Caught in a Loop
These screeds usually come out in the morning, but I couldn’t do it this morning. I was administering a STAAR test. For those out of state, that is the acronym for our state testing. We take five of those tests throughout high school and students are expected to pass them all in order to graduate.
Except they don’t have to pass them all. Special education students can be excused from taking them after making several attempts. Other students can have an alternative packet they fill out in order to get the same credit. Still others can simply graduate with a different diploma as long as they pass three of them. Are you sufficiently confused?
The students are smart enough to see through our bluff. They have friends that have managed to walk without passing it. These tests are normally done in the spring, but retesters have to take it in December as well. I always administer the English test. Students are given five hours (or more) to answer around 50 multiple choice questions asking them to comprehend reading passages, edit reading passages, and revise reading passages. Then, they have to write either an expository or persuasive essay.
The students taking these tests again run the gamut. Some of them are great kids that just don’t have the skills necessary to make it. Unlike all of the other STAAR tests, the English tests are skills based. You can’t study for them. You either know how to read and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation or you don’t. You either know how to write or you don’t.
The rest fall under two categories. Either they know they don’t have to pass and don’t care or they cannot keep themselves awake through the five hours. At some point you start to wonder what exactly we’re measuring. You have the poor girl =asking questions every few minutes and I can’t answer any of them. You have the little turd who announces loudly that he is done with the test after 13 minutes.
Then you have the three or four boys that somehow take apart their chair and throw the pieces at each other. They wait to do this when I am waking up the same three or four girls for the 20th time. Citizens of the state are paying billions of dollars to large corporations so they can write these tests and we can torture these children. Ultimately that is all we are accomplishing.
That’s the whole point. When you fail the test in the spring, you take it again in the summer and then again in December if you don’t pass. Then you go back to the top of the slide and do it again in the spring if you don’t pass it that time. Some students take the same test up to seven times before they are seniors in high school. No wonder they sleep. No wonder they act like 12 year olds. No wonder they just fill it out in 15 minutes. They know the process will start over no matter what. Asking a child to take a test seven or eight times is child abuse. It’s sadism wrapped up in fake accountability.
You are so right. I am a retired teacher and I hated every minute of these types of tests, the forced teaching to the test. All they are are money makers for the company producing this nonsense.
1I just looked up the released 2021 test questions for high school algebra. Lots of questions that test the exact same thing repeatedly – it seems that linear and quadratic expressions are 75% of the exam. Given enough time (and 5 hours is certainly a lot) it’s good practice to have two questions covering similar material, so if some obscure wording causes a student to go awry, they have a chance to show they know the material. And if they show capability on one of the questions, to ignore the one they got wrong. But this exam has the testing equivalent of BS and fluff to fill out the space.
There’s at least one problem that is dead wrong – they did not ask a mathematician (or hell, a college sophmore level math student) to review the test. On the limited review I’ve done, Nick’s hypothesis seems valid: the primary goal is to transfer money from the state to the company that creates (and grades?) the test.
2I bought a Molly Ivins book once at a dollar store that said Molly believed tye whole Bush plan foot these things was to major money for MacMillan Publishing, and I’ve never thought otherwise since.
3What’s the positive side of tests?
4What’s the alternative, Summerhill?
And just think. The more the state uses the these tests as the metric of success for public schools, the easier it is to shift taxpayer money away from “failing” public schools into for-profit private schools.
5And unless I’m wrong, and I’m never wrong (Humperdinck, circa once upon a time, near the Fire Swamp), private, charter, and parochial schools aren’t required to administer standardized tests.
Who’da thunk it?
Ormond, the positive side of tests in general is to find where the message is not getting across. For the student it tells them where to put their time and efforts. For the teacher, it’s the same but from the other side of the coin: where should the teacher look to improve coverage, both generally and down to the level of the individual student.
With my test-for-diagnosis attitude you can guess that I find final exams to be far less useful than in-term ones. My finals typically consist of a sample drawn from homework problems or earlier exams. (I know the final is a success if most of the students leave early, shaking their heads over how easy it was.)
That’s one problem with the STAAR. It seems to have little diagnostic value for either students or teachers. TEA (Texas Education Agency) seems to have a circle-the-wagons approach to criticism of STAAR from looking at their web site. I’m trying to find out just who sets, reviews, and analyzes the math part of that test.
Disclaimer: I have only taught in the areas of math, sciences, and computer science. So my knowledge and expertise are limited. OTOH, I started teaching in a county orphanage in 1969 so I do have some mileage in the area.
6“…It’s sadism wrapped up in fake accountability.”
And so, today, is everything else.
7I’m with the Surly Prof (another prof, but generally pretty cheerful rather than surly, unless I’m dealing with Covidiots.)
I’m quasi-retired so no longer teaching – epidemiology, statistics, medical research methods. I used the weekly quiz as a diagnostic, a technique learned from my dad. The score could not hurt the total grade, only help. One problem (or maybe 2 short), very focused. 10 minutes max, turn it in – then we go over the answers – with the students explaining why that’s right, and helping anyone who was stuck. I find out right away whether they get the key idea that week, spend more time in class if confusion is general, and if it’s just a few, go over in office hours and study sections.
The ones who get everything super-fast are asked to help those who are stuck. A few complain about this, but I remind them that if they are always the first to figure something out, part of their job in the “real world” will be explaining to others, and they will be highly valued if they are good at it, so this is preparation for life.
8Hum…”sadism wrapped up in fake accountability” sounds like a candidate for the GQP to use as a tagline in marketing materials.
Incapable, unable and unwilling to actually govern, the end game of the current R GQP is to download governmental functions to private corporations and use gerrymandering and voter suppression to stay in power — while simultaneously keeping taxes on said corporations low or non existent.
9Decades ago when schools were supposedly far better, we had to take the state’s Regents Exam. I do not recall any high school or even middle school math questions on that thing. Back then, all upper math classes (high school) were segregated and contained only boys. Even then, there were boys who did not take those classes but opted for others such as Woodshop etc. Sometimes even home ec which was 99% girls. I still think that the top colleges in the state insisted on such an exam as Regents did it merely as a PR stunt and a gimmick to provoke more money from their boosters.
Also, such tests are produced by companies that assume that all the material in every subject is covered in a school year. That just ain’t so. I would also include college level, under grad and grad school in this. I recall seeing questions on a grad school must pass exam that never showed up in our classes, yet we all passed.
10@Laurel in California,
11Great advise to the students who get it fast. Explaining to others is a big part of almost every job that pays well.