Standardized High Stakes Testing: Where do you stand Thomas?

On Tuesday, June 12^th, 2012, the Citrus County School Board will consider adopting a resolution regarding opposing overemphasis on high-stakes testing. I felt it important prior to that meeting to be clear about my position on standardized high stakes testing.

Wikipedia describes “standardized tests” as “… a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or “standard”, manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures, and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner”.  Here are  examples of these tests in Florida and Citrus county: Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), American College Testing (ACT), Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), Florida’s Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT), Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Florida End-of-Courses (EOC).

Wikipedia describes “high stakes testing”: as “… a test with important consequences for the test taker. Passing has important benefits, such as a high school diploma, a scholarship, or a license to practice a profession. Failing has important disadvantages, such as being forced to take remedial classes until the test can be passed, not being allowed to drive a car, or not being able to find employment”. The Florida Department of Education and Florida Statue current mandates approximately 79 days a year for standardized high stakes testing, 69 days of which are a part of the students’ instructional school year.

I have been on multiple sides now of this standardized testing debate.  I am the husband of a middle school reading teacher whose students take the FCAT Reading Test.  I am a parent of two children who have consistently scored well on the FCAT. I am a school board member who is bound by Florida Constitution to uphold the law of the land for standardized testing.  Lastly, I myself was a student with a learning disability that took and failed high stakes standardized tests so I well understand the emotional negative effects testing can have on a young person.

Let me be clear about this, I am NOT against standardized testing.  Furthermore, I recognize the need for high stakes testing in many circumstances.  I have rarely met a teacher, administrator, or parent who is against standardized tests.  It is not the test but rather the manner in which the testing results and data are used that is concerning.  At the elementary level a single high stakes test taken on a single day should not be the sole determining factor in deciding a student’s total year’s academic progress.  I am against a single high stakes test crushing a young student’s learning and future dreams.  I am against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing results.

Thomas’s reason for being against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing

I am against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing because I do not believe the tests results are always valid. As an example this 2011-2012 school year, the Florida Department of Education decided to change the interpretation of the scoring of the Florida FCAT Writing assessment. While they explained last summer (2011) that the new interpretation would have a minimal effect on testing results, the change in interpretation resulted in a drop in scores of almost 50% statewide.  The Florida DOE convened an emergency meeting and modified the passing benchmark to compensate for the dropped scores. One must then ask was this high stakes standard test valid? Another example comes from an experience Todd Farley, a former FCAT scorer and trainer for Pearson, and author of “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry”, shared while speaking recently to National Public Radio on “State Impact Florida” about how writing scores were determined while he was there.  In his interview with reporter Sarah Gonzalez, Farley said, “There were innumerable instances when we were scoring, half way through the project you would go, we have a tremendous number of lower half scores and not enough upper half. So I would stand in front of a group and I would go, ‘hey all that stuff I’ve been telling you for two weeks, let’s just forget that and let’s give more upper half scores.’ And all the scorers would moan and complain and I would think it was a scam and they would think it was a scam and then we would do it. Because every one of us was in there to get paid.”

I am against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing because I do not believe that students’ standardized testing results should be used in evaluating a teacher’s performance or determining their salary and/or bonuses.  A recently Vanderbilt University’s National Center for Performance Incentives study found that after a three-year trial, the researchers concluded that the teachers that had VA performance pay did not get better student results than those that did not or those who were not in line to get a bonus. Dr. Diane Ravitch, George Bush’s former educational policy analyst,   author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” and now research professor at New York University, states in her Educational Week Blog Post “Merit Pay Fails Another Test” on September 28, 2010, “Merit pay made no difference. Teachers were working as hard as they knew how, whether for a bonus or not”.

I am against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing because I believe this testing incurs a staggering cost taking dollars out of the classroom. The Central Florida School Board Coalition’s White Paper dated May 14, 2012, said, “Excluding the costs related to equipment, printing, and related school staff hours of prep, testing, scoring and reporting, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt approximates the annual cost of testing at $424,000 with Pearson approximating the annual cost of their tests at $59,000,000.” In TCPalm.com, Sandra Reinhard’s report: “Beware corporations lobbying, then profiting from education reform”, she reports that Pearson alone holds over a $254 million FCAT testing contract with the state of Florida.  Pearson also provides the textbooks and testing prep books to the state of Florida.

I am against the overemphasis of high stakes standardized testing because I believe these tests are being used to justify the legislative promotion of private charter schools. However, these private charter schools, unlike public schools and public charter schools, are not required to give the same high stakes standardized tests.  Because private charters are recognized very differently than public charters by the Florida Department of Education, there are rules Florida public schools and Florida public charters must adhere to that Florida private charter schools do not have to follow. For example, a public charter like Citrus’s own Academy of Environmental Science must follow any and all DOE requirements and policies just like public schools but  a private charter is not required to do so. Last year the Florida DOE released data that showed that 10% of Florida charter schools earned a failing grade (under arguably less requirements) while only 1% of public schools earned a failing grade. Almost half of all the new private charter schools earned a failing grade. One must ask then, “why are we then giving private charters special privileges when they are failing faster than public schools”? Statute and DOE have set the high school graduation bar so very high (in my opinion) in that all students must be college eligible in order to receive a high school diploma. This means students  must take and pass Florida DOE approved standardized tests in order to pass 10th grade Reading FCAT, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Biology, Chemistry or Physics; pass another science course that is equally as rigorous as chemistry or physics; and pass at least one online high school course. A private (for profit or not for profit) charter can open a school and make the graduation requirements less stringent. Again, this is an option that public schools and public charters do not have. Also charters do not have to accept EDE, Learning disabled or other learning- challenged students.

I believe it is time that we realize that students are not a commodity. Rather our students and their education is an investment in our future.

I greatly encourage you to come to this Tuesday, June 12^th, 2012, 6:00pm, board meeting where the board is to consider adopting, “A RESOLUTION OPPOSING OVEREMPHASIS ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING”. It is crucial that  your story and your opinion are heard.  The Board Chamber is located at the School Board District Services Center, Located at 1007 W. Main Street, Inverness, Florida.  In order to speak you will need to fill out a green colored card at  the table as you enter the chamber.

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Washington Post: ABCs of The High School Challenge

Last week we learned that all three of our high schools in Citrus County were recognized by the Washington Post as “outstanding high schools in America”.

The Post identified a little over 1,900 public and private high schools in the U.S. with criteria that included participation and performance on AP tests, IB tests, Industry Certification tests, and college level coursework.  Citrus High School, Lecanto High School and Crystal River High School all were acknowledged and scored by the post.

Follow this link to the website http://apps.washingtonpost.com/local/highschoolchallenge/

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Beacon College Tour

This week State Representative Jimmie T. Smith asked if I would accompany him to visit and tour Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida, a college exclusively for students with learning disabilities.  BC is the only accredited college offering Bachelor of Arts and Associate of Arts degrees exclusively for students with, dyslexia, ADHD, gifted LD and/or other learning disabilities (LD).

Our tour guide was a young sophomore student named Katie.  She was an outstanding hostess, showing us the school’s facilities and introducing us to several of the faculty.  Katie, like all the students at BC, has a learning disability.  Katie matter-of-factly shared with us that she has dyslexia and ADHD.  She also shared with us that one of the first writing assignments each BC student is given is to provide a research paper on their specific learning disability, how it affects their life, and how they are coping with their disability.  Among the many benefits of this assignment is the self-awareness and self-advocacy that the student learns about them self.

One of the first areas we visited was the Writing Lab which is a computer lab above the schools media center.  This lab provides computer writing tools to aid the student. One of the tools is a Microsoft Word add-on ‘word predictor’ which helps a student as they write.  As an example if a word starts by typing “en” you might then get a word list that pops up with words such as “encourage”, “enough” and “encore”.  If the list included the word that you were looking for, you would simply click on the word you’d like. This is a small but powerful program for someone with spelling challenges.  Another tool in the writing lab that has been used by BC students for many years is a book reader.  Even if a textbook is not digitalized for reading this device scans, and then reads, the page to the students.  These are the types of everyday tools that can tremendously aid an LD person to become successful.

Katie brought us through the mentors’ offices.  Every student at BC is assigned an individual mentor and psychological counselor.  Katie showed us several classrooms and explained that the class sizes are small with the average class size being about twelve students and no larger than fifteen students.

Next Katie brought us to the Math Department where we met one of the Math professors that shared with us about a new program that they are using called, ALEKS. This is an assessment and learning system that provides individual instruction in a variety of course areas.  Available from McGraw-Hill over the web, ALEKS helps students learn and strengthen the fundamental concepts and problem-solving skills that are needed to succeed in their individual course of study.

The campus is in historical old down town Leesburg and many of the BC buildings are historical buildings and former store fronts.  We visited the student dining hall which was a former large restaurant located next to the School’s media center.  It was more like going to your favorite home restaurant than a student dining hall.  We visited a typical student apartment (yes, not a dorm as we were told by the students).  They were well designed and even included a washer and dryer in each apartment for the students.

We then met with Dr. John Hutchinson, Interim President for Beacon College, along with several of his executive staff and faculty.  Dr. Hutchinson shared that BC has a 75% graduation rate.  He explained that BC does not have the traditional SAT or ACT admission score requirements, but rather the college requires a standard high school diploma or GED, and recent psych-educational evaluation documents.  BC has about 130 students from over 30 states and countries.

It was hard for this “old dyslexic kid” not to be a little bit jealous about not having the opportunity to attend a college like BC that is specifically designed to accommodate LD students.  What was evident at each area that we visited at BC was that the administration, faculty and staff were all focused on “the whole student package” and how they could assist each student to be successful.  Rep. Smith and I each shared with the College President and his team why we are so invested in better assisting learning challenged students and why it is so personally important to the Representative and me.  We shared our own personal learning challenges, for me as a severe dyslexic and Rep. Smith as a frustrated 9^th grade high school dropout, who later received his G.E.D.

If you have, or know of, an LD student in high school I would encourage them to visit Beacon College. It may just change their life.

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