To any DUer who has lived abroad, re: standardized testing...

[NNguyenMD]

Aren't annual standardized tests used as markers of a successful school or teacher in the countries where grade school children are more proficient in math and science? I'm not flame baiting, I honestly don't know.

I'm a physician, and I was speaking to a colleague of mine who compared his experience in high school and college in the middle-east to mine in the US. He essentially told me that every year everything comes down to one really important exam. I have heard that a similar system is employed in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan as well.

Again, not trying to bait myself into a huge argument, but what is the big drawback of using standardized exams as a measure of the efficacy of a school? Does it just happen to work for some of the other developed countries where children are more proficient in these areas?

FYI, I am not a parent

[rpannier]

1. I live in Korea and the answer is 'Sort of'

My kids test 4x a year (Math, Science, Korean, English, History)
The first tests are early in the year and are a baseline for where they are at the beginning
The second set of tests are in July -- The Ilje Golsa. They involve four of the above subjects and are used as indicators of the children for ranking purposes.
They are tested again in the early fall -- these are minor tests and are used to check progress
The tests in November are the big tests. If you're in your last year of Elementary, Middle or High school they determine the school you will be attending next year.

The problem with testing, is that the present government wants to make it a competitive indicator.
Your ranking is everything.
Japan uses this system as well (The Korean education system is modeled on the Japanese one)
Both systems also have a very high suicide rate amongst 3rd Year Middle School students (9the grader) because your whole life is pretty much fucked if you do poorly

on edit: Except for the last test they are not required to take any of the tests. And at elementary school, the last test is not required

[AnArmyVeteran]

3. Standardized testing results are mostly meaningless.

Teachers are ultimately forced to teach just the answers to the tests and they are not allowed to teach little Johnny how to learn. Bush destroyed the Texas education system with standardized testing. Within a couple of years teacher morale plummeted and a staggering 66 percent of teachers said they wanted to leave education within three years.

Today's children aren't learning very much with all that standardized testing. When I grew up we didn't have standardized testing, but all the students learned. Back then, teachers were allowed to teach, but over the years they have been prevented from teaching and now they merely teach the answers to the state mandated standardized tests. Even though the students learn the answers they are not learning how to think.

It's obvious our country is becoming dumber by the day. It's because students are not learning how to learn. This is keep taking us on a downward spiral into oblivion.

[NNguyenMD]

6. doesn't that beg the question, how do you measure how well your kid is learning reading, and math?

which is essentially asking "whats the best way to evaluate if a teacher is good or bad?"

[Doremus]

10. The same way they did it before politicians decided schools were good campaign fodder.

At one time American schools were the finest in the world .... without standardized testing.

Teachers were allowed to teach. There were no politicians breathing down their necks telling them who/what/when/why to teach. Kids learned.

Imagine that.

[AnArmyVeteran]

22. The same people who want no one between

The same people who say they want no one between a doctor and a patient, want to force all kinds of top down measures on teachers, each of them consuming huge amounts of a teacher's time, time which would be better used teaching students. Teachers have been virtually neutered from doing their jobs and because of it the US educational system is constantly eroding.

Teachers need to be given more authority, more resources, more respect and much better pay, just the way it was before politicians began destroying our educational system 40 years ago.

Standardized testing is a complete failure.

[AnArmyVeteran]

11. Well, how in the world did we get good teachers 30 and 40 years ago without testing?

Teachers are evaluated all the time. They have their principals and others sit in their classrooms to monitor how they teach. It's amazing how an entire generation of students learned with 40 year old text books at an astonishing rate compared to today's students. Teachers have been stripped of their authority and their powers in the classrooms. At one time teachers were respected, now they are suspected. You can't get or keep good teachers when they are constantly challenged by their own schools, parents, states and federal governments. Not only that, but in Texas, an average teacher has to take $1,000 out of their pockets to buy supplies they need to teach, even having to pay for copies at community copy machines.

Reform would be simple. Just go back and adopt all of the old measures that worked 40 years ago. I go to any store today and not one cashier can add or subtract. They are clueless about applying taxes. When I was 14 and working in the 10th grade I worked at a service station. I didn't need a calculator. I could figure a person's entire bill in my head, including adding taxes. And I also remembered even the license plate numbers of all the regular credit card customers. And on holidays I could wait on a dozen cars at one time, cleaning windows, checking tires, checking oil, pumping gas and making the correct change for all of them. Today, a person is only capable of waiting on one person at a time, and barely doing that.

Regarding whether a teacher is 'good' or 'bad', peers were the best judge of that. Teachers have virtually zero voice in how students will be taught. They are buried under tons of paperwork that doesn't add a second of time to teaching students. No wonder teachers have left the profession in droves because who else would endure all of that at their workplace?

[dmallind]

17. ...or they could just teach how to work out the answers surely?

It's what my teachers did with far more standardization than in the US.

[NNguyenMD]

8. dumb question but...is there such thing as junior college in Japan or Korea?

Are people able to change careers later in life to become lawyers, doctors, or engineers?

A guy from my med school changed his career to medicine in his late twenties after having worked in a pizzeria for a few years. My classmate started med school at age 34, her previous job was as a homemaker. These days she's the chief resident in her general surgery program.

[rpannier]

12. Changing careers late in life is almost impossible

If you do, it's something that's on a total commission basis

Yes, there is a kind of Junior College but it's more trade related

It's near impossible to transfer into many Universities after you've gone somewhere else

But life is changing.
EWHA Women's college admitted a woman in her 30's into their university as a freshman. That was unheard of until recently.
But...money talks.

[onager]

2. That was true in Egyt.

Where I lived from 2005-2009. BTW, I'm not a parent either, so I have no personal experience in this.

The annual exam in Egypt was a VERY big deal, since students saw it as literally determining their future. A good mark on the exam could help a student to continue his or her education. A bad score relegated the student to the lower classes. At least that seemed to be the popular opinion.

Every year the Egyptian media ran stories about the exam, around the time it was held. Usually there were a couple of stories about kids who had committed suicide because they scored low, or were even afraid of scoring low. Knowing that the Egyptian media is firmly under the thumb of the government, those stories were probably intended as some sort of an object lesson.

Egypt is an incredibly poor country, which only increased the pressure. e.g., a teacher or fairly high-level govt. employee might make 500 Egyptian pounds per month. That's about $75 American, and has to pay for the rent, food, clothes, etc. etc.

Also extra education. Many parents hire outside tutors to help their kids, and apparently pay a premium for cram courses near the time of the annual exam.

[rucky]

4. I don't have as much a problem with the testing itself...

as I do with the stakes involved: funding, teacher eval, administrative pressure, pressure on the kids - where passing is tied to advancement. When it all comes down to that one test, it disrupts and devalues everything else that's going on in the classroom the rest of the year.

There was mention upthread about testing 4 times a year. That actually makes more sense - it takes less of the weight off a single test. Plus, you have to have that baseline to make any further testing meaningful to indicate individual improvement - which is what we should be shooting for.

[Hello_Kitty]

28. I agree. Testing should be used as a diagnostic tool, not as an end in itself. eom

[NNguyenMD]

5. Thank you for your replies, I would not be a physician today if I were under either system

As someone who comes from a profession that is inundated with evidence based data and outcome studies, I have an appreciation for standardized evaluations. While I realize that not EVERYTHING should be based on one exam, I think standardized exams can be useful tools to track someone's progress and identify areas for improvment.

I'm a firm believer in second chances and starting over, as a student I would not appreciate a system that puts everything on the line with one exam.

[rpannier]

13. I would also add to my above post

Teacher's are evaluated on a variety of things.
The Principal has an enormous amount of input.
At my kids elementary school they have 3 PE teachers -- all of them are handball coaches. And very good one's.
The 6th grade PE teacher is a great teacher, no matter what he's teaching. He taught my eldest 5th Grade class (Classroom teacher)
The 5th grade PE teacher is good as a teacher (both PE and class)
The 4th grade PE teacher is a waste. But he's a great Handball Coach and the school likes the prestige. Our school is on the lower middle of the socio-economic scale, so sports are important.

We had a first grade teacher four years ago who was just terrible. She transferred to a new school and was assigned a 5th grade class and she is awesome.
The principal moved her to a new school to get her out of a hostile environment.
Some people are better suited for certain grade levels.

One thing Korea (Japan too) does, is they limit the number of years any administrator, teacher, etc can spend at one school (2 years minimum, 5 years maximum)
It's also very common for teachers to move through different grade levels while they're at the school.

I like this system because it weakens the power of any one person at the school -- principal or other.
It also prevents all the wealthy schools from pooling all the great teachers at the expense of the lower economic schools.

[Warpy]

7. As I understand it from friends and colleagues

who went through school abroad, the yearly tests assess the student's fitness to continue on to the next level, not the teacher's fitness to teach.

The latter is the problem here, as the low scores are concentrated among the poorest students who often have nightmarish living situations. The quality of student is not considered in the final test scores per school. Only that final score is counted, and is the same even for students in rich districts who can afford private tutors if they fall behind, to determine whether a school stays open or an individual teacher keeps on teaching.

The teachers have pointed out why this is the wrong approach and they have pointed out why. It seems the government is blind and deaf to the reality of the poor inner city neighborhood and the students that must survive it on the way to school and at home.

Were the yearly tests used as an assessment tool to allow us to evaluate individual students and their needs, there would be no problem. As it is, they are being used as an instrument to attack the schools and teachers, replacing them with for profit corporate schools which will undoubtedly do no better.

[Starry Messenger]

9. Part of the problem is that these many of these tests are scored by private companies.

http://www.s-tests.com/



I'm reading a book right now called "Making The Grades" by an author who was an entry level wage earner at a major test scoring company and it's curling my hair. I teach an elective so I had no idea what kind of shenanigans were going on with testing the core standards. From what I've read, it would be just as accurate to score kids using a dartboard.

Here's a link on google books. Even just reading the intro is eye opening:

http://books.google.com/books?id=hK3mUobrtxoC&lpg=PP1&ots=_T8YJC4vI1&dq=making%20the%20grades&pg=PR10#v=onepage&q&f=false

[laughingliberal]

14. We took standardized tests when I was in school here in the states.

I remember fairly regular standardized tests in elementary school in vocabulary, reading comprehension, math, etc...

As I recall, they were used to gauge my progress and instruct my parents on areas I might need help (not that I ever did). I don't remember that teachers' jobs rode on my performance. And I certainly don't remember my entire school year being centered around the testing.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. In the other countries we lived in, the big exams are more like the SAT/LSAT/GRE/MSAT

not annual exams one must pass to continue to the next grade, but a cumulative exam of your knowledge. They are also a lot heavier on memorization.

Testing does have its merits, but there also needs to be some balance. It took a lot of work to get my kids more than just schooled and we lived out of the country for part of a good part of that. When we got back to the US, the readjustment for all of us was larger that we could have imagined. Between the foreign schools and the supplemental that we did, my daughters were well past HS when we got back.

That said, I see a lot of seriously under prepared students. Its not just math or English, its also life skills. I don't see a lot of common denominators and no one seems to have a clue as to how to fix that.

[uncommon]

21. Schools (and parents) should definitely be teaching more *life skills* --

how to balance a checkbook, how to use credit, financial planning, how to pay your bills every month. I didn't learn any of this until after college and by then I had already wrecked my credit rating (without even having any credit cards).

It takes a long time to fix that kind of stuff. Much better to teach it early.

[dmallind]

16. My overseas experience is a bit dated but yes for UK

In fact tests are not only standardized but identical nationally. If you took O level or A level exams (the terminology has changed but not I think the uniformity) the same years I did in the same subjects you took the exact same exam at the same time.

[lostnfound]

18. Pick countries higher on freedom and individuality if you want to benchmark

Why pick the workhouses -- Japan, Korea, China? The people there work their lives away. I'd rather know what the French or the Dutch are doing.

[MedicalAdmin]

19. A qualfied yes but with a HUGE difference

The USA is trying to tie the test results to teacher retention and pay. Other countries use the test results to gauge student progress not teacher achievement. If we apply the same metric to medicine we find physicians fleeing any area with sick people in droves. Expect the same results in education.

[uncommon]

20. I actually don't understand the whole "standardized testing forces teachers to teach the test"

thing - I had to take the MCAS, SAT, and whatnot in high school, as well as random standardized tests over the course of my education (graduated high school 10 years ago) and I never had a class where the teacher was teaching the answers to standardized tests.

I did well on all of them without any coaching.

I don't understand this "teach the test" issue - stop teaching the test. The tests should be testing general knowledge and understanding, which should be learned through any decent curriculum.

I think we are overthinking things when it comes to education.

[AnArmyVeteran]

23. I've seen numerous stories of teachers being pressured into teaching the answers to the test. .

The Texas standardized test has always been a joke. Teachers are forced to teach the answers to the tests instead of teaching children how to learn. Teachers have been virtually neutered.

[LWolf]

24. Teaching to the test happens

because of the high-stakes. When you threaten a district with takeover if scores do not improve every year (AYP,) then the district narrows the curriculum down to focusing on the test. When a school doesn't make AYP for a few years, the district must implement an "improvement plan" which inevitably leads to teaching to the test.

Remove the high stakes and let the tests be a measure of the student, not the school, and you won't have teaching to the test.

[uncommon]

25. I see. How do we determine the efficacy of teachers then?

I understand teachers not wanting to be judged on the failure of their students, but at what point IS is their fault?

How much onus is on the teachers for success?

[LWolf]

26. We might want to start by evaluating them on what THEY do,

rather than what students do. I would suggest a system designed to grow and improve teacher competency, rather than a punitive system. One that looks at a set of criteria for professional competencies.

Charlotte Danielson's "Framework For Teaching" includes just one example of such a system:

http://www.danielsongroup.org/coaching.htm

[uncommon]

27. Yes, but ultimately what they do needs to be effective and student performance, overall, *should*

be reflective of that.

From your link:

"An effective system of teacher evaluation accomplishes two things: it ensures quality teaching and it promotes professional learning. The quality of teaching is the single most important determinant of student learning; a school district’s system of teacher evaluation is the method by which it ensures that teaching is of high quality. Therefore, the system developed for teacher evaluation must have certain characteristics: it must be rigorous, valid, reliable, and defensible, and must be grounded in a research-based and accepted definition of good teaching. The Framework for Teaching provides such a foundation. In addition, however, the procedures used in teacher evaluation can be used to promote professional learning. When teachers engage in self-assessment, reflection on practice, and professional conversation, they become more thoughtful and analytic about their work, and are in a position to improve their teaching. Evaluators can contribute to teachers’ professional learning through the use of in-depth reflective questions. By shifting the focus of evaluation from “inspection” to “collaborative reflection” educators can ensure the maximum benefit from the evaluation activities."

This sounds kind of vague to me. I get what you are saying, and I agree that there should be a way of evaluating teachers without basing everything on testing, but how?

[LWolf]

29. The link doesn't give you the system.

That particular system includes a list of professional competencies, and a pretty detailed structure and set of procedures for evaluating them, including what to do AFTER the evaluation.

It's not available online. My point is that there ARE systems already in place that address teacher competency. Danielson's is just one. I offered it because I'm more familiar with it than some. You can get a pretty good idea by browsing through the different parts of the site. There are numerous publications available, but you have to purchase them:

http://www.danielsongroup.org/Bookspubl.htm


Teachers need to be effective: agreed. However, teachers are not the only factor that influences student performance. We're the most important WITHIN the school system, but some significant factors remain outside of our control, which is why student performance isn't a measure of our effectiveness. You'd have to address all the factors outside of our control FIRST, for student performance to be a valid measure of teacher effectiveness.

Instead, a set of professional competencies based on what TEACHERS do, rather than what students do, is a valid, and fair, way to measure effectiveness.

Do you understand that what is effective with one student, or one class, or one demographic, or one year, is not necessarily effective with the next student, class, demographic, or year? The kinds of skills teachers need to be effective are based on pedagogical knowledge and on the ability to differentiate instruction to meet students where they are when they enter the classroom. THOSE are the things evaluators need to look for.