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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > July > 14 > Entry
Trusting tests over teachers
Michael Winerip, the education columnist at the New York Times, created a bit of a stir in the blogopshere this week when he wrote his final column.
Winerip is a great journalist and a wonderful writer. But he has irked the pro-standards crowd with criticism of No Child Left Behind. His last column is a parting shot at NCLB in which his chief complaint is that the law’s primary message to teachers is that we don’t trust them.
Winerip argues that an education reform can only be successful if it has buy-in from the people that will put it into place. There are lots of other dimensions to the piece. For instance he trumpets small classes as a key solution to the problems of education and needles lawmakers by suggesting they be evaluated in the same way NCLB evaluates educators:
“We need a No Family Left Behind Law. This would measure economic growth of families and punish politicians in charge of states with poor economic growth for minority families.
FOR example, in Ohio, black families earn only 62 percent of white household income, one of the biggest disparities nationally. So every year, under No Family Left Behind, Ohio would be expected to close that income gap. If it failed to make adequate yearly progress for black families’ wealth, the governor and legislators would be judged failing, and after five years, could be removed from office. This way public schools wouldn’t be the only institutions singled out for failing poor children.”
But back to the question of trust. Here’s what he says about the way NCLB relies on tests instead of teachers:
“Because teachers’ judgment and standards are supposedly not reliable, the law substitutes a battery of state tests that are supposed to tell the real truth about children’s academic progress.”
There are convincing arguments on both sides of the question of standardized testing. But Winerip hits on a very narrow question that I find interesting — why do we trust the tests?
Whether a child gets a low or high score on a standardized test, what does that mean to us? That the child is smart or dumb? That they are well educated or poorly educated? Those are the sorts of judgments we often make based standardized test results.
But are those the questions the tests were designed to answer? Do the test makers claim that these tests will give us those answers? (I’ve asked them. The answer to both questions is no.)
And what do we really know about standardized tests and how they are made? Can we be sure certain they are fair and that they accurately measure the material they claim to test?
We’ve written a good bit about testing here at the Dayton Daily News. What we’ve reported is that the methods for creating, scoring and setting passing scores for standardized tests are flawed.
There are too many bad teachers out there, that’s for certain. For some, standardized tests are a solution to that problem. But the flip side is that there are too many bad standardized tests out there, too.
It is an interesting and debatable question, then — how do when know when to trust a standardized test instead of a teacher? And vice versa?
That tough question, I think, is under-reported and under-discussed. I’d love to hear your answer.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Testing
Comments
By Oldprof
July 15, 2006 11:18 PM | Link to this
Let’s see, on one end we have people who don’t know what tests are good for and who think that teachers should be trusted (I rarely agree with Reagan, but “trust, but verify” is a good guide). At the other extreme of the teeter-totter are the foaming-at-the-mouth anti-unionists and greedy profiteers who think teachers ought to be interchangable parts and some corporate boards should collect most of the education dollars. Somewhere in the conflicted middle are those who wish both extremes would just SHUT UP so that some sense could emerge amidst all the partisan bickering. Teachers—unionized or not—ought to have rock-solid support from administrators and parents, yet they don’t. Tests should be used for appropriate purposes, well-designed, and their results analyzed consistently and fairly. Of course, Peter J up there is now going to accused me of being a liberal, and the current (but eventually rebounding) minority viewpoint detests me for quoting Reagan. I think I’ll just move to Bhutan in the hopes that the uninformed over there aren’t permitted to monopolize the mass media with screaming matches.By becca
July 15, 2006 10:15 PM | Link to this
Peter - One of the wonderful things that private school education has going for it is parental involvement. Not all children have the luxury of having parents value the education system. It becomes the teacher’s difficult(& seemingly impossible) task to get the students to value education when their world is telling them different.By Mary
July 14, 2006 8:43 PM | Link to this
I sort of enjoyed Winerip’s analogy for holding politicians accountable on economic performance. Standardized tests and teacher grades and evaluations all have their flaws and limitations. The flaws mentioned for standardized tests can be even more pronounced with teacher tests and grades. We, then, do not do away with teachers we work to improve. As is, teacher grades and standardized tests are both used to try and evaluate learning and education. I see nothing wrong with that as long as we also work to improve. Any other professional discipline uses many data sources - so what is the beef? Engineers design and analyze with formulas, but they also test to learn about their design and make go or no go decisions for launch or production. Doctors analyze through an evaluation of symptoms as well as blood and other tests. Car mechanics repair and replace but also test drive. Education is a large, important and expensive undertaking that needs something other than a lone individual’s trust me approach.By Peter J
July 14, 2006 6:21 PM | Link to this
If teachers weren’t such hacks for their labor union and those interests then maybe people would feel more sympathy that they are held accountable for student test scores. The analogy that the NYT writer makes is ridiculous, it is not a politicians job to ensure economic equality of result anywhere, only to ensure equality of opportunity is not hindered. A teacher is given a responsibilty, and that should not come as a shock. Is it strange that non-union teachers (i.e. private school teachers)do not have trouble producing stellar test scores? The bottom line is that we need competition in the academic arena so that parents can in essence fire bad teachers, just like we would fire an employee that doesn’t produce.