Bad teachers or the system

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Charges of "teaching to the test" are inane and generally incorrect - what requires this much time?

That's not what I've seen. In all the schools I subbed in and especially the ones where I student taught, there was a lot of "teaching to the test" going on...and the worst one was a school with extremely high schores (of the top-ten-in-the-state variety). I guess that tactic worked, but the teachers weren't very happy about it.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by AchtungBaby80

That's not what I've seen. In all the schools I subbed in and especially the ones where I student taught, there was a lot of "teaching to the test" going on...and the worst one was a school with extremely high schores (of the top-ten-in-the-state variety). I guess that tactic worked, but the teachers weren't very happy about it.

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

I'm asking in earnest - I don't know how you can 'teach to the test' for something like history or math. Even in English classes, where these charges pop up most, the rhetorical devices and vocabulary that are the root of these charges are fantastic writing skills on their own right.

How can "teaching to the test" be different from "learning"?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

I'm asking in earnest - I don't know how you can 'teach to the test' for something like history or math. Even in English classes, where these charges pop up most, the rhetorical devices and vocabulary that are the root of these charges are fantastic writing skills on their own right.

How can "teaching to the test" be different from "learning"?

Teaching to the test can be different from learning when the test aren't lined up well with what you are supposed to teach for any reason.

It can also happen when you are aware that for testing purposes, distinctions are made that most reasonable people wouldn't have emphasized, which at least in Georgia seems to happen a lot.

(Our tests in Georgia are not good ones and they all have big curves, so the little distinctions don't seem to matter too much.)

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

Teaching to the test can be different from learning when the test aren't lined up well with what you are supposed to teach for any reason.

Not to be outcome-oriented, but it seems like the very nature of the word 'test' means that the test determines "what you are supposed to teach" . . . however, I can agree that some tests are poorly designed.

This is inordinately vague, though - can I get a specific example?

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

It can also happen when you are aware that for testing purposes, distinctions are made that most reasonable people wouldn't have emphasized, which at least in Georgia seems to happen a lot.

Again, could I get an example? Basically, what you're saying here is that the response options are somehow poor choices to answer a given question? Or that the questions are phrased in a way that is not natural for examination of a given fact?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Not to be outcome-oriented, but it seems like the very nature of the word 'test' means that the test determines "what you are supposed to teach" . . . however, I can agree that some tests are poorly designed.

This is inordinately vague, though - can I get a specific example?

Again, could I get an example? Basically, what you're saying here is that the response options are somehow poor choices to answer a given question? Or that the questions are phrased in a way that is not natural for examination of a given fact?

I PMed you one example, but I'd invite anyone really interested to look at the any of the high school Georgia Performance Standards* (the curriculum) that can been found online and then to pull the End Of Course Test review guide for the same course, and look at the sample test questions. There's a bit of mystery to how one gets from one to the other.

To the second part: yes, both of the ideas you suggest are likely to happen, and sometimes, the "facts" tested might be considered wrong by people with a higher level of expertise.

As far as the first point, the tests aren't supposed to have replaced the curriculum, especially perhaps the local requirements added to the curriculum. Your job as a teacher probably depends most, if it depends on anything at all, on doing what the people in your building expect to see. If those expectations aren't related closely to the test, well, you can imagine that there's a problem.

*If you look and read them, you may want to think about how little of the curriculum would be measured by the SAT or ACT, and yet the schools are supposedly doing poorly because the kids don't do well on those tests.

[carnation]

Oh, don't even get me going on standardized testing. Every piece of paper our kids have brought home since January reminded us to send them to bed on time and give them good breakfasts--and the tests aren't even until next week.I know we have to have them--especially the SAT because some schools, which I have taught in, try to force the teachers to hand out A's like candy so the kids will want to go to college and the school system will look good. (Then they flunk out after the first semester in college.) Somehow you have to see where everyone is in their learning.

I have taught all levels from middle school to college. I've been appalled at the government's idea that all kids, even the mentally handicapped, are going to be able to reach "X" standard. It's been heartbreaking, over the years, to watch programs that were heralded as being what would bring all kids up to par fail fall by the wayside. The truth is that not all kids will make it scholastically. Maybe they're intellectually unable, they have a horrible home life, they don't care, who knows?

My sister teaches several kids who came to her district as Katrina refugees. They want to sleep in class, they're absent for days at a time, they want to know why her school doesn't have 2 hour-long recesses like their old schools did, they refuse to do classwork and homework. And the government thinks that these kids are going to meet the standard they've imposed? I wish they could. I doubt they will.

This post has rambled but it comes from a teacher who's been around for a long, long time! I just have so many thoughts about all this...

[carnation]

Sorry for the double post, but this email I got says it all:
__________________________________________________ __

Here's the football version of what is going on in
education. If you're not an educator, this may not make a
lot of sense to you, but send it to your friends who are in
education. They will love it.

No Child Left Behind -- Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win
the championship. If a team does not win the championship,
they will be on probation until they are the champions, and
coaches will be held accountable. If, after two years, they
have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment
will be taken away until they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football
skills at the same time even if they do not have the same
conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO
exceptions will be made for lack of intere st in football,
lack of desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities
or disabilities from themselves or their parents.
ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own,
without instruction. This is because the coaches will be
using all their instructional time for the athletes who
aren't interested in football, have limited athletic
ability, or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will
only be kept in the 3rd, 8th, and 11th games. It will
create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to
have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the
same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child
gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they
are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private
schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent
their children from having to go to school with bad football
players.

[ASUADPi]

I definately agree that it is stupid to hold all children up to the same standards.

That is why there are lawsuits! NCLB is trumping IDEA, which has been around longer!

In Arizona students take the AIMS test. The kids scores determine if we make AYP or not. We can't teach to the test because 1) they change it every year and 2) they make it harder every year.

In Tuesday's AZ Republic they had a sample of 15 questions from a 5th grade AIMS. Here I am, 28, Master Degree. I got 11 questions right and I was only exceeding. The questions were ridiculously hard! My first thoughs were "OMG if I barely exceeded on this "test" and I'm more educated than the kids, they are going to FAIL!!!"

Here's the stupid part of AIMS. Because of NCLB all sped students (SLD, MIMR labels, which most sped kids are SLD and MIMR) HAVE TO take AIMS on GRADE LEVEL. You are therefore asking a child who can only read at 1st grade to take a 3rd grade AIMS were in reality the reading level on the 3rd grade AIMS is 4.0-4.5. WTF?!?

Even worse is that if high school seniors DO NOT PASS AIMS they DO NOT GET TO GRADUATE!!!! There are tons of lawsuits right not against the Department of Education because of this rule. Especially from the parents of Sped students.

Some kids don't Standardize test well, whether they are sped or not, and it is completely unfair to say to a child "yes, you have a 4.0 but because you didn't pass AIMS you can't graduate". That is complete and utter BS!

I'm glad that parents are suing, hell as a teacher (with no children yet) I'd love to sue our state for their utter stupidity. Hell, I'd love to sue or stupid President and congress for their utter stupidity in NCLB!

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by ASUADPi

Even worse is that if high school seniors DO NOT PASS AIMS they DO NOT GET TO GRADUATE!!!! There are tons of lawsuits right not against the Department of Education because of this rule. Especially from the parents of Sped students.

Some kids don't Standardize test well, whether they are sped or not, and it is completely unfair to say to a child "yes, you have a 4.0 but because you didn't pass AIMS you can't graduate". That is complete and utter BS!

I'm sympathetic to your frustration because I'm sure that it's hard to work hard with special education kids all day knowing that no matter what, they are going to fail. But have you ever thought about how it's might be a mistake to pretend that the kids have mastered skills they haven't? Even if the tests are above their level, why should they get credit for having done third grade work, if they only read at a 1st grade level? You're just lying to them and their parents about what their abilities are if you pretend this. It's not really picking on them or you to acknowledge that they aren't on level: they're disabled: most of us don't expect them to be on level.

But if we didn't test them, do you know how much money would dry up for you programs? Do you recognize that the money, even at the district level, is going to follow what's being measured when the school gets graded?

On a separate and maybe harsher note:

Should everyone who attends and gets good grades with any modifications that it takes to get them be allowed to get a regular diploma? What does earning a diploma mean? Attendance? A willingness to try to do the work with help?

I agree that sometimes the tests are bad tests, but really shouldn't a high school diploma mean that even a disabled kid has a certain level of independent mastery?

And this maybe harshest of all, but I don't buy the idea of a kid with a 4.0 who merely tests so poorly, despite knowing the material, that she can't pass a graduation test. If your school allowed you to get straight As without taking tests, there's something wrong right there. If you took those tests, you should get over some of your anxiety. Anxiety is not a good enough reason to say that a kid doesn't have to prove to the outside world what she knows.

[AGDee]

I think that email is a great analogy, carnation, for educators and non-educators alike.

ETA: It just dawned on me, while reading ASUADPi's post that, since states develop their own tests for their schools, but the Feds are the ones who developed NCLB, what motivation is there for a state to make their tests more and more difficult? It would seem that states would be motivated to make tests that most of their students could pass to ensure continued Federal funding and make their states look good. I'm not familiar enough with the law to know what might prevent that...

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by AGDee

ETA: It just dawned on me, while reading ASUADPi's post that, since states develop their own tests for their schools, but the Feds are the ones who developed NCLB, what motivation is there for a state to make their tests more and more difficult? It would seem that states would be motivated to make tests that most of their students could pass to ensure continued Federal funding and make their states look good. I'm not familiar enough with the law to know what might prevent that...

When NCLB started, states submitted their plans for the tests they would use. In some cases, like Georgia's graduation test, the tests in place weren't rigorous enough, so they had to add harder questions for NCLB.

(It's interesting because the new questions count towards the NCLB data, but not towards the kids' graduation test scores. It could hurt the school, but not the kid, in other words. Go Georgia!)

So states would probably get "caught" if they went back and dumbed it down, but I agree that there doesn't seem to be a NCLB incentive for a state making the test harder.

(And this is one of those cases where I think states and districts are blaming NCLB for something that it isn't really responsible for. I encourage all teachers to look carefully at what your district says NCLB requires; you're often being lied to. Your district has decided to address a certain issue a certain way, but NCLB probably didn't mandate that plan.)

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

Other people have already answered but I'm adding mine since you asked nicely. :-) Different people may mean different things when they use the phrase "teach to the test," but I have always understood it to refer to situations in which teachers are forced to teach certain things solely because they appear on a standardized test and not necessarily because those are the most important things for students to learn. The best example from personal experience that I can give you is what I saw when I was student teaching in a high school--I had spent ages writing painstakingly detailed lesson plans and they were good (if I do say so myself) but unfortunately they were never used because I happened to start my placement at that school just before testing time. Instead of teaching what I had planned, which were lessons aligned with our state's core curriculum and standards, I had to spend (or waste, rather) days going over a bunch of PowerPoints that were supposed to review everything that would appear on the state test for my subject area. These presentations were distributed by the school to each teacher, and everyone had to use them. Reviews are against the rules, but somehow this was circumvented as we (the teachers) were instructed not to refer to these PowerPoints as "reviews"--rather, they were "refreshers" or something equally idiotic. I probably still have those CDs around here somewhere, but you wouldn't believe the stuff that was on them; it was the biggest mixed-bag of stuff possible, spanning everything from consumerism to nutrition (my subject area is Family & Consumer Sciences). The students were bored stiff and to be honest, so was I. Instead of going on and teaching my students something they could've used, we had to speed through slide after slide after slide after slide of yawn-inducing facts that they were supposed to be able to spout on demand once that test landed on their desks. Come on.

And carnation, I'm totally with you! And so is every other educator in my family.

[1908Revelations]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

What does "teaching to the test" even mean?

Often refered to as drill and kill especially around test time (like 3 weeks befor a test) it is serious! I get tired myself, so I know the kids are like damn!

[AGDee]

I question whether these types of tests are actually standardized. When I took testing courses in grad school (for a masters in clinical psych, which I didn't finish), we defined standardized tests as tests that were rigorously tested for norms over time and which would result in a bell shaped curve among the population for which it was designed. They met certain standards for norms, validity and reliability.

Since I saw an ad for summer jobs for teachers to write questions for the Fall MEAPs, I really question whether that would give time for the questions to be tested against these standards. Link that describes this in more detail:
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issu...ld/ea5lk31.htm

Tests like the SAT, ACT and Stanford-Binet have gone through the rigors. When I took the GRE, they told us that one of the sections was a just a test section and wouldn't count, but they couldn't tell us which one. They were working on getting norms and testing reliability and validity of those questions.

My last complaint about the Michigan one (the MEAP) is that the writing questions given are just kind of weird. For my son, in 4th grade, it was for him to write about who his hero is. He had no idea what to write, because he didn't have a hero. He's never thought about who he would consider a hero or why. It seems like kids could be given more than one option so that perhaps one of the questions might inspire them to write something substantial.

[UGAalum94]

AGDee,

I think they force the scores into a normal distribution after the fact based on the students' relative performance.

The state tests are probably nowhere near as well done as the national exam. Say what one will about the College Board and ETS, they do some impressive analysis of the data, before, during and after testing.

On the Georgia tests, some of the individual questions are really bad; on the other hand, there seems to be a massive curve and the cut score or failing scores are really low, so they don't hurt the kids in that regard.