Bombs Away!

Got the preliminary science scores back for my school.

The picture isn't good. They not only went down, they went in the tank in about the most spectacular way you can imagine.

Thing is, a friend in a different district got a peek at her results, too, and she was also waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down. If it was just me, I'd eat the crap sandwich. If this is a statewide trend, though, there's going to be some impossible questions asked later this month when the statewide release rolls out.

Mark your calendars.

Read more here, if any.

WASL Test Administration Quiz Release Items

Actual questions from the WASL proctoring training test. And by actual, I mean mostly made up.

1) During the WASL test many students are confused by question #6. Mrs. Smith stops the class and shows them how to approach answering the question. Is this definitely OK, definitely not OK, or too close to call?

Answer: Definitely not OK. You may not expand on any WASL questions.

2) During the test many students are confused by question #6. Mrs. Smith stops the class and berates them for not recalling the three different lessons that she taught on probability; after a 10 minute screaming jag she retreats to her desk and sobs gently into her morning espresso. Is this definitely OK, definitely not OK, or too close to call?

Answer: Definitely OK. Neither screaming nor crying are banned by the test.

3) As students are taking the reading test a group called Mothers Militantly Against the WASL storms the school, breaks into the secure test storage facility, and holds tomorrow’s science WASL hostage for a $1,000,000 ransom. The principal refuses to pay the money. Is this definitely OK, definitely not OK, or too close to call?

Answer: Definitely not OK. The principal should pay any ransom money out of their building budget, or Title II Part C funds.

4) After losing her election for Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2008 Terry Bergeson returns to the classroom. In April of 2009 KOMO News 4 helicopters take video of her on her knees in the school parking lot, plaintively screaming to the heavens for relief from the ungodly testing monster that she helped spawn. Is this definitely OK, definitely not OK, or too close to call?

Answer: Definitely OK, and a delightful image to boot.

5) A teacher refuses to give the WASL and becomes a folk hero with ballads written about him. Meanwhile, his kids still end up taking the test, only their teacher isn’t in the room to be with them through the process. Is this definitely OK, definitely not OK, or too close to call?

Answer: Definitely not OK. C’mon, Carl.

Read more here, if any.

Value-Added Formative Standardized Norm-Referenced Diagnostic Summative Standards-Based Criterion-Referenced Screening Tests Are the Answer

That's going to be the title of my presentation at WERA next year. I think I'll use it for my book, too.

Read more here, if any.

Idaho: We Squeeze a Nickel ’til the Buffalo Poops.

From the December 19th Education Week:

Ninth graders will no longer take the Idaho Standard Achievement Tests because the state board of education can’t cover the costs, the board announced last week.

High school students must pass the 10th grade version of the test before they may graduate, and the standardized tests are used to determine if schools are succeeding under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But state board members said the 9th grade version had to be axed because with a price tag of about $1.1 million, it was too expensive and the board had to balance its budget.

It would be interesting to see a study that laid out what it costs each state to administer the testing required under NCLB. The last number I saw for Washington was around $200 million; imagine what a place like California or Texas must cost.

Read more here, if any.

When In Doubt, Pick C

In Maryland the debate over how best to test kids is touching on an interesting question--can multiple choice questions work? From the Washington Post:

Maryland plans to eliminate written-response questions from its high school exit exams to address long-standing complaints about how slowly test results are processed, state education officials said yesterday.

Beginning in May 2009, the Maryland school system will phase out "brief constructed responses" and "extended constructed responses" -- questions requiring a short or long written answer -- from its four tests covering algebra, English, biology and government, said Ronald A. Peiffer, the state's deputy superintendent for academic policy.

Eliminating those questions will allow the state to process test results up to four weeks faster than before, Peiffer said. The timing of the change means that the Class of 2009, the first group for which the test will count, will still be responsible for composing written answers.

There's the speed argument, but can multiple choice tests still be valid measures of what students know? How do you account for guessing and the old-school Genesis fan who goes with "Abacab" over and over again?

It's a question that's come up here in Washington just recently. In February there was a proposal to scrap the WASL in favor of a multiple-choice assessment; despite some bi-partisan support, it didn't pass. There's been a hearty debate about whether the WASL is that much better than the ITBS that many schools discarded in favor of the mandated state assessment.

To my mind, a written response is always going to show you more about what the kids know than filling in the appropriate bubble will. Even the best constructed multiple choice question will be inferior to an essay question if you want to measure insight and application.

That said, I'm also a big booster of the MAP assessment from the NWEA, because it's sooooo damned easy to administer, you get the results back the second the test is over, growth can be measured in a snap, the ability to rank order and apply percentile rankings is meaningful--the data that my school gets from the MAP is vastly superior to what we get from the WASL, and I'm saying that as the data guy and one of the building test coordinators.

We can't solve this through local control; to be able to compare districts and comply with the demands of NCLB, OSPI has to bigfoot. If you heard tomorrow that Terry Bergeson had seen the light and wanted to switch the WASL to a multiple choice format, what would your reaction be?


For a different take on the Maryland story, try District Administration magazine. Diane Ravitch brings her usual thoughtfulness to the limitations of multiple choice testing here; EdWeek does a great job with her blog, and it's a place well worth checking out often. A research-minded look at how to write good multiple choice questions can be found here.

Read more here, if any.

Because Tests are for the Little People, That's Why!

In Connecticut, all new teachers have to take the Praxis I test, even if they oodles of experience outside the state.

It's different for the Superintendent of Schools in Hartford, though. The state legislature recently said he didn't have to take it, because he's a very busy man with more important things to do.

A message has been sent, and it's got the letters FU in it.

Read more here, if any.

When They Test Well, I Feel Good

Last week I gave my kids the DRA Reading Assessment, which is the best way I’ve seen to measure growth in fluency and decoding over time. We give it three times a year in the fall, winter, and spring; the goal that’s been established is to have 60% of the kids meet the standard.

This year, as a grade level, we’re at about 75%. In my own room 80% of the kids, 16 out of 20, met the standard, and that’s the highest I’ve ever gotten.

The morning of the test was incredible. I usually start with the kids who are low and go higher throughout the day, the theory being that the better readers take longer to test. That morning, though, my marginal kids were nailing every book they read and getting to the goal with room to spare. There was one point where I had three of my struggling boys in a row, including my autistic student, all pass, and man it took everything I had not to start dancing around the room. Neat, neat, neat.

There’s a couple of thing I’d attribute the success to.

This year we grouped for reading. I had the high kids, there were two middle groups, and our low students were all together. I can hear some of you saying it’s tracking, but by doing that we were able to get a lower student:teacher ratio and focus more on phonics, which is what those kids needed. We also made it flexible; kids tested in and out based on the tests we used.

I’m also pretty fond of our reading curriculum, from Houghton-Mifflin. There’s a lot of content, the pacing makes good sense, and we’re getting great results. Each week has a story, three phonics stories, and three leveled readers, so we have a lot of options on where to go with the kids.

With my four kids who didn’t meet the standard two of them came to the school in the spring, and another is my high-needs special education student. That leaves one girl who had been here all year who didn’t make it; she’s the kind of kid that I’ve got to do a better job of targeting early on and making sure she gets it.

It makes the work worth it when you can see a truly tangible result like those test scores. Sure, they aren’t everything, but they are something. Anyone who would tell you different is deluded.

Read more here, if any.

Al Shanker on High Stakes Testing

I’m currently working my way through It’s Being Done, the new book from Karin Chenoweth that profiles schools from around the country that are succeeding at the goal of getting all their kids to meet high standards. It’s a pretty good read; you can find it at Amazon or the Harvard Education Press, and there’s an article written by Ms. Chenoweth in a recent Education Week.

At the beginning of chapter 2 she has a recollection of a speech by Al Shanker, the famed AFT president, that really struck a chord with me.

Many years ago I heard Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, talk about the effect a standards-based test has on the relationship between students and teachers. Teachers with high standards, Shanker said, were often seen by students as enemies imposing arbitrary standards that were often indecipherable—particularly if students had had teachers with lower standards in previous years.

But, Shanker said, the effect of an external exam, such as the national exams taken by students in many countries, is to produce a partnership between the teachers and the students, where teachers are the resources students need in order to master a difficult objective. In preparing for an external exam, students see teachers with high standards not as cruel and arbitrary taskmasters but as people who can really help them—something like hard-driving coaches who help their players win in a big game.

I’m not sure how many kids actually make that next step and attribute the pressures of the school to the testing instead of their teacher, but it’s still a neat way to think about things.

Do you talk with your classes about the state mandated tests? If so, what’s the conversation like?

Read more here, if any.

They Test Me, So I Test Them

Last week we had the first round of our NWEA testing, covering reading. There’s 17 kids that I’ve had since the beginning of the year; of them, 12 tested above the 50th %ile, with the other five being in the 49th, 48th, 45th, 36th, and 5th.

Charitably, that means that 70% of my kids met the grade level standard. The part that’s annoying me is the 5 that are below. Both of my special ed kids, for example, fell below. One made great gains, one barely budged. The other three kids who were below the 50 percent line have all made growth, one of them incredible growth, but I still didn’t get them there.

Then there’s the nagging question of just what the test means. The primary version of the NWEA is still in “beta” mode, so to speak, so the percentile rankings they have established are based off of a very small sample. That throws an element of uncertainty into the testing process that I wish wasn’t there; I like to be able to think of their scores as good, not good with an asterisk.

What the NWEA has all over the WASL is the timeliness aspect; I get NWEA results back that same day, where the WASL scores (for 4th grade, at least) won't be available until the kid is in 5th grade. The end result is that it's not a test of the child, it's a test of the program, and program change is the hardest thing to do in education.

In math my kids did OK. Of the 17 kids who have been here all year long 13 of them met the grade level standard, with three of the misses being in the 40-50 percentile range. If I add in the kids who came during the year I have 18 of 22 at grade level, a not-to-shabby 82%. If I decline responsibility for my special ed kids that goes up to 90%, but they’re mine and I’m keeping them, so there.

Overall, I can see a lot of room for improvement in what I do. This year our Title program was in a shambles for most of the year; next year I need to get the small group support to the kids who need it sooner. I’ve found some neat at-home activities on-line that I think could make a real difference; next year I should push the parent contact angle more and see if I can get better growth from the kids I identify early on as needing more help.

Next up is the DRA Reading Assessment, and then the silly season really begins.

How are your kids doing?

Read more here, if any.

Kramer vs. WASL

WASL time also means WASL Editorial Time. They're often repetitive, but I really liked this take by Stephen Kramer:

Last year, for the first time in WASL history, teachers were prohibited from looking at any test questions or completed test booklets. Now teachers have no way of knowing what is on the test or how their students responded. As I monitored students taking the test last spring, I knew many of the things I'd seen in the past were happening again:

• Students inadvertently turning two pages in a test booklet, and missing all the questions on those pages.
  
  
• Good writers who were stumped, became discouraged and shut down because they couldn't quite figure out how to respond to the assigned writing prompt they had a full day to work on.
  
  
• Students whose hands were so tired by the afternoons on writing test days (there are two) that, when they were copying their final draft work into the test booklets, they purposely skipped entire paragraphs or pages of their first-draft writing.
  
  
• Students who became so disheartened, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to solve a particularly difficult math problem, that they gave up, lost confidence and randomly marked answers to the rest of the questions in the section.
  
  
• Students who struggled for so long on a couple of particularly confusing math or reading questions that, when they read a "no-brainer" question, they were convinced that they were being tricked -- and skipped over the obviously correct answer because they didn't think it could possibly be right.

This idea of not being able to look at the test your kids just took is stupid beyond words; what manager worth his salt doesn't check what's being produced on his watch? Kramer has written previously about his experiences giving the WASL before; I'd be curious to hear his take on what a useful testing system would look like.

Read more here, if any.

It would be funny, if it weren't the test!

There's a good chance that students will come up short on the NY state exams. That's because the rulers they use for measurement problems are marked wrong.

I choose to believe it's all a plot by the Chinese; mess up the rulers so the kids mess up the test, mess up the tests to mess up the schools, mess up the schools to mess up the society, then invade Canada.

Read more here, if any.

A Test That I Did Not Know About

Did you know that 8th graders take a test to measure what they know about technology? From the Spokane Spokesman-Review:

Greenacres Middle School student Jarod Maynes was a little apprehensive about taking yet another required test on Tuesday.

Maynes and all the other eighth-graders in the Central Valley School District took an online test this week to demonstrate how well they can use a computer.

"It's kind of stressful. It reminds me of the WASL. I would act differently on my own computer. I could figure it out, but not on a timed test," said Maynes.

One of the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all students are technologically literate by the time they finish the eighth grade "regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location or disability."

It's up to each state to come up with its own definition of "technology literacy."

In Washington, each of the 296 school districts is required to assess and report its eighth-graders' level of technology literacy.

Now I’m curious as to what my district does.

The rest of the article can be found by following the “Read here” link below.



Students' computer skills tested
Educators want assessments followed up with funding

Greenacres Middle School student Jarod Maynes was a little apprehensive about taking yet another required test on Tuesday.

Maynes and all the other eighth-graders in the Central Valley School District took an online test this week to demonstrate how well they can use a computer.

"It's kind of stressful. It reminds me of the WASL. I would act differently on my own computer. I could figure it out, but not on a timed test," said Maynes.

One of the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is to ensure that all students are technologically literate by the time they finish the eighth grade "regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location or disability."

It's up to each state to come up with its own definition of "technology literacy."

In Washington, each of the 296 school districts is required to assess and report its eighth-graders' level of technology literacy.

Dennis Small, educational technology program director for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, said the state worked with school districts and regional administrators to come up with Washington's definition of technology literacy as well as the three "Tiers of 8th Grade Technology Literacy Indicators," or the degree that a student uses technology. For example, tier one is personal use and communication; tier two is the ability to access, collect, manage, integrate and evaluate information, and tier three is the ability to solve problems.


The state doesn't require districts to report individual scores, only the number of students in each tier. Dick Burrill, supervisor of instructional technology for Central Valley, said that even though it's another hoop to jump through, the assessment will be helpful.

"It gives the district good data. We'll be able to see how we're doing as a district and where our students need to improve," said Burrill.

The Central Valley district paid a $5 license fee for each of its 1,010 eighth-graders to take the online test. The money comes out of the district's technology budget.

Burrill said many variables can affect students' technology literacy, including influences at home, their teachers, which school they attend and which district they're in.

"Each school (in the CV district) does their own budgeting for technology; different buildings have different equipment," said Burrill.

Districts can use stand-alone assessments like Central Valley, or other means, such as observation logs, examination of portfolios, certification tests and student surveys.

Barb Gilbert, director of instructional technology for Spokane Public Schools, said in January they will have their eighth-graders answer a survey based on the three tiers.

The district has a subscription to a survey program, so there won't be any additional costs.

Dan Butler, Mead School District's executive director of technical education, said the district won't have to spend additional money on an assessment because the district will use a program it already has.

"Technology isn't about learning different programs. I don't really care if the students can use an Excel spreadsheet. It's a tool and it's a changing tool," said Butler. "You can teach a first-grader how to do a Power Point presentation, but they won't be using that program by the time they're in the 10th grade," said Butler.

Read more here, if any.