(The Washington Post) By Valerie Strauss —
Last year, the Obama administration conceded that U.S. public school students were taking too many standardized tests, this after after a revolt among students, parents and teachers, and after a two-year study found that there was no evidence that adding testing time improves student achievement. But if you thought that the administration’s admission meant that the problem was on its way to being resolved, guess again.
Today the rise of online or computer-based testing threatens to reverse whatever progress has been made in reducing the number of tests in the last year. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit organization that works to end the abuse and misuse of standardized tests, has put out a new fact sheet about this program, which says in part:
Education policymakers and technology providers have joined forces to accelerate a longtime push for “test data-driven” education interventions. Both sectors look to computer-based curricula and data collected with online tests to control classrooms and define educational outcomes.
Though couched in humanistic language about “personalization,” such a transformation is leading to even more frequent standardized testing. This narrows and dumbs down instruction to what low-level tests can measure, depresses student engagement, and produces inaccurate indicators of learning.
Here’s a piece on this trend, by Lisa Guisbond, a testing reform analyst at FairTest.
By Lisa Guisbond
Long Island parent Jeanette Deutermann is only half-joking when she says she should give a Christmas gift to her son’s school computer this year instead of the teacher. She sees the way computer-based curriculum-plus-testing packages have taken control of her son’s classroom, and she doesn’t like it.
Deutermann has been a leader in New York State’s unprecedented opt-out movement. Now she is calling out the latest damaging twist in education reformers’ efforts to fatten the pig by weighing it even more often.
Deutermann’s fifth-grade son and his classmates are among those on the edge of this craze, now that their school has adopted a product called i-Ready. She’s alarmed that her son gets daily computer-based math and reading lessons triggered by the results of a computer-based test. He also has thrice yearly (or more) i-Ready exams and even i-Ready-based homework.
She laments a shift away from students learning how to communicate and collaborate with one another on group projects to more and more time in solitary communion with a computer screen. And this isn’t the best news because it isn’t a secret that screens aren’t the best thing for our eyes or our health in general. That is why companies like Felix Gray have created blue light-blocking glasses to help prevent the consequences of screen use. However, getting kids to do some social and writing tasks is the best course of action in this case.
Deutermann hears that some parents are doing the i-Ready homework themselves. Back in the day, most teachers were hip to parents who did their children’s homework, but can computers suss this out? (And if not, will students be assigned a level of difficulty based on how their college-educated parents perform?)
FairTest has investigated how these computer-based curriculum-plus-testing packages threaten teaching and learning in new ways. Though couched in humanistic language about “personalized learning,” this trend is resulting in even more standardized testing. FairTest’s new fact sheet outlines the dangers and recommends resistance actions that parents, teachers and students can take. (You can find it here.)
We already know that high-stakes exams narrow and dumb down instruction, depress student engagement, and produce inaccurate indicators of learning. Now we must be vigilant and prepared to push back against these new threats:
What Can Parents, Students and Educators Do?
Parents Across America’s report on the dangers of EdTech suggests six questions parents can ask, including: which devices and programs are being used, how much time children spend on electronic devices, and what kind of data is being collected. Parents should also ask whether assessments are mostly multiple choice, how often they are administered, if some students (e.g., students with disabilities or English learners) are tested more frequently, and who controls the data and how it is being used.
Armed with detailed information, parents can fight back against technology misuse and overuse.