Educators speak out against testing
Perhaps Blaine principal Troy LaRiviere’s May 3 letter to the Chicago Sun-Times emboldened other educators to speak out.
For example, the former head of assessment at CPS, Carole Perlman, wrote this letter to the Chicago Tribune criticizing the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers. “Though superficially appealing, using test scores to evaluate teachers will create more problems than it will solve. Excellent teachers will be erroneously labeled as incompetent, while poor teachers may get a pass. Students will not benefit.”
And just a few days ago, I received this wonderful e-mail from former teacher Judy Tomera, who agreed that I could share her comments:
Dear Julie Woestehoff, May 26, 2014
I’m writing to tell you how much I enjoyed you presence on Dick Kay’s show a Saturday or two ago and am looking forward to your next appearance. I think what you had to say about schools and testing, in particular, is spot on. It is my opinion after spending about 40 years teaching elementary school (K – 5th grade in rural, urban, and suburban schools) that standardized testing is a waste of time and resources for many reasons, one of which is that they do not test what you want to know about a child. Many of the questions are ridiculous, designed to lead children astray so the standard bell curve can be preserved. And, as you well know, the tests are not directly linked to curriculum so they are not a valid indicator of what children have learned in school.
For example:
In first grade in the 80s children were asked to identify which animal lays eggs and fill in the circle below it. (California Achievement Test) The pictures were of an elephant, bunny, snake, and horse. Enough 6 and 7 years olds were drawn to the bunny (think April and Easter when most testing is done) to elicit the required number of wrong answers to maintain the bell curve.
In third grade in the 2000s on a reading test 3rd graders were asked to find the word in the row that has the same vowel sounds as the first word. The first word was BEAR and the other words in the list were BEEN, EARS, HAIR, and HERE. Many children marked EARS because it had the same vowels, not vowel sounds. That item was also included on purpose to draw children to a wrong answer. I doubt if the children that missed that item would have read the following sentence incorrectly: The bear had brown ears. Semantics and syntax play an important part in reading correctly. What child who can read would read the sentence as The bear had brown airs, which is the correct response to the question if students had indeed understood the question correctly.
- See more at: Parents United for Responsible Education » Blog Archive » Educators speak out against testing:For example, the former head of assessment at CPS, Carole Perlman, wrote this letter to the Chicago Tribune criticizing the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers. “Though superficially appealing, using test scores to evaluate teachers will create more problems than it will solve. Excellent teachers will be erroneously labeled as incompetent, while poor teachers may get a pass. Students will not benefit.”
And just a few days ago, I received this wonderful e-mail from former teacher Judy Tomera, who agreed that I could share her comments:
Dear Julie Woestehoff, May 26, 2014
I’m writing to tell you how much I enjoyed you presence on Dick Kay’s show a Saturday or two ago and am looking forward to your next appearance. I think what you had to say about schools and testing, in particular, is spot on. It is my opinion after spending about 40 years teaching elementary school (K – 5th grade in rural, urban, and suburban schools) that standardized testing is a waste of time and resources for many reasons, one of which is that they do not test what you want to know about a child. Many of the questions are ridiculous, designed to lead children astray so the standard bell curve can be preserved. And, as you well know, the tests are not directly linked to curriculum so they are not a valid indicator of what children have learned in school.
For example:
In first grade in the 80s children were asked to identify which animal lays eggs and fill in the circle below it. (California Achievement Test) The pictures were of an elephant, bunny, snake, and horse. Enough 6 and 7 years olds were drawn to the bunny (think April and Easter when most testing is done) to elicit the required number of wrong answers to maintain the bell curve.
In third grade in the 2000s on a reading test 3rd graders were asked to find the word in the row that has the same vowel sounds as the first word. The first word was BEAR and the other words in the list were BEEN, EARS, HAIR, and HERE. Many children marked EARS because it had the same vowels, not vowel sounds. That item was also included on purpose to draw children to a wrong answer. I doubt if the children that missed that item would have read the following sentence incorrectly: The bear had brown ears. Semantics and syntax play an important part in reading correctly. What child who can read would read the sentence as The bear had brown airs, which is the correct response to the question if students had indeed understood the question correctly.
Whatever happened to Israel?
Many of you remember Ismael Vargas, who was PURE’s bilingual trainer and assistant director for many years. Israel Vargas Not as many got to know Ismael’s brother, Israel, who worked for PURE for a couple of years back when we had our offices on Dearborn. Israel was a whiz of an admin asst and translated all of our materials and newsletters into Spanish, which was a wonderful resource for us. But