Fred Smith on David Abrams' resignation: No Mas!

Fred Smith is a former senior analyst for the NYC Board of Education and an expert on testing. Here he comments on the sudden resignation of David Abrams, who led the NY State Education Dept. testing office into one preposterous blunder after another over many years, the most serious of which was  test score inflation -- but my favorite was the ridiculous 4th grade reading test of 2006 which featured Brownie the Cow.  (You have to see this to believe it; here is the story and questions archived.) This article in the Daily News was probably the final straw: about a prematurely released state plan to lengthen 3^rd grade standardized exams to four hours.  

Susan Crawford asks whether the SED might actually hire a trained psychometrician in Abrams’ place. "Does there exist a "lever of change" we can push somewhere to insist that SED put someone in charge of testing who has the appropriate credentials?" 

Fred responds: 

I'm reminded of a statement by Abba Eban: Men behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.

 Surely wisdom has not guided the NYS Testing Program.  Maybe there's a slight opening for it now.

The spirit of OWS comes to mind as a force for change: With the ridiculous longer testing that was about to be sprung on everyone; followed by Abrams' (who must know where the bodies are buried) resignation; and the rebellion of principals against teacher evaluations--perhaps, the moment is ripe for principals, teachers and parents to unify in a massive OPT OUT of the testing.  No Mas! 

There's no need to rush ahead on the next runaway test train--to perpetuate obsession with high scores, misuse of the data to justify dubious decisions and consequent cheating, institutional lying about the results, destruction of the curriculum, mad giveaway money to publishers and other attendant evils.

Interim assessments to be provided by McGraw-Hill

According to the blog Ed in the Apple, McGraw-Hill will provide the new interim assessments to be required in all NYC public schools every 4-6 weeks starting next fall. The company has “produced a web-based diagnostic tool” that it has been “rolling out” around town and “audiences have been applauding.”

“The students can take the exam online or on a Scan-able form.….Mc Graw Hill will place servers around the City and will maintain the website. The Department deserves accolades: a useful tool that embodies 21^st century technology.”

I remain skeptical, having seen the highly flawed ELA exams prepared by the same company. Remember the 4^th grade standardized test featuring the notorious Brownie the Cow? Yes, that mind-bendingly absurd test was produced by McGraw-Hill.

A few years ago, due to scoring errors by CTB McGraw-Hill, 9,000 New York City school children, who had actually passed the test, were reported as having failed and required to go to summer school. Thousands more in California went to summer school and in many cases were held back due to another McGraw-Hill mistake. Moreover, most experts in testing dispute the possibility that useful information could ever be gained from standardized interim assessments -- no matter how good the test or the scoring -- because individual student gains or losses over short periods of times are too small to be statistically reliable.

Of course, all the new testing will only further diminish the amount of time available for actual teaching and learning. A recent UFT survey found that already, teachers spend “nearly five hours and 15 minutes of class time — the equivalent of a day-and-a-quarter of instruction — each week on mandated assessment-related paperwork.” Test prep is even more time-consuming, with about 1/3 of classroom time devoted to test prep for two months before the reading and math exams.

Finally, as many teachers point out, given their huge teaching load and class sizes, especially in middle and high schools, even if they had the time to analyze all the results for each one of their 150 students every six weeks, they will have little or no opportunity to address their specific deficiencies.

Since the whole point of the new costly and time-consuming interim assessments, according to DOE, will be to facilitate “differentiated” instruction, one wonders why at the same time, this administration is so resistant to providing the smaller classes that might actually make this possible.