Stealth Assessments

For years, school administrators have been talking about bringing more computers into the classroom.  Parents have assumed that this was to enable students to hone their computer skills and to gain knowledge about the world. Surprise! It has turned out that the world is gaining knowledge about your child.  Read Jane Robbins’s commentary about data-mining  from the website, Truth in American Education here.

Under the federal education law, No Child Left Behind, at least 95% of the state’s students must take the state assessments. However, this year Washington state students in various parts of the state opted out in large numbers, resulting in only about 90% of the students taking the assessments. Exact numbers have not been released yet. This is an unexpected and unprecedented occurrence.  It is uncertain how the federal government will respond.  Read the KPBS article.

This video by Aaron Kasparov explains the Common Core approach to math and English/language arts. Many states are seeing this type of math for the first time, however we in Washington state have been subjected to this type of math for years. We experienced this “constructivist” math during the WASL period. In some districts, subtle messages undermining traditional values in the language arts courses have also been in the curriculum for years.

Watch the video.

After our post of May 4th, even more students have opted out of the Smarter Balanced Assessments which align with the Common Core Standards. Students, parents, and teachers are not quietly accepting the new Smarter Balanced Assessments which have no track record, rob students of countless hours of school time, and squeeze out other subjects which are not in the Common Core Standards.

Bellingham students have opted out by the hundreds. See the article.

Also, students in University Place’s Curtis High School are opting out, many citing testing overload as the reason. Read about University Place here.

Diane Ravitch, education researcher, posted on her blog a resolution by teachers in Everett, Washington, disapproving of the Smarter Balanced Assessments.

King 5 News did a story on the wave of opt outs in the Puget Sound area.

We hope the education policy-makers are watching and listening.

As in previous posts, we repeat, the Smarter Balanced Assessments are NOT STANDARDIZED, even though the media, administrators, and legislators use the term.  For one thing, the assessment is adaptive. They explain on their website:  Based on student responses, the computer program adjusts the difficulty of questions throughout the assessment. For example, a student who answers a question correctly will receive a more challenging item, while an incorrect answer generates an easier question.

You can see that each student is receiving a different set of questions. If each student is taking a different assessment, how can that be called  standardized?

Please read more about the difference between “standardized tests” and “assessments” in our commentary, “Lies, Damn Lies, and the Myth of ‘Standardized’ Tests.”

Students across the United States are opting out of Common Core Assessments, and that includes Washington State.   The US Department of Education funded two consortia to develop the assessments: The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).  In Washington State, we are using the SBAC assessment.

Here are a few points to keep in mind:

(1) Students may legally opt out. Yes, by law, Washington State schools are required to administer the assessments. However, students are not compelled by law to take the assessments. There are possible consequences, however. Through a phased-in schedule, high school students will eventually have to pass the SBAC to graduate.  This year, however, juniors and seniors may use the assessments that are being phased out to graduate.

(2) Not Standardized. The assessments ARE NOT STANDARDIZED no matter what teachers, administrators, politicians, or the media say. This is from Smarter Balanced ‘s own website:

“Based on student responses, the computer program adjusts the difficulty of questions throughout the assessment. For example, a student who answers a question correctly will receive a more challenging item, while an incorrect answer generates an easier question. By adapting to the student as the assessment is taking place, these assessments present an individually tailored set of questions to each student and can quickly identify which skills students have mastered…..  “

Think about it:  If each student is being fed a different set of questions, it means each student is taking a different assessment. That cannot be described as “standardized.”

Also, please read our commentary: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Myth of “Standardized” Tests.

It is not the test that is standardized; it is the student who is being standardized through continued assessments.

(3) No Validity and Reliability Studies The SBAC (and also the PARCC) assessments are brand new. They have no track record. It has not been established yet that they actually measure college and career readiness.  The use of the computer for this new assessment is unfamiliar to many students so low scores often reflect the students’ confusion with the computer process, not their lack of comprehension of the material.

Here is what is going on in some of the Puget Sound schools:

Nathan Hale High School, Seattle:   http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/sbac-standardized-testing-nathan-hale-high-school/26267407/

Garfield, Roosevelt, and Ingraham High Schools, Seattle:  http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/big-wave-of-seattle-juniors-skipping-new-high-school-tests/

University Place, Tacoma:   http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/04/29/3765492_half-of-curtis-high-school-juniors.html?rh=1

PARCC, which stands for Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, has come out with a statement on their spying, or as they say, “monitoring” policy.

Education researcher and writer, Mercedes Schneider, has commented on PARCC’s statement. Read her comments….

We also know that SBAC, the other testing consortium, also recommends spying on students’ social media. (SBAC is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.) Washington State is a member of the SBAC.

Here are just a few concerns, and you can probably come up with many more:

If students are posting about the assessments on social media, even if they don’t reveal any test questions or answers, they are presumed guilty. Does this “infraction” go on the student’s permanent record?

Many testing companies release their test items after using them for the public to see.  Do PARCC and SBAC plan to do this, and if so, will they hold back some of their more intrusive questions?

The people at Pearson, PARCC, and SBAC are being paid with our tax dollars; they are supposed to be delivering us a service, not controlling and spying on our children. How did they become our overseers?

Opting out is looking better and better.

Would you let your children reveal their innermost feelings and thoughts to a perfect stranger? No?
Yet when they take the Common Core assessments, they are asked to reveal their thoughts and beliefs to a computer which will track, record, and retain every response.  In fact, the school need not use just assessments to mine this information. They can use any assignment done on a computer or tablet, or even use an “education game” as a stealth assessment.

Please be aware, that the Common Core assessments are not “standardized tests” as we knew them from the past. The Common Core assessments are adaptive to each child, so each child receives different questions–this is not “standardization.” (We have explained the difference between standardized tests and assessments in a previous post.)

Education expert Mercedes Schneider comments on the use and abuse of power surrounding the assessments. She refers to the PARCC assessments, but the comments can also be applied to the Smarter Balanced assessment used in Washington State. Read her blog post, “The Powerful, Enforced Silence around Standardized Testing.

Yesterday, we posted that Pearson which administers the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) Common Core Assessments spied on students’ social media and wanted to suspend a student whom they thought had breached test security.

Now it has come out that the other of the two Common Core assessment consortia, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), is also advising state education departments to spy on student social media. Washington State is a member of the Smarter Balanced consortium.

Read the article…

See Smarter Balanced Assessment’s guidance sheet.

(Photo- courtesy of photoexplorer at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

It was confirmed that Pearson, a United Kingdom-based testing company involved in the development of Common Core Assessments, was “monitoring” the social media accounts of  New Jersey students taking the PARCC Common Core Assessment.  A student had sent a tweet about the PARCC assessment after school, and Pearson contacted the New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE) to have the student suspended, ostensibly on grounds of the student having breached test security. There was no evidence that the student had cheated. Pearson’s monitoring of the students’ social media was done in cooperation with the New Jersey DOE.

This is alarming on so many levels. Apparently, this is not the only student whom Pearson asked to be suspended. Why is a multinational testing company in cooperation with a US state governmental department delving into the social media of the students in New Jersey? Is this happening in other states as well?

PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) is one of the two consortia producing Common Core Assessments; the other is the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) of which Washington State is a member. We do not know if Washington state students will also be “monitored?”

Read more….

(Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

When students take the Smarter Balanced Assessment this year, many may score poorly due to the computer-driven nature of the test, not because they did not know the material.  The Smarter Balanced Assessment is an online assessment, although a paper version will be made available during a transition period.  The flawed construction of the computer assessment is the subject of a critical report by education consultant Steven Rasmussen. Read the Education Week article about Steve Rasmussen’s Report and Steve Rasmussen’s report itself .

Rasmussen urges people to share his report with their friends. Please do so! And consider opting your child out of the Common Core Assessment.