Dave Bangert, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier has a good column entitled An ISTEP rebellion brewing? West Lafayette superintendent contends it’s just a matter of time.
He talks about West Lafayette School Corporation superintendent, Rocky Killion’s criticism of ISTEP testing at a program the other day. We spend a ton of money on ISTEP and don’t get much bang for our buck.
Can you imagine, he asked, what could be done if the state poured testing money into a program along the lines of Read to Succeed?
Can you imagine, he asked, going with an easier way to figure out whether a kid can read by third grade: “How about we ask the teacher?”
But, of course, there is money and political capital to be made by distrusting teachers. Marketing requires that you identify a problem of which the consumers were unaware and sell them a solution. So, the schools are failing – let us sell you some testing and private schools
My school is good, and my kid is doing fine. And, yet, my school and my kid had to waste time on these tests. Furthermore, as a champion test taker, I can tell you that standardized tests aren’t great at capturing what kids need to succeed. I was good at those kind of tests, but I was fundamentally lazy. My sisters were far better at excelling in the day-to-day grind of the class room. I never got the 4.0s they got, but I crushed the tests. Thing is, life is a day-to-day grind. The skills you need to excel in a classroom are far more valuable than those you need for test taking. Now that I’m out of school, about all those testing skills do for me is make me kind of a trash talker when I’m playing bar trivia at BW-3.
Meanwhile, my kid has to waste a good chunk of several school days taking (and an unknown amount of time preparing for) a test that tells me what I already know — he’s pretty sharp and he’s learning a lot in school. I suspect other parents and teachers have a pretty good idea of where their kids stand educationally as well.
But, trusting teachers to tell us the truth is unappealing and there is money to be made by mistrusting them, so we’ll continue to spend our resources on a bunch of tests instead of on education.
I think that’s where the documentary is headed that WestSide is putting together. Ironic, since tomorrow my students take their annual AP exam.. and will depress me to no end.
Marketing requires that you identify a problem of which the consumers were unaware and sell them a solution. So, the schools are failing – let us sell you some testing and private schools
But why put more money into better schools until we get better kids.
The local NPR had a story on ISTEP the other day. It was marketed and installed as a tool to test individual students for their skill levels. It failed at that so now it is used as a proxy for school and teacher performance. And it is failing at that, apparently.
It is like the military. If the weapon system cannot perform its mission, change its mission and keep buying them.
Was ISTEP Mitch the Bitch’s spawn?
Republicans like to vilify teachers. Standardized testing gives Republicans a means by which to do that.
“I was good at those kind of tests, but I was fundamentally lazy.”
Exactly. That’s why I distrust all these kinds of tests (ISTEP, SATs, LSATs, etc). They were all easy for me, while people I know are smarter than me – and more diligent about schoolwork – struggled with them. I’m convinced them tests don’t measure much except trivia-game competency.
These tests did prepare me for the boring, big-lecture college classes that graded only on tests – the kind of classes where I only had to show up 2-3 times during the semester. But I can’t say that I learned much from those classes, either.
The obscene amount of money spent on these tests is simply not justifiable when a teacher can tell you even more about your child in concrete terms. The other posters are dead right in saying that the purpose of ISTEP testing is not to provide insight leading to better programs–making them more “diagnostic”–but to serve altogether different purposes. In the end, such testing fits into the tradition of blaming and punishment that is so entrenched, and leads to a decline in educational quality, because teachers focus on teaching to the tests and multiple choice test performance. Furthermore, the assumption that this sort of summative assessment leads to better instruction is simply not true. The day to day formative assessment that every teacher does without ballyhoo does improve instruction and learning. The state assessment king has no clothes, and the revolution is overdue. Instead of kowtowing to the politicians, trying to make something good out of the travesty being feed to them by ignorant legislators, they need to stand up and give the correct message. The message: The state is wasting your money, taking it away from the education of your kids! Nothing is improving but there are a lot of scared kids and teachers because of that foolishness.
I always had a love/hate relationship with standardized testing. From the outside, I thought it was obvious just how bad it was at measuring what it was supposedly measuring. From the inside, I was awesome at it, so why rock the boat?
A fellow student in high school was going through a tutoring program. Her tutor apparently told her to seek out some of the “smart” kids and ask them how they succeeded in school. My friend and I, the cynics, essentially told her we didn’t do anything. We didn’t study, we didn’t try, we just were lucky enough to be good at the metrics that schools/tests used to determine intelligence.
It would be much more interesting to put money into the teachers and let them find creative ways to engage students at all levels instead of forcing them to constantly produce “results” in the form of spreadsheets full of numbers.
This is a bit of an aside, but it reminded me of a study described to me by a friend of mine a couple of days ago. I might not get the details quite right, but something along the lines of a test administered to two groups of students. Following the first test, group A was praised for how hard they worked, group B was praised for how smart they were.
Leading up to a second test, group A was more enthusiastic about taking it; group B was more anxious. Group A performed better than group B.
I think what it showed was that the hard workers had some control over what was happening to them. The “smart” group had no control. It was like magic; just a function of being smart.
That is the practical reason why you don’t group kids or reward them because “they are smart”, but make sure that they hear the message that they learned because they worked hard (if that is the case, of course). Kids who hear the message that they get good grades because they are “smart” aren’t left with a practical option when the work gets tough. And they don’t do well later when the tasks get challenging. Kids who understand that it’s hard work that brings reward, work harder when the challenges get tough. Jay Leno, in his biography, tells that story about himself.
Education is to cultivate brilliance, to allow our minds to operate at their fullest. Education is not proven by a punch clock. Hard work is nice, I suppose, and much is said in praise of it, usually by employers, but it’s the refuge of the mediocre.
Brilliance gives us Bach, Locke, DaVinci, Newton, Jefferson Rembrandt.
One will never “hard work” their way to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Ave Maria or the Brooklyn Bridge.
Educating should attend to providing each student with the necessary rudiments to allow the mental engine to fuel itself and to run at high revolutions, then finding the direction in which it prefers to operate and giving it intensive training in those arts.
There is a flaw in your reasoning Freedom. Brilliance WITHOUT hard work is nothing. Mozart was extremely talented, but without anyone to cultivate that thirst for the next challenge it would’ve been wasted. The same for any of the individuals listed. All but Jefferson in your list had folks who paid for their next challenge.
“Refuge of the mediocre” is definitely not the product of hard work. If we are to look deeper, a great chapter of “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell is to be read. Studies have shown that to become truly great at your craft, one must practice approximately 10,000 hours. The chapter is quite brilliant and I would recommend before you attempt to reply in your usual snively tone.
We live in a time of narcissistic entitlement. Many people believe that their personal attributes qualify them for rewards (grades, money, prestige, etc.) simply because they believe they are “special”. Just ask any HR person, and the stories about these people will come pouring out. Great genius without grit, determination and perseverance goes nowhere. No question that the great achievers of the past were brilliant, but if Michelangelo was not willing to endure hardship and hard work, the Sistine Chapel would still have been a white plaster ceiling. The same story applies to Bach, Jefferson, Newton and all the rest. Hard work was, for them, not a refuge for the mediocre, but the companion to greatness. Like the ad says, the best way to get money is the hard way: you earn it. The same applies to what people need to learn about making something out of life, particularly when they are young.
School isn’t the place to teach what you value, nor should school reward this. Hard work is a means, not an end.
School isn’t a place where we teach values? So, we should nix any kind of teaching of western civilization, or reading, or art, or music, or civics, or reciting the pledge of allegiance, or valuing turning in your homework on time?
Flawed argument. Try again Freedom.
You truly are stupid.
Sticks and stones my friend. Sticks and stones.
Teaching what people value and rewarding others for learning has always happened in all relationships–formal and informal: education, as well as science, journalism and the rest. After all, schools are one of the institutions of the culture and one of the avenues that civilizations use to pass on those values (including “freedom”). Now, if you don’t think so, fine, but engaging in value-free anything is an abstraction which is almost impossible. Just try it sometime if you are into frustration.
Good points, Stuart. Schools inculcate students with societal values continuously. It would happen even without conscious intent.
“Societal values” are “teacher values” and are taught in school by teachers lacking the ability or desire to teach the course. “Values” only have a place in school if the parents expressly bargained for those lessons. In absence of a bargain, confine the instructor’s comments to Chapter 7.
And where do teachers come from? The planet Tico Brahe?
The bargain was struck before you were born and it is an implied piece of the social contract. Want to opt out? Hire a tutor or home school them in christian Mythology
“Opt out?” When I did I sign it? What’s the duration? What does it cover? What are the breach provisions?
You opted in when your where born into this culture. You can opt out in one of several ways in addition to the ones I formerly suggested.
1. Abort yourself retroactively.
2. Move to the Libertarian paradise, Somalia.
3. Take up homesteading in Riley, New Mexico.
So, your theory is that teachers go to college, study for four years, go through student teaching, willing decide to go into a career that is thankless and pays even less than that….and they don’t have the desire to do their job?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
That’s one of your dumber comments, quite a remarkable event, really.
[f]reedo[o]m, your made a syntaxical errors. I believe you meant to say “That is one of (my) dumber comments,” not “That’s one of your dumber comments.” Make sure to get those possessive pronouns right. Sorry that school failed you.
Stuart:
Teaching must yet be teaching. Drifting even a little from reading, riting, rithmatic finds us inside a political party headquarters and not a classroom.
In re-reading your post, it’s just a mess of conclusory statements, non sequiturs and red herrings. You’re not to be taken seriously. You’re here to dissemble, to defend your castle, and you don’t give a whit about how stupid this country continues to become.
So you point to artists to make your point about how brilliance is straight brilliance, but you argue that we shouldn’t teach the arts? Good call to destroy your own argument.
You truly are stupid. Avoid my posts; they’re senior class work, and you’re far from ready for such heady material..
The ad hominem attacks are here! I guess our comments were right on.
One more thing: When a person insults you because he has run out of rational things to say, it’s a perverse way of sending that message. The sad thing is that he doesn’t learn from his mistakes and doesn’t change his behavior.. Just keeps on keeping on. I wonder what he gets out of it.
Feeling important because we waste time on him. Kind of the same problem we have with psychopaths really.
Freedom, your personal insults notwithstanding, an education without values is just plain impossible, and fortunately not even desirable. If it were, it would only be something that an autistic robot would do, if that, and is even difficult to imagine. If you recognize that at the start, then you can choose the values you teach, because you understand the framework. The more you understand that, the more you realize just how intricate and subtle the teaching relationship is. The values are the context of what we know and give it meaning. Even the written context of Chapter 7 brims with values.
By the way, personal insults don’t help your argument, and they certainly don’t add to your credibility. They just sort of tell us that you are running our of any sort of positive contribution that you would have otherwise made.
Important lesson: When someone doesn’t engage in serious discussion, don’t feed the troll.