About the Scaled-Back Testing.....

The Pensacola News Journal has a piece today about Escambia County Schools scaling back the number of standardized tests administered annually district-wide.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, agrees we were testing students way too much.

This is not a new issue, and the blame game between districts and the state as to whom it is/was that was requiring so many tests continues to this day; local administrators blame the state for all the testing, and the state blames the districts.

So last legislative session the issue was addressed via a law that limits the number of hours students can spend taking tests.  Many of us feel this law did not go far enough.

Now, the ideological perspectives bubble up, determining what tests to cut, and what tests to keep.

Establishment types, unions, liberals, and other educrats want nothing less than an end to all standardized, summative assessments that actually measure student mastery of content and that carry any real consequences.  While they won't necessarily (openly) admit this, they DO want a return to the days of no accountability, no tests that can group students by ability levels or ----wait for it----- actually prevent social promotion.  They want teachers to be the arbiters of pass/fail, not a test, and this scenario all but assures that social promotion will once again re-emerge even stronger than ever! (teachers can be, and are often, chided into passing students who should not be passed.)

Politicians and lobbyists for the testing industry are agnostic as to the value and or consequences of testing, but simply want more testing, summative, formative, and every type in between that  they can sell. (they make money-- big money--- selling tests).

But conservatives and reformers like me want a better, more balanced approach.  We want fewer tests and more classroom learning time and teacher autonomy.  We don't want the elimination of summative tests, but rather fewer of them and much less "drilling and teaching" to these summative tests.  We understand that an educational world devoid of summative tests does not prepare students for the real tests of life that carry real consequences.  And to focus on formative tests exclusively is lazy and redundant; pop quizzes, classwork, projects, assignments, and homework give teachers the information they need to inform teaching practice to their students.  Keeping only the formative assessments is akin to taking the easy way out and is, no matter what a bureaucrat tells you to the contrary, an act of dodging accountability.

In this battle, the educational establishment types have won this skirmish locally.

Is this a victory though, or is this regression?

On the current trajectory, I see the slow and plodding watering down of assessments that carry any real consequences, under the guise of saving class time and eliminating "high stakes testing".  But

The Seminole Solution

Dr. Walt Griffin, Superintendent of Seminole County Schools, has sent an intelligent, common-sense proposal to the Florida Department of Education.  His simple plan/solution to Florida's continuing standardized testing problems is documented in his letter below.

The letter with a very intelligent, common-sense solution, now being coined the "Seminole Solution" was answered within a week by Education Chancellor Pam Stewart, who politely nixes the plan saying the standardized tests Seminole County proposes in the Seminole Solution "do not measure the state specific Florida Standards."  

I think the response was weak, and I think the average Floridian just wants us to use common-sense, previously time-tested and trusted norm referenced tests. We need to be more efficient, more practical, and less parochial, in my opinion.  Otherwise, the "Opt-Out" groups will only continue to grow....and they will be right in wanting to opt out based upon Florida's horrific track-record on test-administration over the last few years!

Pam Stewart's response....

So Which Version of the Testing Story is True?

A few years back and three Chancellors of Education ago-- then Chancellor Gerard Robinson made an allegation on his blog that infuriated many board members around the state.  In this statement made by Robinson--he deflected statewide criticism he was receiving from education stakeholders regarding the out-of-control testing mandates coming down from Tallahassee.  He simply blamed local districts.  It wasn't us, it's them, they did it!

 It reminds me of a scene from the 1979 film "The Warriors" captured at minute 1:42 of this clip.

(Wrong guys got blamed due to a false statement being repeated over and over and over loudly and often by someone in a  position of  credibility)

At that time in  July 2012, I brought the issue to the board meeting and was reassured that it was the state, not us, that was mandating the massive number of tests.

Fast forward to last Tuesday and the big education summit in Tallahassee, and this time I heard with my own ears directly from the highest education official in the state  that it is local districts, not the state DOE or Tallahassee mandates, that are driving the massive number of tests administered yearly at the district level?

So who is it?

This issue was discussed by one of my counterparts on the board, and recently in speaking to a peer in a central Florida county, they are asking the same questions and are receiving murky, misleading, or flat-out inaccurate answers.

Looks like it's time to once again bring this issue to the board's workshop to pin down who it is, exactly, that is mandating the ridiculous number of tests that we are administering locally.

We're all for a rational, reasonable level of standardized testing for accountability--but what we are doing statewide now is ridiculous and it is burning out teachers and students and robbing classrooms of learning time.