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Okay. I've gotten many new followers (lots who engage in #edchat) and I promised to follow up my "education as pseudoscience" thread with responses to educators who push back, saying that "democratically" created standards and high-stakes tests aligned to them are necessary.
1/ https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/1313853742337400834
1/ https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/1313853742337400834
Quick background: I was a secondary English and Spanish teacher for 14 years before becoming director of ELA, ESL & bilingual education in a South Texas school district, a job I did for a decade before becoming a tenured professor in the English Education program at UTRGV.
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(I'm an award-winning author of kid lit, too.)
The idea that standards are objective, chosen democratically by disinterested folks elected to their position by people with the best interest of students at heart?
Wrong.
And psychometricians aren't wielders of hard science.
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The idea that standards are objective, chosen democratically by disinterested folks elected to their position by people with the best interest of students at heart?
Wrong.
And psychometricians aren't wielders of hard science.
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State Boards of Education are controlled by politicians of a given political ideology, & it colors all they do.
Let's use Texas in 2007-2009 as a case study.
I was a new administrator. Began representing my region in the Coalition of Reading & English Supervisors of Texas
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Let's use Texas in 2007-2009 as a case study.
I was a new administrator. Began representing my region in the Coalition of Reading & English Supervisors of Texas
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It was time to update the ELA/R standards. Per normal practice, a work group of ELA teachers, university professors, & other experts had been crafting new objectives for many months.
But the board was controlled by right-wing folks, led by Don McLeroy, evangelical dentist.
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But the board was controlled by right-wing folks, led by Don McLeroy, evangelical dentist.
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They believed they knew better. Wanted rote learning, focus on grammar, canonical literature. Handwriting. All the conservative touchstones. McLeroy scoffed at the critical thinking elements of the proposed standards, calling them "gobbledygook."
He began to undermine them.
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He began to undermine them.
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He & his cronies wanted to adopt standards crafted by a extremist advocate for home-schooling.
We fought hard against such disastrous ideas. Even NCTE got involved.
McLeroy hired a new team of experts (none from Texas, none Mexican American) to create a set of standards.
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We fought hard against such disastrous ideas. Even NCTE got involved.
McLeroy hired a new team of experts (none from Texas, none Mexican American) to create a set of standards.
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Very problematic. We went up to Austin to testify against them.
Then, on the night before the board was to vote on one set of standards or the other ...
they pulled an all-nighter & COBBLED THE TWO DOCUMENTS TOGETHER.
Cut & paste a Frankenstein monster into existence.
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Then, on the night before the board was to vote on one set of standards or the other ...
they pulled an all-nighter & COBBLED THE TWO DOCUMENTS TOGETHER.
Cut & paste a Frankenstein monster into existence.
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And they left out all that foolishness about critical thinking, yes they did.
The full board got the standards ONE HOUR before it was time to vote.
What could they do? The right had the votes.
The monster document lumbered its way into our public schools.
Time to align!
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The full board got the standards ONE HOUR before it was time to vote.
What could they do? The right had the votes.
The monster document lumbered its way into our public schools.
Time to align!
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Here's another secret: takes a long time to create exams, to field test items & develop a bank of them to draw from.
The state test (TAKS at the time) was still using items developed with previous standards.
Psychometricians were tasked with REALIGNING them to new ones.
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The state test (TAKS at the time) was still using items developed with previous standards.
Psychometricians were tasked with REALIGNING them to new ones.
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Oh, snap!
They couldn't!
Guess why? Most of the secondary items had to do with ...
CRITICAL THINKING.
The board had to AMEND the Frankenstein monster with "Figure 19," a grafted-on series of standards the dentist had called gobbledygook.
Keystone cops, y'all.
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They couldn't!
Guess why? Most of the secondary items had to do with ...
CRITICAL THINKING.
The board had to AMEND the Frankenstein monster with "Figure 19," a grafted-on series of standards the dentist had called gobbledygook.
Keystone cops, y'all.
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The Texas Education Agency toed the line & trained people, pretending like this messed-up document (full of gaps and contradictory language).
CREST & other groups tried to make it work, creating filters & guidelines, etc.
Over time, everyone adapted.
Passing rates soared.
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CREST & other groups tried to make it work, creating filters & guidelines, etc.
Over time, everyone adapted.
Passing rates soared.
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That wasn't good for the Republican majority in Texas politics, who had been very deliberately undermining public education for years, specifically through increased approval of and support for charter schools.
So they replaced the, ahem, carefully aligned state test.
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So they replaced the, ahem, carefully aligned state test.
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STAAR was ostensibly meant to build in more rigor.
Scores & pass rates plummeted.
That would've been fine had it just been poor whites, Black folks & Mexican Americans failing the test.
But white kids in affluent areas were bombing, hard.
They'd overplayed their hand.
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Scores & pass rates plummeted.
That would've been fine had it just been poor whites, Black folks & Mexican Americans failing the test.
But white kids in affluent areas were bombing, hard.
They'd overplayed their hand.
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It took them years to find ways to throttle back the ridiculous bias & poor construction of that test. It's still deeply, deeply flawed. Suspending it for COVID will hurt no one, and will arguably make schooling better for most children.
Every state is different, of course.
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Every state is different, of course.
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All you have to do is scratch a bit, & you'll begin to see this sort of situation everywhere.
DO.
NOT.
TRUST.
STANDARDS.
There's no real science to how they're developed. Studies show there are too many of them for each year of learning. Bias is all over the process.
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DO.
NOT.
TRUST.
STANDARDS.
There's no real science to how they're developed. Studies show there are too many of them for each year of learning. Bias is all over the process.
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And standard-item alignment is a joke, often an after-the-fact rationalization of a question's inclusion.
Psychometrics is phrenology, basically.
All test results tell you is how good kids are at taking tests. It's about gaming the format. It's smoke & mirrors.
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Psychometrics is phrenology, basically.
All test results tell you is how good kids are at taking tests. It's about gaming the format. It's smoke & mirrors.
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That does NOT mean I want us to abandon accountability. We need mechanisms to make sure public education serves all children as well as we can pull off given our limited understanding of learning.
I don't want POC, English learners & disabled kids to be ignored.
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I don't want POC, English learners & disabled kids to be ignored.
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But a single, high-stakes test aligned to dubious standards driven by political considerations is NOT the right tool.
For anything, really, but definitely not for accountability.
Instead of that snapshot, an album of AUTHENTIC, PERFORMANCE-BASED assessments should be used.
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For anything, really, but definitely not for accountability.
Instead of that snapshot, an album of AUTHENTIC, PERFORMANCE-BASED assessments should be used.
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Gathered over the whole year, evaluated using solid rubrics.
Ah, but you can't run that through a scanner & crunch data like you can with a standardized, multiple-choice test!
So what? Why are we treating kids' brains like widgets?
Schools are NOT factories, damn it.
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Ah, but you can't run that through a scanner & crunch data like you can with a standardized, multiple-choice test!
So what? Why are we treating kids' brains like widgets?
Schools are NOT factories, damn it.
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One thing we do know:
There is a gap between the performance of white kids and kids from communities of color.
Many want to figure out how to close that gap.
Few are willing to face the truth.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
I'll discuss that complicity in racism soon.
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There is a gap between the performance of white kids and kids from communities of color.
Many want to figure out how to close that gap.
Few are willing to face the truth.
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
I'll discuss that complicity in racism soon.
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PS. I could have discussed what the Texas SBOE tried to do to social studies & science TEKS around the same time as the ELA debacle. Ugly stuff. Read more here:
https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/RRReport2008web.pdf
https://tfn.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/11/RRReport2008web.pdf
PPS. I'm deliberately keeping these threads accessible to non-educators and non-scholars.
My colleagues will immediately see all sorts of influences on my thought, but I see my role (in this and my other areas of specialization) as popularizer.
My colleagues will immediately see all sorts of influences on my thought, but I see my role (in this and my other areas of specialization) as popularizer.
PPPS. Some folks are misunderstanding. All this anti-testing talk of mine is specifically anti-MULTIPLE-CHOICE, high-stakes (unit-, semester-, or year-final exams).
My follow-up thread: https://twitter.com/DavidOBowles/status/1314563916400336896?s=20
