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Williams is absolutely right. The real problem is the hyper-focus on testing and lack of understanding and appropriate action toward the schools, the curriculum, the teachers, etc. And THAT is a KIND understatement!

Ditto to Akademos’s comment.  Plus, Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner Steiner would be spending their time far better focusing on providing appropriate reading instruction and interventions for struggling readers (40% according to the NICHD) throughout the state and throughout every grade.  That would do far more to improve test scores – not to mention actual learning – than constant tinkering with the tests themselves.  

What does a passing grade in a regents exam really mean?
How does the state arrive at the cut-off scores?
What is the mathematical (statistical) basis for a given conversion chart?
Why does the media and the public accept these scores as a valid description of a student’s knowledge?

And folks, don’t forget that there’s a HUGE push to make teachers’ salary steps and differentials largely dependent on test scores. What most people don’t realize is that only certain subjects have statewide tests of any sort. There was recently a push to award bonuses to teachers based on whether their students did well on state tests, but that effectively would reward only ELA and math teachers, maybe science and social studies, and, on a high school level, foreign language teachers – maybe. What about art and music and special education and speech-language therapists (who are considered to be “teachers” under NYS law)? Even the idea of schoolwide bonuses was troublesome – yes, it sounded good on paper, but if you read the fine print, it would have allowed principals to use their discretion in distributing the bonus among their staff. I remember hearing something about my old school receiving such a bonus but no one ever confirmed it, nor did anyone ever admit to receiving any of it. There’s so much federal law and “educational reform” resources being devoted to teacher accountability that everyone seems to have forgotten that education begins at home and can only be fostered in the school if the entire community (teachers, parents, students, legislators – in a word, everyone) supports it. Sure, they’ll tinker with the tests, make them more difficult to pass, but then the pass “bar” will just be lowered to accommodate the same bell curve. No one seems really to care whether or not the students are actually learning anything – those of us on the front lines in the classrooms do really care about this, but it doesn’t help to protect our jobs. “Differentiated instruction” hasn’t led to “differentiated test results.” I’d really like to see BloomKlein deal with a group of 30 to 34 Title I high school students in a room without air conditioning on a 95-degree day – for a few hours or a few days or a few weeks. Of course, we’d have to film it to prevent them from spinning it as a “we can do it, why can’t teachers?” opportunity. The policy wonks have NO IDEA what happens in schools.

Steiner eerily echoes our last Commissioner, who led us into the tests-equal-reality syndrome. In his first news release after becoming Commissioner Richard Mills (replacing Tom Sobol, who was forced out), wrote, “Of course New York has educational standards: they’re the Regents Exams.” And, at a statewide curriculum conference shortly thereafter, he gave a speech in which he said, “We use State reference points to motivate schools to achieve.” In short, tests became the substitute for curriculum, and test scores became gimmicks to be manipulated to be used by Conservatives to promote their own agenda. To complete the Orwellian cycle, while calling for more and more training of teachers, the powers-that-be have moved to restrict any decision-making by teachers, replacing it with top-down, uniform plans and procedures. Ironically, teachers are told that they must produce “results,” not through their own skills at working with students, but by mechanically following instructional designs created by people who have never worked in public school classrooms.

To NYC Parent–which state tests are are you saying are norm referenced?

Thank you all for answering my questions. I don’t want to repeat the old cliche about lying using statistics. The DOE is doing a great job demonstrating how statistics is misused.

It is sad that the Supt of Schools in Buffalo is not familiar with the standards movement and backwards design. The best evidence for improving teaching and learning is to focus on standards (what students need to know and be able to do) then to design asseessments that measure these abilities and lastly to develop a curriculum that can help ALL students develop these skills and master the content in the standards. This is the lesson in Diane Ravitch’s excellent analysis of the failures of the current Corporate, Test-based Education Reform models, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”

I agree with Ms. Ravitch that the real issue is that we moved away from a focus on standards (for what to teach and what to test), merely creating a curriculum won’t solve that problem.

This is, from all places, The NY Post!

Among a litany of shocking revelations in a soon-to-be-released study is the fact that eighth-graders who score a 3 out of 4 on state math and reading tests have just a 52 percent chance of graduating high school, even though they’ve been told they’re on track.

“We’ve been calling that ‘proficient,’ ” state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch told The Post’s editorial board. “We were giving out misleading information.”

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/hiking_class_standards_5mzO41a2Bn7q8eArteS28J#ixzz0tfgf2F2H

How many teachers think this is so shocking?

Give Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools here credit, too.

See ‘What it really means to score proficient on New York tests’, July 12.

But this story should have broke looooooooong ago.