This entry is an activity for Teach-Now while working towards a teaching certificate. Specific goals and requirements had to be met by this entry and is by no means designed to be an independent feature.
At Croton Harmon High School in Croton-on-Hudson School District, New York, students summative accomplishments are based on Regents Exams. Overall, these students perform better in English and Math compared to the State of New York: 93% of the students demonstrated meeting or exceeding the learning standards for English Proficiency; and 94% in Math. Roughly 84% of the student body participate in Advance Placement subjects; theses are courses that provide future credit in many colleges and universities. If we consider this village’s population, 16% of the 528 students are from minority families and none require economic assistance (U.S. News). This percentage may indicate a level of ELL needs, but as Jennifer Moore (Art) expressed, students generally help each other elevating the performance of the entire class. But this entry will not provide much for statistics and data. Such research of high-stakes testing for this school (and all others) takes more than a few interviews and a quick internet search. A proper evaluation requires years of data to review and analyze based on a properly tested survey. What I will provide will be just a little bit of exploration.
As Defined, and the Concern:
High-stakes testing is any form of assessment that evaluates an overall performance of comprehension with a large consequence: promotion to the next grade or graduation; school funding; teachers removed from classes. If test results repeatedly demonstrate low performance, high-stakes testing also affects teachers and schools; the results determine job placement and funding or even the closing of the school. The high-stakes means there can be high risks, win or lose. Imagine if high-stakes was assigned to a sport: for example baseball hitters would only have one strike (made one mistake or did not answer at all); football teams would only get one down (experiment and theorize to advance with deeper knowledge); basketball players would not have rebounds (no chance to revise).
For some, high-stakes creates high anxiety. The stress may affect the performance and not accurately measure the student’s ability. Basing a student’s achievement on one test evaluating accumulated retained knowledge can create so much stress that a student may not perform well. There are several considerations that a test result may not include. What if a student could not sleep that night before because of the anxiety? How can a student who shows better daily performance results but is not a great test taker show excellence? What if that student has dyslexia, is a Level 1 English Learner, or has differentiated lessons a grade below? What if that student did not have breakfast because his single mom did not have enough money to provide one? A student’s performance may be better represented by an overall grade including the periodic assessments that represent the daily performance.
Some History and The Results
The classroom environment has always been encouraged to be open, inviting, friendly and non-discriminating so students feel respected such that they return that respect by setting themselves to actively and productively learn. High-stakes testing helps governmental departments to gauge overall educational performance somehow forgotten this expectation. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson with his War on Poverty added The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to support families and school districts with low-income families an equal access to quality education (USDE, 2015). The ESEA has been later reauthorized a few times and the most recent was No Child Left Behind Act, 2002 and 2012 (USDE, 2015). The goal of this update meant that the gap between the low-income and minorities and the high-performing students with greater access would be removed. The effort would be based on full accountability of the teachers measured by standards evaluated by tests. For some of these teachers, the tests only increased the gap and discouragement (Change The Stakes). The tests are designed to challenge and grade knowledge. However in New York, testing results have shown drastically reduced achievement levels because tests were not designed for English Language Learners.
“Drops were particularly enormous in districts serving large numbers of English language learners and students with special needs. For example, in North Rockland, Port Chester, Ossining and Peekskill, 82 to 92 percent of students in some grades failed to meet targets in math and English.” (FairTest, 2013)
Additionally, teachers have been judged. A large portion of Syracuse New York School District teachers were designated not highly effective (FairTest, 2013). How in one year can an entire district have no quality teachers? These results can determine a teacher’s future employment. Teachers are responsible to facilitate activities that spark curiosity and knowledge acquisition, but teachers can only go so far; students have to participate and try. Some testing scores may be the result of students who simply do not care.
Some Action and Considerations
A group of “public-school parents” and teachers called Parent Voices New York “…committed to bringing together diverse parents, taking action together and using our power as citizens and voters to influence policy around public education (PVNY),” make awareness of the misuse of standardized testing, and reform for quality education. To enforce their concern and movement, ParentVoicesNY have encouraged test opt-out because of the negative impact testing policies have on the classroom—standardized testing removes teaching to individual learners. Jeanette Brunelle Deutermann presented a list of wrongs like poor acknowledgement of the students who will be taking the test such as special ed or English Learners; and that teaching-to-test has removed many benefits of education to student development.
“Educators have always tested what they have taught. But now what is tested determines what is taught.”
ParentVoicesNY presented the concerns of time and pressure on students who may not have the capability to withstand the testing duration. A test that matches the learning capability of one child will not even consider the ability of another. The time spent testing has taken away time from lunch and recess as well as replaced other subjects necessary to all students’ development. Javier Hernández collected for The New York Times April, 2013 opinions from both sides regarding high-stakes testing. One student remarked that previous tests were achievable; testing taking now was frustrating difficult requiring more work than the allowed time. In the week of the new test delivery, “Many did not finish, and some students said classmates were crying at the end” while others were not fazed.
Another group of concerned parents and teachers of New York, Change the Stakes, similar in passion and concern have an additional agenda point raising caution of using students and schools for private business development. The stress of test-taking alone creates enough pressure on many individuals — students, teachers and principals— that having tests with questions designed not for grading purposes but to test test-taking unnecessarily harms education. There may be future productive development but at what immediate cost; but at what authorization; at what respect.
“We demand a statewide policy that requires timely parent notification about all field testing programs and creates a mechanism that allows us to say “NO” to this extra burden and the use of children as subjects in test research projects. We strongly believe that insinuating children into test development projects without informed parental consent is a violation of parent and student rights.
We were shocked to learn that our schools gave field tests last month in reading, math and science without letting parents know. ACT and Pearson bought entry into schools by offering principals I-Pods in return for student participation—behind the backs of parents. We view this as a bribe and an end run that lets publishers exploit children and take away more school time to try out test material.” (Change The Stakes)
There are extremes to high-stakes evaluation and strategies. In some cultures, the pressure to succeed is constant. Yi So-Yeon, a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) alumni, became the first Korean astronaut on April 8, 2008 (Newcomb) later to quit. Her resignation ended the Korean Space program. During the space expedition, she was given “…18 experiments to complete in [her] 10 days in the [International Space Station]…she says. ‘Everyone told me I didn’t have to complete all of them, that it wasn’t expected of me. But I knew everyone was watching me, so I gave up meals and sleep and completed all 18 experiments. It’s a very Korean thing to do.’ (Schechter).” This public pressure to achieve permeates through the academic environment. Such pressure fertilizes so much stress that students will end their own lives to avoid parental and/or social disappointment and embarrassment. In 2011, four KAIST students ended their own lives because of the highly competitive academic environment with high-stake penalties. Suh Nam-pyo had instituted a monetary penalty for “…each hundredth of a point that their grade point average fell below 3.0 (McDonald, 2011).” Such a penalty is a heavy cost to their family that most can not afford. The school is very selective only admitting roughly 1,000 adding each academic year for the total 9,027 student population (Times Higher Education). Overall, The Education of Ministry in Seoul reported “…146 students committed suicide last year, including 53 in junior high and 3 in elementary school (McDonald).”
Essentially…
As an assessment, high-stakes testing should inform teachers how students have performed and what adjustments in the instruction need to be made. The issue with most of these tests is that the results are presented at the end of the school year and do not specifically provide what knowledge the students missed (Supovitz, 2015). If no detailed data can be accessed at the right time, then the value of the test does not compensate the pressure preparing for the test and allows no room for improvement. The cost of the test is the sacrifice of education that supports individual growth and development. Though high-stakes testing may uniform education, does this process limit the scope of subjects and the lessons experienced? Can we say that students are learning not what needs to be tested but learn for the skills they will need to succeed beyond the school environment?
But high-stakes testing may not be all bad. A single term-end examination creates a challenge that evaluates a student’s collected and retained knowledge as well as how it has been applied. The test becomes an achievement indicator placing a lot if not all responsibility onto the student to achieve. To equally evaluate all students, an even-level standard needs to be in place. A even level of evaluation allows a college or university to some level provide an equal assessment of a student. The process would be severely difficult if they had to interpret and analyze different tests to properly judge one student from Alaska equally compared to another student from Washington D.C. Knowing that a single test has some degree of record, students may internally motivate to elevate their performance by productively engaging in the activity. Their actions will not only reward the teacher to be recognized as effective, but reward themselves with the proper skills to accept future challenges.
REFERENCES and RESOURCES
Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes
Change the Stakes. (2015). About CTS – What We Believe. https://changethestakes.wordpress.com/about-cts/what-we-believe/
FairTest. (November 2013). Common Cored Brings a New Chapter of High-Stakes Test Horrors. FairTest, The National Center for Fair and Open Testing. http://www.fairtest.org/Common-Core-Testing-Horror-Stories
Hernández, Javier C.; Baker, Al. (April 19, 2013). The New York Times. A Tough New Test Spurs Protest and Tears. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/education/common-core-testing-spurs-outrage-and-protest-among-parents.html
“Kristine.” (2011). Student Suicides in South Korea. Voice of Youth. http://www.voicesofyouth.org/en/posts/student-suicides-in-south-korea
McDonald, Mark. (May 22, 2011). Elite South Korean University Rattled by Suicides. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/world/asia/23southkorea.html?scp=1&sq=youth%20suicide%20south%20korea&st=cse&_r=0
Newcomb, Alyssa. (Aug 13, 2014). Why South Korea’s Only Astronaut Quit. ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/south-koreas-astronaut-quit/story?id=24959899
PVNY. (2015). Parent Voices New York. http://www.parentvoicesny.org/
Schechter, Asher (Sep 2, 2012). Yi So-Yeon, S. Korea’s First Astronaut, Who Didn’t Mean to Be One at All. Haartez. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/yi-so-yeon-s-korea-s-first-astronaut-who-didn-t-mean-to-be-one-at-all-1.462232
Supovitz, Jonathan. (2015). Is High-Stakes Testing Working. Penn Graduate School of Education. https://www.gse.upenn.edu/review/feature/supovitz
Times Higher Education World University Rankings. (viewed Nov 13, 2015). Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) South Korea. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/korea-advanced-institute-of-science-and-technology?ranking-dataset=133819
USDE. (2015). Elementary and Secondary Education Act. United States Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/esea
U.S. News. (2015). Croton-Harmon High School Test Scores. http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/districts/croton-harmon-union-free-school-district/croton-harmon-high-school-13627/test-scores
Williams, Wendy M. (January 2001). The Plus Side of Big Tests. https://www.nassp.org/portals/0/content/48084.pdf