Let's see if I can catch up on just about everything at once...
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From the Intelligence Education Agency: Direct postings from the NEA convention. John Kerry locked up 86.5% of the NEA delegate vote; I'm only surprised that it isn't higher (but don't assume they're telling their members how to vote; no way). The NEA also passed a new business item, NBI 12, which "requires NEA opposition to the passing of 'barrier tests' for grade promotion or high school graduation." They'd rather stick with the plain old barriers of low standards and poor teaching, which do enough to prevent graduation.
Oh, and they defeated NBI 26, which "would have directed NEA to support international pressure to demand the Sudanese government 'stop its efforts to displace and starve native populations' in Darfur." For those of you wondering how the NEA came up with a business item on a topic that is so far beyond its domain, and presumed area of expertise, I figure it's the same leftwing groupthink that has led Students Against Testing to be added to the list of "anti-war" activists (kudos to Charles Johnson for catching that one). Peace on earth, except towards psychometricians.
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Gifted kids might be self-assured, but in Illinois, they're not self-contained. Board members who justified keeping gifted kids "clustered" in regular classrooms pointed out that "only 3 percent to 5 percent of students are truly academically gifted," but the 50% or so of Illinois parents who believe they have gifted kids disagree.
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I never miss the chance to use "North Fond du Lac" in a sentence, and it sounds like the parents of NFdL, Wisconsin, never miss a chance to complain about test scores at a school district board meeting. Well, okay, it's only one parent, but that's probably, what, 20% of the population? It's also easy to see why district officials couldn't talk about race issues in regards to low test scores, since, according to this, non-hispanic whites make up 97.2% of the local population.
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Hope springs eternal for 39,000 students in Louisiana who are retaking the LEAP in hopes of leaping forward to fifth- or ninth-grade. The standards were recently raised for the fourth-graders, who now must pass half, rather than 40%, of the items to move forward.
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Algebra is now the standard for eighth-graders in Florida. This is interesting. Is the idea to introduce it early so that kids who don't make it through high school will still know it? Is that the reason it's on the ninth-grade FCAT? Eighth-graders who perform poorly on the FCAT will be exempt, but I have to wonder what's going to pass for "algebra" now that almost everyone has to take it in middle school. Heck, I didn't qualify for it in eighth-grade.
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You gotta love an op-ed that begins, "In the world of standardized tests, Christmas never comes," but I should point out that the author is concerned about the lack of "controversial" content in test items, rather than overtested and gift-free students. As for the couch-on-the-porch item, I empathize with item writers who are forced to figure out a "what doesn't belong in this household" situation that applies to every examinee. I myself have frozen mice in my house, which my mother emphatically states do NOT belong in my freezer.
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Tests are reliable, report researchers Jay P. Greene, Marcus Winters, and Greg Forster. A press release about their most recent peer-reviewed study is as follows:
A newly published peer-reviewed study by Manhattan Institute researchers Jay P. Greene, Marcus A. Winters, and Greg Forster finds that scores on “high-stakes tests,” where the results hold consequences for either schools or students, are reliable indicators of academic proficiency. The study appears in the latest issue of Teachers College Record, published by Columbia University...
Many fear that high-stakes tests are fundamentally distorted because they might create incentives for schools to cheat or for teachers to “teach to the test” to avoid the negative consequences of poor performance. The study, which evaluated nine school systems nationwide including the entire states of Florida and Virginia, found that high-stakes tests produce results very similar to those from nationally respected tests that have no consequences tied to the results, or low-stakes tests. Since there is no reason for schools or students to manipulate the results of low-stakes tests, the similar results from both types of test indicate that we can believe the results of high-stakes tests.
Greene, Winters, and Forster find that if high-stakes tests cause teachers to “teach to the test,” then they do so in a positive way. The study shows that if teachers are changing their curriculum and classroom techniques in response to high-stakes tests, they are doing so in ways that convey real skills to students. This sort of “teaching to the test” is a positive development.
The two well-known gadflies Greene and Winters also reported in the New York Post that per-pupil spending in schools is much, MUCH higher than most people assume.
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From Newsday, a fairly balanced article on the problems with using high-stakes tests for third-graders in NYC. The article mentions the research of Professor Joshua Aronson, who studies stereotype threat in test performance. It's worthwhile to note that while "You might not make it to the fourth-grade" isn't a helpful comment to an African American kid with test anxiety, neither is "All tests are biased against minorities and those kids just can't be expected to do as well." Professor Aronson points out that minorities "are sort of suspected of intellectual inferiority in this culture," and I believe people who claim that minority kids can't be expected to answer basic test items fall into the category of perpetuating those suspicions, and in fact help to perpetuate stereotype threat as well.
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Finally, I'm 100% in favor of students producing writing portfolios. Unlike the author, though, I don't see such portfolios so much as a way to assess student ability as to enhance it, something that standardized tests do not, in and of themselves, do. The trick is finding a quick, cheap, and reliable way to assess those masses of students who have produced portfolios, and that's where standardized testing is more likely to be helpful.