Bringing Assessment Front And Center In Education Reform
6 min read
Anya Kamenetz has a pair of reactions to Diane Ravitch's new book Reign of Error. In these reactions, Kamenetz attempts to draw a distinction between privatizers, corporate reformers, and the rest of the motley crew that populate the reform universe:
To summarize, I believe “privatization†and “corporate†are too simplistic a brand with which to lash the education-reform complex.
I believe a more subtle characterization with more explanatory power is that this is a technocratic and technophilic coalition, uniting conservatives, liberals, bureaucrats, politicians, entrepreneurs, executives, school leaders, and philanthropists–hey, even some teachers, parents and students!–in the basic conviction that schools must innovate, using technology and data.
However, this formulation leaves assessment - a key factor - out of the equation. It also leaves out the context within which this discussion is occurring.
- Schools are being ranked in part on test scores.
- Principals are being ranked in part on test scores.
- Teachers are being ranked in part on test scores.
- In some cases, teacher pay is being tied to test scores, or rankings derived from test scores.
About the only people not being ranked on test scores are the politicians setting the policies, or the pundits and think tanks pushing test-based rankings.
Concurrent with the increased emphasis on using standardized tests to evaluate teachers, principals, amd schools, we have the Common Core State Standards rollout, which is accompanied by new tests aligned to the Standards, and new curriculum aligned to the Standards.
However, "success" on the new tests is not absolute. The cut rate - the level at which people pass or fail - is set arbitrarily. In some of the more visible releases of statewide scores on the new Common Core aligned standardized tests, scores have fallen; in some cases, considerably. In Washington DC, test scores increased because of how the cut rate was set.
As these results show, "passing" or "failing" is not an absolute, but rather a human (and often political) calculation about how performance should be ranked via an algorithm. The "truth" of data relies heavily on analysis and interpretation. Tony Bennett demonstrated this exact point in Indiana when he shifted the algorithm on his A-F rating system in order to raise the scores of a charter school from a "C" to an "A". Obviously, the school didn't magically get better; the use of the data was changed to make the grade appear higher.
To summarize thus far:
- Teachers, schools, and principals are being rated (and ranked as competent/incompetent, or successful/failing) based in part on student test scores;
- The relative pass rates of those tests are set by committees and could just as easily reflect a political calculation as student learning;
- Despite the arbitrary nature of the test results, people still point to it as "data" and therefore have an elevated sense of faith in what it can reveal about learning.
As the Common Core rollout unfolds, all of the major textbook publishers have been selling services and content aligned to the Common Core Standards. Given the high stakes of what is being defined as failure ("failing" schools can be closed, teachers found "ineffective" based on test scores can lose their jobs/lose pay) there is a strong incentive to play it safe, and use curriculum, testing materials, and services provided by textbook companies. Just as nobody ever got fired for going with Microsoft, nobody ever got fired for using Pearson (although that might be changing). The combination of high stakes tests, cut scores being set that increase "failure", the speed of the rollout - all of these factors increase pressure to go with something safe and packaged. The choice to go with something safe and packaged provides a clear path for public money to go into private companies.
It should surprise absolutely no one that these same private companies lobbied heavily around education bills.
At the end of her second reaction to Reign on Error, Kamenetz says:
It’s perhaps necessary to draw more specific battle lines among the terms “reformer,†“innovator,†and “privatizer.†The fact is, you can believe in locally, democratically controlled schools that are equitably and abundantly publicly funded and staffed with professional, well-paid teachers, and you can further hold that poverty eradication and other social progress around the family/maternal/child development matrix is equally important to any thing that happens under the umbrella called “school,†while also seeing a lot of merit in educational technology, innovation and data-driven decisionmaking. That’s what makes the current state of education reform so complicated and interesting.
It's not necessary to draw battle lines anywhere. If we approach this as a battle, we've already lost. It's not about technologists versus non technologists - time will sort that question out for us, even if schools at the present fail to fully embrace what technology can offer. It's about how we define learning. No one in their right mind will say that they don't want to eradicate poverty, or that they don't want equitable funding in schools. However, you can get a sense of a person's or organization's views on education by examining their views on assessment. People who favor the status quo (standardized tests, and ratings based on these standardized tests) are supporting an educational system that tilts toward sending public money into the hands of private companies - the companies who write the tests, administer the tests, grade the tests, and write the curriculum that is aligned with the tests. People who favor student centered learning, and assessments that look at people as individuals, place greater emphasis on the experience of the learner than they do on observations of that experience.
Neither of these positions can claim ownership over innovation, data driven decision making, or technology. The question here is how we view and define the role of the learner relative to the observations that can be made about the process of learning. Advocates for more student centered learning put the learner's experience as the main goal. As we discuss how education can improve and serve every learner, that's a good place to start.
