Number 2 Pencil

Watch out for his little sister, Exit Exam

Standardized testing has always been a villian to some, and now it's in black and white - or, rather, in animated pixels. As the New York Times reports, the No. 2 Pencil is part of the institutionalized-racism collective of super-villians on Adult Swim's new cartoon, Minoriteam:

They don't leap tall buildings in a single bound or scale skyscrapers. They don't transform into not-so-jolly green giants or zoom around in tricked-out sportsmobiles. Instead, Minoriteam — a motley band of minority superheroes — uses stereotypes to fight their archenemy: racism...

The multiethnic crew battles a gang of villains including the sniveling Corporate Ladder (an anthropomorphized ladder with a cape and a pipe), Racist Frankenstein (a bigoted monster) and Standardized Test, whose head is shaped like a No. 2 pencil and whose body resembles a Scantron test.

Oh yeah. I'm all about that. I've been trying to find a screenshot online but haven't seen one yet. Please send one if you find it!

Objective standards under attack

Hoo boy. Our culture of entitlement - and uninformed opposition to testing - is quite apparent in this lawsuit against FedEx:

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A federal judge has certified a class action lawsuit alleging that FedEx Corp. discriminated against minority workers. The suit was filed in 2003 by eight current and former employees. It seeks millions of dollars in damages and an end to the company's alleged discriminatory practices...

The suit contends the delivery service paid thousands of current and former minority employees less than their white counterparts, passed over them for promotions and gave minorities poor work evaluations.

James Finberg, an attorney representing the class, said FedEx normally promotes from within, yet three times the number of package handlers and loaders are minorities compared to drivers, who earn more. Twice the number of minorities fail promotional tests than do whites, Finberg added.

"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a much higher rate, but yet has not changed the test," Finberg said.

Emphasis mine. The assumption here is that any test which has an achievement gap among ethnic subgroups is biased and therefore discriminatory.

Fed Ex tries to fight back with logic and data, which tells me they're probably going to lose:

In court documents, FedEx contended that promotions were based on "objective" factors, not race, that include time of service, passing a basic skills test, previous performance evaluations and whether the employee has been disciplined.

Tsk, tsk. You mean Fed Ex doesn't look at racial quotas when making hiring decisions? You mean they created objective standards and hold all employees to those standards? They refuse to tweak the standards to ensure a more "diverse" workgroup? How dare they.

The tests, they eat your brain

Apparently, test anxiety is now considered brain damage.

Knowing that, students and parents alike take stock in what standardized tests mean and ponder their pros and cons...Specialists contend there’s scientific proof that standardized tests, and really all tests, can cause damage to the brain.

WHAT specialists? In what area? All possible tests? Are you kidding me? Some reporter thought this was a claim that could be dropped without any citation or support into an article about testing? Do they really think the readers will believe this nonsense?

I googled this topic for quite a while and came up with nothing but links to the standardized tests that are used to assess the extent of brain damage. Perhaps our specialists - or the reporter - are confused.

But there’s another possible side effect to standardized tests, according to one psychologist, that might undermine a child’s ability to learn.

"The byproduct of years of testing has caused students to believe that good grades are more important than understanding — that high scores rather than the cultivation of the mind is the purpose of schooling," said Nicky Hayes, editor of the journal Foundations of Psychology.

Is his point here that grades are independent of understanding? Because when it comes to grade inflation, I might believe him. But I'd like to know what his evidence is for the argument that high test scores are somehow not only uncorrelated with, but a block against, the cultivation of the mind.

Others say the education system relies more than ever on standardized tests that compare students to one another as the dominant assessment instrument.

This tendency has forced teachers at all grade levels to "orient students to performance goals and comparative standards of excellence instead of internal mastery goals," says Scott Paris, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

Translation: We don't like tests with their objective standards for all kids, because it was much easier to teach students when all we had to do was get them to meet their own goals, as opposed to society's. I suppose "literacy" is something Paris would consider one of those evil "comparative standards of excellence."

The emphasis on external goals, Paris suggests, creates an unhealthy classroom scenario in which "standardized tests provoke considerable anxiety among students that seems to increase with their age and experience."

Really? Are students dropping out in droves rather than take tests or meet standards of any kind? Are they having panic attacks en masse? And if they were, wouldn't the fact that "experts" like Paris are trying to convince them that they are incapable of rising to the challenge of "external goals" have something to do with that lack of fortitude? Isn't his argument here that American students can't be expected to meet goals that push them beyond their specific comfort zone? That seems like quite an insult.

Update: Wow, that's a whole lotta brain damage.

Put down the bong and step away from the computer

The Baltimore Chronicle publishes a long, long, meandering and bizarre slumgullion of conspiracy theories and ignorant statements and calls it a commentary. I just have to note that this particular member of the "reality-based community" doesn't fail in his required anti-testing-propaganda duties:

No Child Left Behind has left teachers behind, as they have little recourse but to teach their students to succeed on a standardized test, which represents a very shallow educational goal. It leaves little room for nurturing innate curiosity and fostering independent thinking...

Which is presumably what Baltimore's teachers were doing before NCLB came along - you know, when all that innate curiousity was being so nurtured that Baltimore's students were doing so well on all those other measures of academic achievement.

And while we're at it, I'd like to offer $100 to the first person who can produce solid evidence (research in peer-reviewed journals, that sort of thing) showing either (a) that independent thought and curiosity are skills that cannot be taught in conjunction with the basic skills that tests measure, or (b) that measures of independent thought/curiosity are more predictive of adult success than are standardized test scores.

Oh, sure, I'm beating a dead horse, but it never fails to amaze me, the power these testing opponents ascribe to tests. Just one class on basic skills and one day filling in bubbles, and poof! There goes all that innate curiosity of yours!

Does testing cause baldness?

I don't know where to start with this one, from a Boston advice column:

Dear Chatters: LAMBERMOM said her 10-year old daughter began pulling her hair because she was worried about the MCAS. She asked Chatters for advice and support.

ANTI-MCAS MOM: Maybe the problem isn't with your daughter. Maybe it's with the state education leaders thinking they have to scare 10-year-olds into preparing for a test to the extent that kids literally pull their hair out...Believe me, your daughter is not alone in her nervousness and extreme anxiety...

To find out about tens of thousands of other parents who are working to change things so our kids won't have to pull their hair out over the MCAS, go to the MassCARE website, www.caremass.org, and join us. Education reform shouldn't be about giving our children nervous habits they didn't have before.

Nervous habits like literacy and numeracy?

I shouldn't be mean. A 10-year-old who is this nervous is not a good thing. However, I'm not convinced that the mother's first response should be to eradicate anything that is causing this nervousness. This may be the first test her daughter is facing, but it won't be the last. Wouldn't it be more useful to help the daughter prepare for the exams? Talk with her about the anxiety and let her know that it's pretty much a part of everyday life? Perhaps hire a tutor or even (I can't believe I'm saying this) a test prep instructor?

Thanks to Reginleif for the link; she sent it to me with a subject line that read, simply, "Oy." I have to agree.

Behold the standardisto bandito!

I've not been paying attention to the most recent round of articles blaming ETS and the College Board for the fact that test prep companies are set to see profits rise because of the new SAT. For starters, I'd think it was crystal clear to most observers that the testing companies have no control over what the test prep companies charge, and that most if not all testing companies offer prep material for free or at a very small price. It's asinine to blame the College Board for the fact that some test prep companies charge four-figure sums.

What's more, the complaint that tests scores rise with familial income has little to do with the cost of test prep, and everything to do with the fact that children from wealthier families are likely to have a top-notch educational experience in every sense. Even though I don't support the for-profit testing industry, it's not Princeton Review that produces the income gap.

This is a new one on me, though:

Make no mistake about it, profits loom foremost in the minds of many of the 'standardistos' and other so-called education 'reformers.'

Eh? Those of us who want to reform education are the same as those charging $1000 a pop for test prep courses? We somehow all profit from that? Where the heck's my check?

From blaming ETS for the cost of test prep, to insisting that test prep money funds those of us supporting the use of standardized testing - the march of anti-testing hysteria continues.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Triticale for the link.)

Pinhead alert

Hey, I finally got some new hate mail - and it was in the comment section of a post that had nothing to do with the original post that upset the mailer. Given that they left it in a comment, I figure they want it public, so here it is:

I read an old entry of yours from February 11, 2004 about your stand on the SAT. I am quite angered by what you wrote, but I will try to be civil and tolerant in my response.

You clearly are someone that is not insightful or considerate to those less fortunate. I suggest that you read this book: "None of the Above: The Truth Behind the SATs" by David Owen. Hopefully it will help you understand this issue. Please keep your mind open, and come to think of people other than yourself.

I suppose I should keep an open enough mind to be swayed by the uncited, anecdotal evidence that the commenter feels is proof that the SAT is completely useless. I also suppose I should do a better job of explaining validity, reliability, correlations, and all those other things that could possibly help people like this commenter understand what test bias really is, and why anecdotes like this don't necessarily have anything to do with it. I could point out that I have said, several times, that I think colleges should be free to cease using the SAT in admissions, because I understand that the test could be useful and valid for predicting college performance in one environment, and not as useful in another. I could also point out that perhaps rich kids might do better on the SAT because they have the advantages in life that allow them to better prepare scholastically in every sense of the word, and that this disparity is not exactly limited to standardized tests.

Or I could just sit here and goggle at the fact that, of all the pro-test posts I've put up over the last three years, what got this pinhead exercised enough to write was an article in which I said virtually nothing. I just noted that the Cornell Sun was defending the SAT. All the pro-SAT comments in the post were quotes from the Sun article. I mean, surely I've said many other things over the years which would piss off the anti-testing hordes more than that. It's like this guy wasn't even trying.

(Hmmm... Did one of you Devoted Readers write me some fake, irrational hate mail just because you knew it would cheer me up to be able to slap it around on the front page? 'Fess up, now! If in fact you did that, I appreciate it. It's a lovely gesture.)

Anyway. As you know, I've had a bad week, and it's Friday. And I have the feeling that this person calling me names, and telling me that I don't have an open enough mind (you mean, like how open this pinhead is to the idea that the SAT could have some use in college admissions?), will not be influenced by any information I give, or arguments that I cite. I have the feeling that this person just wanted a soapbox (for which I'm paying, of course) on which to stand to bitch and moan about how unfair it is that some "children" do better on the SAT than others.

So here's their soapbox. If you want to respond, the comments are open. I won't be back until 12 or so, because I've got a Morbid Angel show to attend.

Update: Hey! The Morbid Angel show was great! Lots of good energy. Dave and I took goofy photos of ourselves with our cell phone cameras (on this one, he looks especially goofy because while I was photographing us with my phone, he was talking to someone else on his phone). Afterwards, we went to our favorite restaurant (the Troc is in Chinatown). It's easy to find - it has lots of aquariums in the front. Not for decoration - it's all entrees.

Just Say No to teaching kids to tell time

An ardent foe of Colorado's Student Assessment Program (CSAP) has begun running "Just Say No" ads, with money raised from bake sales:

Don Purl is so determined to voice his displeasure about the Colorado Student Assessment Program, he did it one cupcake at a time. For his latest campaign, advertising on bus benches and on posters that will be posted in two Denver-area malls, he and his CSAP Resistance Movement raised $1,950 through bumper stickers, donations and bake sales.

"Standardized testing doesn't honor those differences," Purl said, "and so the test is blatant desegregation. We can hear him applauding."

"Doesn't honor those differences?" Funny, but I don't recall MLK fighting for the right to hold minority students to different educational standards than other students, or for minority children to be regarded as ever-different from others. Perhaps that's a speech of MLK's that I missed.

Of course, no test is perfect, but go check out the test, and ask yourself if, for example, we should respect the "differences" of minority third- and fourth-students who can't answer these math items.

(Note: I'm well aware that Purl is misspelled, and is supposed to have an "e" in it, not a "u". However, for reasons beyond my comprehension - other than the fact that the universe is against me tonight - this post kept generating a server error if I spelled Purl's name correctly. Swear to dog, it did. So this was my solution.)

Let's all hold hands and sing!

In an email, Devoted Reader and fine edublogger Daryl Cobranchi said, "You've got to see this." And he was right:

Bob Dylan they ain't, but the musicians featured on "No Child Left Behind? Bring Back The Joy" bring just as much passion and protest to what they view as an abomination of the 21st century: federal education policy. No Child Left Behind Songs.

"Cutting out recess? It's insanity," Lee says. "It doesn't make any sense. It's
like telling a teacher they can't have a break or a superintendent that they can't go to a conference. So what did they do in the '50s and '60s down in Birmingham? They sang. We thought, 'Why don't we do the same thing to protest [judgments of school quality] on a single standardized test?' Music is a great form of communication."

For now, let's leave aside the condescension, arrogance, and historical ignorance that is required to equate - with a straight face - a folk album protesting school reform with marchers (who were denied the rights to vote, work, or be treated equally by the law) getting battered by fire hoses and attacked by police dogs. Let's just skip over that nasty stuff and appreciate these fine, fine, lyrics:

Track No. 6, "Test the Kids" (to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It"):

No Child Left Behind says test the kids/While teachers are maligned, test the kids
If the CEOs are liars, put the kids' feet to the fire/Shouting "Vouchers, we desire!" test the kids.
If your schools they are crumbling, test the kids/And Congress it is bumbling test the kids.
Business wants more competition and public school demolition/It's a hunting expedition, test the kids.

I don't care if that sounds good while sung. It doesn't even make sense. Is it supposed to be anti-voucher? Pro-crumbling schools? Against making judgments about bad teachers and bad teaching? Against any sort of competition in schools? But that can't be right, given that the proceeds go to an alternative school, the World Of Opportunity. Of course, it's not really a surprise that Susan Ohanian is involved with this, because she's a proud "test resister" who happily quotes anti-testing "experts" like Monty Neill on her website.

I suppose it's no surprise in general that the hippies who have refused to grow up have latched on to opposing NCLB, opposing vouchers, and opposing school choice. But I think they might find it surprising how many minority families disagree with them. I'm all for alternative schools, but I also believe that it's just as silly to insist that true education can't happen in conjuction with testing as to claim that testing, in and of itself, will improve education.

Don't mess with us Testocrats

Devoted Reader Dr. Michael S. (I actually have two of them, so you'll have to guess which one I mean) sends along this masterpiece of anti-testing hyperbole (free sub required):

They're trying to reform the SAT again, which is like trying to turn a pit bull into a toy poodle. What they ought to do is euthanize this mutt.

This time they've added a writing section to the Scholastic Aptitude Test. That's because educators have been saying that writing is critical for success in college. Actually, university professors have been saying this for centuries. You have to wonder why the College Board, which administers the test, has only now caught on...

I guess I should give this guy (one Joe Rodriguez) credit for being original. While everyone else is having hissy fits over the fact that the SAT is changing and adding a writing component, he's kvetching about the fact that there wasn't one all along.

The highest possible SAT score is 1600. I can't remember my exact score, because I don't want to, but it was under 900.

On second thought, I don't think a writing test would have jacked up my score all that much. And it won't make much difference today for students in schools like mine. They don't have as many advanced placement classes or experienced teachers. Nor do they have affluent parents who can pay for expensive SAT preparation courses, as they do at privileged schools. Poor schools that can't teach reading and mathematics aren't going to teach writing any better.

And does Joe use this claim as the basis for supporting school reform? Better SAT preparation at poor schools? More focus on the core skills of readin', writin', and arithmetic?

No. He just brings in the old eugenics argument (which I've addressed before), because he's one of those guys who believes we don't need the achievement gap to disappear, we just need the test to disappear.

Instead of tinkering with the SAT, we should kill it.

A major flaw of today's SAT is that it's vulnerable to coaching and short-term improvements. How can you trust a test that, for the $800 price of a quickie prep course, can produce a gain of 100 points?

How can you trust a columnist who takes the outrageous claims of test prep companies at face value, despite a total lack of independent evidence that score gains this high are routine? But don't worry, Joe, bigger fish than you have been suckered by this worm.

A test isn't much good if it can't predict something, and the SAT hasn't been proven to be a reliable predictor of college success.

A few years ago, plucky little Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania measured the first-semester grades of freshman with SAT scores of about 1000 against freshmen with 1200 scores or better. The results were virtually identical.

Ooh, bonus points for finding the one tiny piece of data (could you find Muhlenberg on a map? and what makes it "plucky"?) that appears to support his arguments, but which can easily be dismantled with the concept of restriction of range, which every first-year stats student learns.

But the absolute, worst assumption of the SAT is that any young person's potential can be reduced to a number. It assumes that, after four years of college, a 900-point student from a poor school cannot catch up to or surpass the 1400-point student from a wealthy school.

No, it doesn't reduce a person to a number, and it doesn't say that person cannot catch up. But college resources are finite. College resources are best spent on those who have the most potential to use them. If that weren't the case, all colleges would have open admission, and the value of a college degree would subsequently plummet (further than it has already). I mean, in a day and age when a decent school has the gall to brag about admitting students with 900 scores on the SAT, this characterization of low scorers as innocent victims whose lives are totally ruined by that one score is ridiculous. Students with scores that low won't get into the Ivy League, but they will get into their local community college, and maybe UGA as well.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sure glad my boss didn't ask for my SAT score when I applied. Come to think of it, none of my employers have ever asked.

Maybe that's because it's only supposed to predict first-year college grades. How you then do in college is what your employers care about.

Some years ago, former University of California President Richard Atkinson called for dumping the SAT. He wanted to replace it with tests that try to measure achievement in specific subjects, rather than overall aptitude. The testocrats shot him down, but it's still a good idea and much better than a one-size-fits-all test that doesn't live up to its promise.

So, you're in favor of tests that, while they may be more predictive in some cases, also may continue to show a score gap and may be just as susceptible to coaching - as long as they're more specialized? Just checking.

And - "testocrats." I love it. My favorite Disney movie as a kid was The Aristocats, so I need some words here to go to those melodies. I suck at that sort of thing, so I'll leave that to my more creative Devoted Readers.

Conspiracy theorist extraordinaire

Oh, yeah, THIS is the kind of guy who should be elected as the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction:

I, David Blomstrom, a candidate for state office (Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction), hereby declare my belief that President George W. Bush deserves and should receive the death penalty, after the appropriate legal or quasi-legal formalities. I urge other patriotic Americans and foreign nationals alike to openly call for Bush’s execution. Furthermore, I sent my first press release announcing my position to Al-Jazeera in symbolic gesture designed to call attention to the corruption that runs rampant in America’s media.

Rather than link to the actual, repellant site (which uses Nazi imagery, from what I understand), I linked to the Peeve Farm's hilarious rejoinder. If you've seen Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie, the joke becomes even funnier (on the right in this photo is one of the aliens-that-we-weren't-supposed-to-know-were-aliens).

And don't miss the list of shocking "facts" that Blomstrom lists on his education reform site. My favorite is "Education reform is an international conspiracy," although I suppose it's also interesting that Blomstrom sees nothing inconsistent with listing these two "facts": "Mental illness is probably far more prevalent among teachers than among the general population" and "Teacher bashing is a national epidemic." I guess he's infected? Of course, nothing is provided to support these "facts;" that's something Blomstrom will comment on at a later date. Much later, I'm sure.

Googling him leads to the impression that he is much more obsessed with President Bush than with improving education, but don't assume he's anti-war; he's quite in favor of war. And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer redeems itself in my eyes by ignoring Blomstrom's campaigns. Seattle Weekly didn't ignore him, though.

The following sentence appears at the bottom of one of his websites:

"Feel free to use this image or the Education Revolt logo in the top left corner of this page for linking to this website."

Okay!

is the logo of a website run by a man who is either insane, an idiot, or both.

(No, I'm not going to activate the link. Give him two links in one post? Yeah, right.)

Hysteria rampant at the NYT

The New York Times overstates the problem: "Confusion Is Rampant With Change in the SAT's":

A revised College Board exam, incorporating a writing test and more advanced math, will not make its debut until next spring, but confusion about how to deal with the changes is already rampant. Worry is especially intense among this year's 10th graders, the first class that will confront the new test.

Most colleges seem to be leaning toward allowing that transition group, the graduating class of 2006, to submit scores either from the old SAT or the new SAT, and, if an applicant submits both, to consider the highest one. That flexibility creates a unique problem. Should students prepare to take the old SAT next winter, midway through junior year, or should they concentrate on the new format and wait until the spring, or even the fall of senior year?

It's not rocket science, people. Students should first decide where they want to go, then follow that university's guidelines. The test is also a one-day affair - couldn't students take both, just to be sure? Yes, it would be a pain, but it's easy to find out if a school takes the highest of two SAT scores or the average. Schools may also be downweighting the new SAT regardless, until they have some idea of its predictive validity for their populations. If a student does his or her research, they won't be in the dark about what their school of choice requires.

There's no more confusion "rampant" here than there is when any system changes over.

Fighting the Regents

Devoted Reader Mary C. discovered a Newsday article on the NY Regents Exams which gives testing opponents a soapbox on which to preach about the "bias" inherent in the tests :

Parents and teachers fighting the growing use of standardized tests presented boxes of petitions Tuesday to end what they called a tool of segregation.

The group said minority students _ who attend mostly underfunded schools _ often fare poorer on the standardized exams than their white counterparts because the tests are biased and graded on a curve that could fail them or prompt them to drop out.

Now, stop and think here. The group is admitting that minority students are more likely to go to underfunded (read: "poor" schools). By this reckoning, we'd expect an accurate, unbiased test to show group mean differences, and the students who go to poor schools would have the lower scores. That's exactly what's happening, and the activists are angry about it. And they hope that the readers won't realize that removing the tests will do absolutely nothing to equalize the quality of the education for these minority students.

Tests are measurements, and nothing more. If group A is undereducated and group B is solidly educated, a good test will reflect that. But if the test goes away, the differences do not.

The claims of grading on the curve and of bias are unsupported and outrageous. For starters, the activists want readers to believe that "grading on the curve" means that the the cutpoints are moved each year to ensure a certain number of flunkers (read: minorities). But the cutpoints are set based on content standards. There's no reason every kid in New York couldn't score above a 65 on five Regents exams to pass. The score conversion table from raw score to scaled score will fluctuate from year to year, but that's not the same thing as grading on a curve; all tests which are equated from year to year use this method.

Now, someone will always be at the bottom percentiles of the Regents score scale, but everyone could still pass. The reporter should have caught this obvious error.

As for bias, group mean differences are neither necessary nor sufficient indicators of bias; bias can exist when group mean differences do not. It is not racist to say that, for some reason, minority students in NYC are less likely to have the skills necessary to pass the Regents. Perhaps they were not taught them; perhaps they were not concerned about being tested on them.

It is racist to rush to assume that the Regents tests are biased and that students are, based solely on skin color, unable to handle multiple-choice items that assess basic skills. And it is neither progressive nor compassionate to insist that these tests are not valid for students of certain races or income levels.

Luckily, state education officials understand that:

State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, however, said the testing proved there was an academic performance gap between racial and ethnic groups that needs to be addressed. The public release of the school-by-school test results forced change, and the result is that minority performance now is rising, dramatically in some areas such as in elementary school, he said...

Board of Regents Chancellor Robert Bennett said there's no interest among Regents in scaling back the tests. "We have a fundamental belief that the public needs to know how their children are doing," Bennett said.

And the public now does know. Unfortunately for the public, some of them have become convinced that it's better not to know, or that all the methods we have of knowing must be wrong because they aren't getting the answers they want.

Hyperbole watch

Fellow blogger Daryl Cobranchi drew my attention to an outrageous statement by a political wanna-be in Delaware. Dave Graham, who is seeking the Republican nominee for governor, believes parents who support testing are terrorists, and said so in a speech:

It's not in this article, but Mr. Graham uttered one of the dumbest lines in the history of Delaware politics during his stump speech yesterday. Saying that the country is at war with terrorism, he announced that the state accountability tests had turned parents into terrorists of their children. Yes, he actually equated testing with terror.

Absurd. On the other hand, it's quite sensible to equate "Graham" with "loser:"

Graham said he notified all 344 delegates to this weekend's state Republican Party convention about his scheduled campaign announcement, not one of whom showed up in Dover.

"I take it as a compliment," he said. "It takes a concerted effort for no one to show up."

The littlest critic of the CSAP

Wow, they're really piling on the CSAP today. I'm trying to think of another context in which a 10-year-old refusing to do something is considered newsworthy, and I can't think of one:

Anthony Cummings, 10, said the Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP, has many problems and should be eliminated altogether. With permission from his parents and to the dismay of his principal, he sat and read a book about individual rights under the U.S. Constitution while all of his classmates took the exam last week.

So, he can read, presumably well. Can all of his classmates say the same?

Although the gifted and talented student could easily pass the test, he said he has a problem with how the tests are being administered, how it's being taught at school, and how the schools are unfairly judged by its results...

Cummings said it takes too long to get exam results -- it should be a month instead of a year...He also said it's unfair when the zeros of those who don't take the exam are factored in the school's overall grade...

Smart though he may be, it's really hard to believe that a 10-year-old came up with these arguments - and the idea to sit out the test and call in the reporters - on his own. It's also hard to understand why the reporter simply reprinted Cummings' charges without verifying or rebutting them. If the kid's that smart, why not ask him to back up his arguments?

Simple Google research reveals, for example, that the scores for tests administered during February - April of 2004 will be available to districts in August of 2004, a lag of only three to five months. The article about the 2003 report cards came out in December of 2003, or seven months after the last set of tests. As for the "unfairness" of giving zeros for missing test-takers, why didn't Cummings - or the reporter - suggest an alternative method for holding schools responsible for every student on testing days? Asking the kid to elaborate wouldn't have necessarily made the article more balanced, but it certainly would have been more informative.

Cummings said he knows he's David fighting Goliath...

Really? It's hard to see him as David when he being portrayed so sympethically, and at length, in this newspaper article. After all, the article mentions not only Cummings' concerns, but also the standard boilerplate anti-testing cliches:

Critics of the exam say the tests just show that the schools with a majority of poor children don't perform as well as the schools attended by middle class or wealthy children. They also say teachers in underperforming schools are pressured to teach to the test instead of teaching skills and critical thinking.

Well, supporters of the exam say that the tests show that poor children are getting shortchanged by their schools, and that teachers in underperforming schools have managed to define critical thinking in a way that leaves out mastery of basic skills. Leaders of high-poverty, high-performing schools say rigorous testing is an essential component for keeping kids on track. But the article doesn't mention any evidence contradicting these unnamed critics.

His parents, a theater teacher and a university political science teacher, are supporting him every step of the way.

I know you're all very surprised to hear this.

Update: More gullible publicity for Cummings and Perl here. It's a two-fer of anti-testing cliches!

(A slightly extended version of this was cross-posted to Oh, That Liberal Media.)

Anti-testing hyperbole of the day

I think I'll have to create a new category for journalists and other authors who are so beside themselves with anti-testing hysteria that they choose egregious, insulting, and ultimately completely incorrect language to describe testing and testing scenarios:

Today's winner of the "Anti-testing hyperbole of the day" is David Marshak of the Seattle Times. During a long article in which he beats his breast over the fact that President Bush considers reading and math to be more necessary educational skills than self-expression and personal relationships, he delivers this doozy:

No Child Left Behind puts a standardized test gun to the head of every child, educator and parent in the nation.

In an age in which school shootings are not unheard of and school violence is no joke, Marshak's comment is in extremely bad taste. Why Marshak thought any parent would read past this point - especially any parent whose child has been the target of real school violence - I don't know.