place of the STAR exam wouldn’t have been reimbursed by the state and would have had to pay out of pocket at a time when their budgets are already bare bones.
Too bad – 2nd graders should not be bubbling, particularly in a high stakes environment. Not to mention the pressure that this puts on the K and 1 teachers to be more “academic” when students need play. I could go on for paragraphs – at least I have the option as a parent to opt them my kids out of testing and will be.
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It’s a shame to see actual parents and educators — those who work with, nurture and care about kids — outmuscled by one of the numerous powerful billionaire-funded so-called-reform forces. That exemplifies everything that’s wrong with our national and state education policies. This has to end sometime, but at what cost to our kids and schools?
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Well, chalk up this one for the victory of common sense and for saving many miseducated kids before they fall off the cliff, over carrying water for unions’ anti-accountability animus. One expects caring more about union contributions rather than about children from someone like Loni Hancock, but it is disappointing when even statewide PTA reps, which should know better, are captured by know-nothing anti-testing fever promoted by the unions.
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The list of organizations for it basically establishes why it failed. The teacher’s unions, the school boards, and the ed school faculties have negative credibility. For a number of people (including myself) if those guys are for it I’m against it – whatever it is. Throw in Ravitch and I’ll actively go door-to-door campaigning against it.
Does anyone think any of those groups is for testing of ANYONE? The 2nd grade was their starting point, but they are all against any testing of anyone, anywhere, any time since someone might not do well and have their self-esteem hurt. All are for “portfolio assessment” where nothing really counts so they all get a recommendation to Harvard. CAHSEE is starting to show some positive results in narrowing the racial attainment gaps but it took years to get it working with all these same groups arguing against it. I kept reading in the papers these same groups arguing essentially that effort ought to count towards HS graduation. If you could measure it, maybe, but even if you could, the people that pay the taxes think a diploma ought to be an indication how much you actually *know*.
In trying to analyze why I get so livid when those groups above make their arguments I finally realized it can be summed up in as “fractions”. A lot of kids aren’t learning it and ed school professionals are actually arguing that since we have calculators they don’t really need it which is a post facto excuse for not teaching it well. Kumon after-school tutoring centers (really “drill, baby, drill” centers) used to have as their big ad “Wouldn’t be nice if your child learned fractions once and for all instead of not quite getting it year after year?” Along those lines, I asked one of the more grounded ed school professors whom I respected (they do exist) if the “spiral method” actually worked. He said absolutely not and “we’ve” known that for 20 years. So why do they keep doing it? “Tradition!” he answered in his best “Fiddler on the Roof” imitation.
There are too many other reasons to go into here but they are all similar. The ed schools have been taken over by the holistic, self-esteem, creativity gurus who used to be confined to the more “Woodsy Walden” areas of Marin County and their clones dominate in the classroom and the administrative centers. It is obvious to anyone not on the public payroll that we are failing an increasingly technological society so what the pressure groups mentioned are for is almost guaranteed to be wrong – drastically, horribly wrong.
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Michael G., you’re ignoring the looming fact that the PTA — which has been the nation’s most committed and effective voice for children, families and schools for 111 years — also spoke against this abusive testing of young children. So this is what you say about parents, in other words: ” … if those guys are for it I’m against it – whatever it is.” That’s extremely revealing of the contemptuous attitude behind education reform. Ignore and disdain parents’ concerns; billionaires and business titans know best.
This contempt for parents and students can’t stand.
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Sorry Caroline, I’ve been a member of the PTA and seen how they were manipulated (including the elections) by the administration to block anyone who wasn’t part of their “amen chorus” to get in any officer position. In addition the administrations flat out lie and cite laws that don’t exist to convince any doubters. School site council – same thing.
Here’s an excerpt from a research article by some engineering professors who worked to bring up math scores among disadvantaged minorities in Oakland County, Michigan:
“Perhaps surprisingly, the fiercest resistance to the Pontiac project in implementing
supplemental mathematics instruction using practice and repetition came from university level
K-12 education academicians. Being engineering academicians who learned and
excelled in math in fair portion through practice and repetition, we were shocked at the
antagonism our efforts encountered. Most academicians in disciplines that actually use
mathematics on a daily basis have no idea that this antagonism to practice and repetition
exists on the part of K-12 education-related academicians. Indeed, when we explained
the situation to our colleagues in science, mathematics, and engineering, as well as to
engineering students and engineers, the reaction was invariably disbelief.”
The entire paper is here:
http://www2.oakland.edu/users/oakley/Papers/Using%20the%20Kumon%20Method%20to%20Revitalize%20Mathematics%20in%20an%20Inn%E2%80%A6.pdf
But Caroline, you and your traditionalists can silence me and my kind oh, so easily. Let any who want form or join their own charter school so we can be all happy in our rigorous little world where self-esteem comes from meeting a tough challenge and not the easy A’s. I will revel in being free of the endless whining about anything that requires schools to show they actually are doing what we pay them to do. You can be happy, too, in your “bubble-free” world of “self-esteem, and creative self-expression in a holistic, caring, child-centered environment” and keep on preaching to your choir about how important it is that everyone see that they are succeeding regardless of their effort. Everyone left in those schools will agree with you and you can rest unchallenged in your beliefs. It is my money too, so stop standing in the way of people who want to vote with their feet as to the educational theory they adhere to. My educational theory is “sit down, and do the work until you get it right.” Quaint and pre-historic really, but there you are.
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The final day of second grade is the final day of the first half of elementary school (K-2/3-5). By at least this midpoint, most parents want some assessment of where their children place academically compared to peers.
There is nothing inherently wrong with asking second graders to complete a multiple choice test. Even Kindergarteners all over the world are provided multiple choice assessments as part of day-to-day classroom instruction.
The University of California, the California State University, private universities across the state, trade schools and employers make decisions every day about who gets “in” and who does not get “in.” As a career example relevant to “public education,” one cannot serve as a public school teacher unless one has earned a Bachelor’s Degree and one cannot be hired as an educational administrator without having earned at least a Master’s Degree.
Standardized testing is one aspect of student assessment. It’s not the only aspect. But, the “standardized” part of “standardized testing” ensures that a student who is taught by a less experienced or less skilled teacher will not be limited by underexperienced subjective evaluation as that student’s only touchstone for the year.
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Do we really have such little faith in teachers to assess students in an on-going and objective manner? The tests are administered in May over a couple of days and the results are given in August or September. Teachers are in the best place to observe students using multiple measures and means in order to guide students where they need to go as opposed to over-relying on this single standardized test. Test anxiety, a bad day, poor testing environment, or the fact that a student is a morning person or afternoon person can greatly impact the results. The purpose of standardized testing is not to monitor and assist an individual student – it is to assess the overall status of a classroom, school, or school system (i.e. district, state, or nation). Standardized tests were never meant to serve as markers for individual students – it’s the aggregate that is valid, not the individual score.
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Robert,
Standardized tests can be used for individual assessment, for school assessment, for student diagnostics, for teacher instructional improvement, and sometimes for some mix of the above. The goal will dictate how such assessment is constructed (number of items, reliability, timeliness, etc.)
In case of STAR you are incorrect. STAR assessment has a dual design goal: individual student scores, and system (class, school, district) assessment. That was clearly stated by then-Governor Pete Wilson after the CLAS fiasco in 1993-94. Accordingly, STAR was designed to reliably provide both individual and group scores, in terms of number of items. (The fact that CTA succeeded in inserting a clause into the law that it will not be used for classroom (i.e., teacher) assessment says nothing about STAR reliability or suitability for that purpose.)
On the other hand STAR was NOT designed to provide diagnostic feedback, or formative feedback. (The pseudo-diagnostic narrative regarding relative success on the few clusters of standards is a late add-on that was never designed for reliability).
As to implying that relying on standardized test equals to having “little faith” in teachers, would you be OK with certifying your commercial pilot solely based on the subjective opinion of some flying instructor? I thought so. You need both. We do have both in education.
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I’d love to know if there are ANY parents anywhere who want their kids subjected to bubble-in testing at age 7. None who are at all attuned to their kids, anyway. I think that viewpoint is restricted to people who have no contact with young kids (possibly including their own). The comparison of teaching young children to the technicalities of flying an airplane is a little revealing — and invites some jibes about the fact that these wrongheaded ed reform fads are destined to crash and burn.
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“Nobody wants XXX. And if someone still does, clearly that person is (pick one from disconnected|mad|child abuser).”
Perfect logic. Of a demagogue.
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I say we test art and music.
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The latest polling (PDK) indicates the public has a slight bias in favor of teachers’ unions, as well as a huge bias in favor of teachers and local schools. Significant, I think, in light of the constant negative propaganda from the editorials, pundits, right-wing think-tanks, and ritual union bashing.
Methinks the testing industry was at work here. The real costs of substituting diagnostic tests was almost nil. There are many useful assesments that don’t require expensive test forms, booklets, etc., they are just helpful assessments that inform instruction that are teacher administered/scored. And aye, there’s the rub. No expense-no profit.
Ravitch blew the whole testing boondoggle out of the water. After a decade of test-it-if-it-moves waste there has been little progress even in the test scores of the disadvantaged. Those scores the accountability cult so admires. For those and all other kids there has been a damaging narrowing of the curriculum that has hurt education and kids.
Recently the highest scientific body in the nation, the National Research Council, has determined test driven education and accountability measures have produced no positve results. But, what do they know?
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Mr. Ravani writes that “Recently the highest scientific body in the nation, the National Research Council, has determined test driven education and accountability measures have produced no positve results. But, what do they know?”
Had Mr. Ravani read the NRC report carefully, he would have noticed that the NRC report does not argue that accountability is ineffective. It actually implicitly acknowledges just the opposite that accountability is an effective educational lever. And then it goes on to launch a nitpicking attack on standardized testing because it is, in its view, not perfect enough and can be improved. Accepting that anything in life can be improved, including standardized testing, one will notice that the report is conspicuously silent on whether standardized testing as practiced today is actually ineffective, but goes out of its way to give this impression. Allow me to illustrate NRC’s mealy-mouthed and misleading language simply with its major conclusion:
Conclusion 1: Test-based incentive programs, as designed and implemented in the programs that have been carefully studied, have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest achieving countries. When evaluated using relevant low-stakes tests, which are less likely to be inflated by the incentives themselves, the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number of programs. Even when evaluated using the tests attached to the incentives, a number of programs show only small effects. Programs in foreign countries that show larger effects are not clearly applicable in the U.S. context. School level incentives like those of NCLB produce some of the larger estimates of achievement effects, with effect sizes around 0.08 standard deviations, but the measured effects to date tend to be concentrated in elementary grade mathematics and the effects are small compared to the improvements the nation hopes to achieve.
The above does not say accountability has not increased achievement. It says it has not increased the achievement enough. How much would be enough? Well, if we were to catch up with the best in the world, then perhaps. Until then … “not good enough.”
When evaluated using relevant low-stakes the effects tend to be small. Translation: We don’t trust the impact of accountability when it does show up, and hence we are going to ignore it and assume that most of it is due to cheating. Other possible interpretations, such as misalignment between low-stakes and high-stakes (as is frequently the case of NAEP vs. state testing) is silently ignored here.
Even when evaluated using the tests attached to the incentives, a number of programs show only small effects. Translation: Because not all accountability programs show large effects we are going to discount all accountability programs, instead of trying to understand what undermined their effectiveness in those cases.
Programs in foreign countries that show larger effects are not clearly applicable in the U.S. context. Translation: Even if we are aware of successful large scale accountability programs overseas, we are going to ignore them and assume they will not apply to us.
School level incentives like those of NCLB produce some of the larger estimates of achievement effects, with effect sizes around 0.08 standard deviations, but the measured effects to date tend to be concentrated in elementary grade mathematics and the effects are small compared to the improvements the nation hopes to achieve. Translation: When all other reasons to discount the effectiveness of accountability fail, and we are still left with large and broad effects that are difficult to ignore, we will undermine them by pointing out that (a) they are still smaller than we would like them to be, and (b) they are not as uniform as we would like them to be.
This is not a scientific report but a political hackery done under the imprimatur of the NRC, our “highest scientific body in the nation.” Perhaps I should not be too hard on Mr. Ravani for missing what the NRC really said — after all, the report went to a great extent to obfuscate the reality.
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Caroline, I’ll say that I don’t think it caused my particular child any harm to take the STAR test in second grade. That said, I think there are better ways that time and money could have been used, and in an environment where we are cutting 5 days from the school year, those are the days I’d cut first.
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Like I said: The NRC, what do they know? Again, as Ravitch laid out, having been in the mix when the testing/accountability “reforms” were proposed; they were based on nothing. Nada. Zip. The “reforms”, according to the NRC got a little better results than nothing/nada/zip. That’s not a very high bar, as the NRC points out. According to NAEP reading results achievement was rising faster, and gaps were closing faster, prior to the imposition of standards/tests/accountability.
In any case, the discussion of scores puts aside the very important issue of the narrowing of the curriculum. Those who would support improved STEM instruction, for example, should know that in many secondary schools students are placed in two language arts classes and two math classes in order to pump test scores. With PE that leaves one period (in a typical six period day) for a student to go to a stem class, an art class, a history class, a government class, an economics class, a music class, etc., etc. You can’t do real education under these circumstances.
Then there the fact that the feds, and the state to some extent, are investing close to half a billion dollars to replace the current tests because they are so limited, narrow, and devoid of critical thinking. How much do we want to invest in the scores attained on the current set of inferior tests? And I don’t blame ETS here, they were awarded the contract because they were the low bidder, not because they offered a more sophisticated product.
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Caroline,
Nearly every second grader in the United States receives multiple choice questions as part of every day’s regular schoolwork and regular homework.
Is ALL the schoolwork/homework multiple choice? No, of course not. But is ALL the 2nd grade schoolwork/homework devoid of multiple choice assignments from August to June? No, of course not.
Your choice of the words “want their kids subjected to bubble-in testing” is aggressive and representative of a small percent of parents. There are tens of millions of parents across the USA and hundreds of millions of parents across the world who do want their children assessed regularly throughout second grade and beyond. Do we want ONLY multiple-choice testing? No. I found the daily journaling assignments highly valuable for my second grader in a neighborhood Title One school. I also found the second grade book reports valuable and the regular math assignments valuable and the consistent reading assignments.
California’s top universities don’t admit applicants randomly. They assess academic performance/potential based on grade point average, standardized test scores and the range of tie-breaker influencers such as community service, personal statements, recommendation letters, work experience, etc. Rigor is determinative of future opportunities.
Even if a young person has a wonderful heart, an outstanding attunement to interpersonal relationships, a high sense of ethics and an admirable sense of generosity, no University of California review committee will consider someone’s application with a 2.7 GPA and mid-range standardized test scores. Heck, you rarely get consideration now with a 3.5 GPA and top 25 percent standardized test scores.
Are there wonderful young people who pursue non-university paths to post high school success? Yes, absolutely. The CSU system, the community college system, the trade union structures and a variety of non-college paths always exist as structured alternatives. But, most future lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, pilots and even teachers will come from the ranks of students who qualify for four-year university admission immediately after high school. Are there many other paths to fulfillment? Yes. But, there’s nothing wrong with including multiple choice assessments along the way.
Standardized multiple choice tests for high schoolers ultimately provide bright students of poverty a way to catch the attention of high profile universities. Rather than demean standardized testing, we should celebrate that it provides otherwise invisible high-performing students the opportunity to choose or to reject pursuing a spot in the US aristocracy.
I don’t stress out that my elementary kids have to take tests. I also celebrate that they play outside on their bikes and scooters and they enjoy swimming at the public pool and they enjoy visits to parks and they are learning about geography and they have interest in learning other languages and they participate in their worship community and they know when it’s time for public elections and they sometimes can play together without bickering and they basically know to put worn socks and shirts in the laundry basket before heading to bed at night and they get a kick out of helping in the kitchen to crack and scramble eggs.
Tests are part of reality. We face a range of them in human interactions every day.
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El, my kids like taking tests and do well on them (despite otherwise rebellious streaks, smart mouths and similar symptoms of teenhood). The older was in 2nd before they were STAR-tested; the younger was STAR-tested in 2nd — it was no big deal to them either way.
But it is scary and high-pressure to a lot of kids, and I think there’s no benefit to it. My biggest issues are the stress on many very young kids and the waste of money.
Speaking of what parents want or don’t want, I’ve never heard of a private school that administers serious, stressful tests to kids that young — has anyone? So if there were such parent demand, why aren’t the private schools all doing it?
John. I like the new reminder about civility. It would help if your site allowed posters to remove their own comments after the fact as some do — you’re in Silicon Valley, so how hard can it be to upgrade to that technology?
Also I will try to say this as mildly as possible: You let certain, apparently preferred posters get away with some outrageous direct name-calling. Strong words and sentiments are one thing, but direct name-calling is generally considered over the top. A little evenhanded moderation might be in order.
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Caroline: I will check to see if readers can remove their own comments. Not sure it is easy without administrator’s access on a Wordpress blog. Meanwhile, any reader can write me — john@svefoundation.org or text me (408-391-3068) — to have a comment edited for content or typos or removed. As for my moderation, do let me know (offline is fine) when you feel I have been partial or unfair.
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My response crossed with Chris’s.
Your argument appears to be based on the assumption that I oppose all tests in class, but that’s not the case.
You’re confusing the kind of high-stakes, high-stress standardized testing I refer to — the STAR tests, here in California, with the regular classroom assessments that a teachers does during the course of the school year.
I’m not opposed to classroom tests. Overall, I’m not opposed to standardized testing, and I want my kids’ achievement and abilities assessed. I AM opposed to attaching high stakes to the tests for teachers and schools.
I think second grade is too young for high-pressure testing. And — something I left out of my response for El — the very real danger of a narrowed curriculum due to the high states and high pressure is a big issue too.
As I noted in my previous response, my older child was in second before STAR testing came to second grade, and my younger was STAR-tested in second grade. I have zero sense that I had more information about my younger child’s achievement and abilities than I did about my older child’s. Their teachers were already well aware and were giving me that information. The STAR tests didn’t make a difference.
So, just to be clear. I don’t oppose testing in class. I don’t oppose standardized testing overall. I do oppose attaching high stakes to standardized tests for teachers and schools, and I do oppose extending standardized testing — which is inherently high stress in our current high-stakes atmosphere — to inappropriately young children.
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I’d like to mention, yet again, that STAR test is an absolutely no stress and no stakes test for students. In fact, that is one of the arguments its detractors often cite when they argue that “students don’t care” about the results.
If kids are “stressed” by the test, this can only happen when teachers and administrators unconscionably transfer the pressure that STAR puts on them, to pressuring their students instead. Arguing that they can’t help it is no different than arguing that bank tellers can’t help themselves from stealing.
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I well understand that in most cases there are no stakes attached to the STAR for students — this is why some high school kids bubble in their Scantron sheets in Christmas tree patterns and such.
(There are exceptions — middle-schoolers hoping to get into selective high schools such as Lowell or privates.)
But high-stakes tests with rewards and punishments are VERY high-stress for entire schools, and the stress certainly does affect the students. And some kids are simply panicked by being tested, with the stress that pervades the annual STAR testing increasing the fear.
Anyone who hasn’t, please read Linda Perlstein’s “Tested.” It will clarify a lot.
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ze’ev – I think to say the STAR is no-stress for students ignores the fact that they do require some significant stamina to complete. The second graders usually do try and haven’t cottoned on to the idea that you can bubble patterns instead of reading the questions.
I am personally ambivalent on them. I think they have some value… but when choosing between keeping our reading specialist and keeping STAR testing, I’d rather keep the reading specialist. Unfortunately, no one gets to make the choice that way.
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@el: STAR testing costs around $13/student so in an average elementary school of 300-400 students across K-5 you will save $650-$850 per year if you cancel 2nd grade testing. I doubt it will pay for one month of your reading specialist. If, however, it will identify only a single second grader as a weak reader and save him from falling between the cracks in third grade, it will already pay for itself. Not that the saved money will go to school in any case, but that’s not the point here.
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An educator’s lament: Why didn’t we fight back?
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2011/08/31/no-child-left-behind-a-conspiracy-against-public-education-that-too-few-called-out/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog
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What a perfect response to the likes of Caroline, who want everyone to be forced into the public schools with no choice AND no ability to know whether the schools are any good:
“But Caroline, you and your traditionalists can silence me and my kind oh, so easily. Let any who want form or join their own charter school so we can be all happy in our rigorous little world where self-esteem comes from meeting a tough challenge and not the easy A’s. I will revel in being free of the endless whining about anything that requires schools to show they actually are doing what we pay them to do.”
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Happy day to you too, Shadowlighter.
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Ze’ev, does that $13 per student include the local staff time to supervise and administer the tests?
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I believe the $13 covers the cost of the forms, scoring, mailing back and forth, reporting, managing, etc. It does not cover the cost of teacher time but, then, teachers are not paid extra nor substitutes are required. So $13 per tested student is the incremental cost to the system.
Under normal circumstances administration should take 2.5-3 hours for each of math and ELA, and can be easily done in two half-days. Throw in another half-day for makeups and it’s three half days. Unfortunately, some schools spread it over two (or sometimes even three!) days for each test, which can easily disrupt regular instruction for two weeks. Such schools claim that “it helps students” but in reality is a reflection of simple stupidity. The “early morning” advantage of assessment that is sometimes cited as the reason for splitting the assessment is, as far as I am aware of the research, fictional. (I am talking about splitting each into 3 first-period 50-60 minutes, rather than run it simply for the first 3 periods with a short break in the middle.) In total that’s about 1% costs going into quality assurance, when one includes the cost of teachers.
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What about the inaccuracy of second graders’ standardized test scores, the tests’ inability to measure actual learning, and the fact that high scores are more likely to indicate high socio-economic status than predict academic success? Why would we subject second graders to these tests and waste ANY time and money on something that doesn’t even assess learning well?
I’ve observed in several classrooms where testing is taking place and here is a telling conversation during state testing in a fourth grade classroom:
Fourth grader 1- what does rhomboid mean?
Fourth grader 2- I think it’s like a rhombus.
Fourth grader 1- Oh, I remember that from math.
Test Administrator- You are both cheating, this is unacceptable. This test is very important…
Fourth graders 1 and 2- <crying during the remainder of the testing period>
And that was an example of high-pressure testing with fourth graders who were strong readers and confident in math. Now imagine testing in a second grade classroom where each student is at a different level of reading. Some students can only read aloud to check their own fluency, some can read aloud perfectly with little understanding of meaning, and some students are still sounding out phonemes. The test results won’t actually tell you this though. Most teachers do know where their second graders are in reading and math and don’t need a standardized test to tell them. They need time and support to work with their students, training, and resources so that they can teach and teach well.
That said, the CA senate bill 740 does not say that second graders shouldn’t be assessed at all. In fact it introduces forms of assessment that are better suited to second graders than standardized tests:
(9) “Formative assessment” means assessment tools and processes
that are embedded in instruction and are used by teachers and pupils
to provide timely feedback for purposes of adjusting instruction to
improve learning.
(10) “High-quality assessment” means an assessment designed to
measure a pupil’s knowledge of, understanding of, and ability to
apply critical concepts through the use of a variety of item types
and formats, including, but not limited to, items that allow for
open-ended responses and items that require the completion of
performance-based tasks. (Bill 740, amended in assembly Aug.15, 2011)
This bill is not trying to get rid of assessment entirely, merely improve it and stop recklessly testing young students. Instead of telling us that our school’s/district’s/state’s second graders can or cannot read well, tell us what is being done to improve reading. Let’s refocus on learning.
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