Yes, this sort of "test-prep" activity which you describe does occur, but only because the results of these assessments have become so significant in things like rating of teacher effectiveness. These so called "high stakes" assessments do nothing to motivate better teaching or learning and instead motivate cheating and all sorts of other workarounds such as lowering standards so that it looks like more students are being successful. Just look at what happened in the Atlanta school district last year.

Additionally, student attitude plays a huge role in the outcome of such assessments. Successful students have a more positive approach to such tests and actually like to take them in order to 'show off' how smart they are, while less successful students loath such tests and often intentionally 'sandbag' them, or just bubble in patterns on the answer sheet (see John's comment, #3 below), which of course provides no real information at all about the student's learning and if over-emphasized, can reflect very poorly on a teacher who is actually doing good instructional work.

Comprehensive portfolios and open response or written answer assessments are a much better reflection of actual learning, but of course, these are difficult to score rapidly and are hard to use for comparing extremely large groups of students, such as across an entire state. Hopefully this new computer based system will provide the best of both worlds.

Those tests were such a joke. I had to take those stupid tests when I was in junior high school 40+ years ago. I made random patterns filling in the bubbles and then when I was finished, pulled out whatever book I was vacuuming and read while the rest of my classmates struggled through the stupid test.

The biased survey question shows the journalists know nothing of test design and should report on something they know, like pop culture.

I disagree...If that were the case then they should have fantastic scores across the board...standardized tests are meant to verify the basic skills that students must acquire - they are not a test for creativity or other intangibles...trouble is that the students do not care and the teachers unions care even less...with the money spent on education over the last 30 years (doubled) and the grades of students (flatlined) they want to blame the tool, not the worker.

Well I have never trusted standardized test. My child passed the exit exam for high school the first time it was given, 9th grade with high marks, but failed the ninth grade. She also had high marks every time she took the CAT and failed 2 years of elementary school. Those tests mean nothing. Teachers don't have time to teach kids to think.

Well I have never trusted standardized test. My child passed the exit exam for high school the first time it was given, 9th grade with high marks, but failed the ninth grade. She also had high marks every time she took the CAT and failed 2 years of elementary school. Those tests mean nothing. Teachers don't have time to teach kids to think.

There are those students who rebel against whatever authority/teacher there is and thus can get failing grades because of no or bad effort. Those same students can pass the test because they are smart. I don't want to get into the psycology of it, but it does happen, just like there are those students who are smart but test poorly

lonereb--Try teaching your child yourself. Sometimes, homeschooling a child for a year or two gives you a lot of insight into that child. It is likely that your child is brighter than average, can test well when she wants to, but has issues with things like organization and might have (as Bill points out) some issues with being oppositional/defiant.

It's difficult to tell, from a distance whether this is a personality issue, a learning style issue, a poor school system, or something like autism or ADHD. The only way you will find out is to either have the child fully assessed by a professional or to teach her yourself.

Tests like this are fine if one understands what they are--they are a single measure of whether or not a child is learning. Children who test well and who can think their way through a test do well on them--and that is one sort of intelligence. But, they are not going to test for everything or work for everyone--when doctors test a person's health, they don't just do a blood test and let a person go. The blood test is a good measure--but it doesn't tell the doctor everything about you--it will miss some things.

If I had to guess, then I would say that your daughter is likely a "daydreamer" or oppositional. Daydreamers can do the work, but they just can't get it together to do it and turn it in. "Daydreamers" are often AD (though not necessarily ADHD), or have Asperger's syndrome (no longer "recognized," but still a syndrome), or are just students who think differently (they are "feeling" rather than "thinking"). Oppositional students can do the work, but feel that they shouldn't have to and would rather do something else (see the poster, above, who faked his way through the test and then read a book). Oppositional students are often narcissistic, though sometimes they are just in bad school districts.

Still, people are guessing--it's like a doctor trying to figure out what's wrong with you just from a post in a thread. The doctor might suggest your going in to be tested because you might have this or that syndrome--but an anomaly like this (of high test scores but low performance) doesn't mean that the test doesn't work, it means that there is something more seriously "anomalous" about your daughter than that test is able to assess. It suggests the need for more serious and more thorough assessment before she falls through the cracks.

But, if you've a mind, you can homeschool your child. Try the trend called "unschooling"--if that works, then your child probably just thinks differently. Schools were designed after the Henry Ford model of "assembling" in increments, using exactly the same methods, and building on each skill like "building blocks." Not everyone can learn that way--children, for the most part, aren't cars. However, it's not the test that's "bad"--it's only testing what it's designed to test.

My child passed the exit exam for high school the first time it was given, 9th grade with high marks, but failed the ninth grade... and failed 2 years of elementary school.

How closely were you monitoring her completion of assignments and overall grades during this time? Academic failure doesn't happen all of a sudden, especially to a student who can do well on a standardized test. The most common reason for low grades in such a situation is students not doing the work or not turning work in. This can be the result of various things as described above (oppositional defiance disorder, attention deficit, etc.) Parental responsiblity does not begin and end with looking at a report card.

Amen!

Speaking from my own experience with standardized testing, how the teacher interprets those results can make a huge difference in how the teacher uses them in the classroom. Depending on the teacher's personal biases on gender, race, ethnicity, etc., it will affect how an individual student will respond to their teaching once the test results are in. That can be good or bad.

Can't really blame it on MSNBC, unfortunately. They only reflect a bias in the wheels of our wonderful society (read sarcasm here) - and other news outlets aren't any better. Gotta get the schools and teachers more involved and cognizant of all the ramifications of thier choices regarding using test scores in teaching their students, regardless of the paper results.

Really? I like your additional choice--I would have selected it if it had been one of the choices.

Jake in Chicago

Really? I like your additional choice--I would have selected it if it had been one of the choices.

Jake in Chicago

Really? I like your additional choice--I would have selected it if it had been one of the choices.

Jake in Chicago

I concur, that's the answer I would have chosen.

I also remember taking the Iowa Basics when I was in school. They were the toughest of all standardized tests seeing as how the came from what was then the most literate state in the nation. Then the schools realized that they were churning out ignorant people and to raise the scores, switched to the CAT (California Achievement Test). And when it was discovered that these tests were still too hard, the state decided to create their own test and thus in Indiana the ISTEP was born. When I started on the Iowa basics, I was scoring in the 90th percentile (meaning top 10%); the CAT had me in the 95th percentile; and with the ISTEP, I was in the 99th percentile. Sure, I learned a lot between the testing years, but I'll admit that it probably wasn't enough to jump my scores that drastically.

got bored most of the time, and just started making desgns with the dots

This is why testing is needed to identify those qualified to work in the rice paddies.

Glad I didn't go to public school. The nuns didn't give any test like that till the PSAT test. They had the time to teach the subject and how to think when reading or watching a supposedly historical drama.

I did well in school, and on standardized tests. They are not fair. They are not anything close to how most people have to use the knowledge they have.

When you go past a certain level in school, you are taught about memory encoding and memory recall. How you organize information in your mind when it is learned helps determine how you get it out. Try to say the alphabet backwards quickly. It takes practice. Studying for fill in the bubble tests encourages schools to teach to the tests, and forces kids to organize the information to best use it for the tests. This is why tests that more closely resemble realistic ways in which the information will be used later.

Reality has shown me that it is complex wordplay, not realistic scenarios, are the things that bring down tests into horrible wastes of time and resources. These tests do not come close to reality, and second language students do not stand on an equal playing field, irregardless of how smart they are and how much they know of the subject.

You are just a conformist who does not care to understand the problems deeply enough to be of any use. Go home and make your counterproductive jokes elsewhere.

Kevin, I disagree greatly.

I always scored in the 99th percentile on those tests, got good grades all through school, and now I am being paid to go to graduate school. I am from Iowa. I think those tests are a load of crap.

Standardized tests are a good measure of general knowledge, but they completely disregard other things such as creativity, abstract thought, or problem solving. Standardized testing is just regurgitation of certain facts, nothing more.

Not to mention that some students just don't test well. I have a friend who is an engineer, and his standardized test scores are horrid. However, his grades were high, and he was quite capable.

I actually voted that the tests are ineffective even though I did very well in high school and college and I am now in Graduate school.

As a teacher, I feel like these tests often impede me from actually teaching my students. Yes, there are standards that need to be met in order for students to be considered successful, but the pressure for them to ace the standardized test at the end of the year distracts both teachers and students. In theory, the tests measure to what degree the standards are being taught and learned, but in actuality, it doesn’t feel that way.

If a school has a certain number of students fail any one of the standardized tests, it will be taken over by another agency and teachers could lose their jobs. With those stakes, of course we are going to take time out of our busy year to teach them how to take the test. I teach English, so there is a writing component to every test my students take. If by teaching the kids the formula that is needed to show that they have found the right answer so they’ll pass is cheating, well, just call me unethical. I know my students so I am able to judge whether or not they have achieved success even if their wording is a little off or odd; state graders can’t necessarily do that.

I’ve completely left out how other important factors such as language barriers, socioeconomic status, and domestic abuse factor into kids achieving success on these tests and in the classroom. Most of the teachers I know work their tails off to help these kids regardless of the circumstances.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that teachers would rather be expert teachers, not test proctors, but the system so far hasn’t allowed us to be.

I remember when I was a kid the IQ test was slanted to urban youth in the north. Somebody made up a set of questions that were life and death skills for rural southern youth and every city kid failed the test. They failed to correctly answer What color is a copperhead snake? Duh. The truth is that what is important knowledge is different in different places. I was my cousins practice dummy for IQ tests when she was in college and I knew every question and every answer.

Unfortunate some are unable to distinguish between academic achievement and misspent taxes and sufficiently lack the former to effect the latter. Guess some can be sufficiently trained for organ donation.

To fix the drop out rate would require doing something to end social promotion so that students who get to high school actually have the skills they need in order to do high school level work.

There's nothing more defeating than taking a student who doesn't know even their basic multiplication facts and sticking them in an algebra class, because that's the lowest level of math offered, and expecting them to be able to do the work. After a year or two they give up and leave.

The change that must be made is to require students to actually master the content (or at least most of it) at each and every grade level before being allowed to be moved on. However, implementing such a system would create such a gigantic pool or bubble of retained students and would eventually result in such social untenable scenarios as 16 year old males attending school alongside 9 and 10 year old girls (I hope I don't need to explicitly describe the inherent risk here), that this is just not done.

The solution to the second part of the problem is to place the trouble makers somewhere else. The solution to the giant bubble of students will simply require much more money than we're currently willing to spend.

Why should kids not drop out of a school that ignores their educational needs? It is often better for your career to skip as much of high school as you are allowed and go strait to a trade school or a community college. I have an AA, BA, and a Master's degree with no high school diploma or GED. I would do it again, too. My brother skipped out at 16, then went on to get every kind of computer certification he could. He now has a masters too, and is making six figures as a CCIE (Network engineer), and is working on his doctorate. High school is the worst possible choice for many 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are very serious about their education. Other places are far better.

I agree, many students needs are not meant all at in high school.

Hellohowareyou,

Re: ... and go strait to a trade school ...

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

The tests are mostly process of elimination, nothing more. I sped through those tests without actually solving half of the math problems, because I knew what the answer was not.

that's so funny C@li4ni.......look where it got you! Your on newsvine...

So flag... you're saying that people who tested well don't spend their time on newsvine? You kind of dissed yourself there bud.

they have standardized tests, their classes are super rigid, and not really into that whole 'how is your child feeling today' crap.

This was true in public schools here at one time. In a Midwestern town of 200, just five decades ago, a small consolidated school produced four professors and two teachers from my family, and from my brother -in-law's family, a doctor, professor/author, lawyer and engineer. Everyone in our classes graduated. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills isn't the problem. It's that teachers are expected to do so much more now with so much less in the budget to work with, and they are villified because they can't work miracles. They have students now who have no parental control. If they call the home, if there is anyone home, the parent likely says: "What did you do to provoke my child?" Teachers today have students who have spent their formative years in front of a TV, watching programs which display bad behavior (one can hope the bad behavior is only observed by the children on TV). Laugh if you want to...besides being taught respect for authority at home, kids in my day watched Andy Griffith, Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. (Unfortunately, that last one will probably bring some snickers; oh, how the world has changed.) We need those tests of basic skills..and now we need so much more: we need home economics and vocational education in our schools again. We need music and art. We need jobs that can support families. We need a government which isn't run by large corporations. We need a population which is not so brainwashed that they can't see that putting billions away to sit in the Caymans or in Swiss banks, while this country so badly needs jobs, is hoarding. The only good it does is sit there waiting to buy more government. Cutting education funding is mendacity. Faulting standardized testing is ludicrous. Other forms of assessment are good to use as well, but there's no reason to fix what isn't broken. Teachers had never taught to the test until No Child Left Behind. Teachers taught children how to read, observe, reason, interact and to desire to learn more. No Child nearly bound teachers from teaching.

Thingaboutit,

You sure said a mouthful!

Teachers today have students who have spent their formative years in front of a TV, watching programs which display bad behavior

I've often referred to this as the "Bart Simpsonification" of a generation. That yellow haired punk has now been on TV for 20 years, and look at the boys we've got in school. Many of the boys consider it 'gay' to strive to be academically successful.On the other hand, many of the girls emulate Lisa, Bart's studious younger sister, and just look at the overall trend in college admission stats: 55% female, 45% male. Could there possibly be a link?

how so? Was it not the standardized tests that allowed this country to get to where it is today? Did standardized tests somehow just infect our educational classrooms the last few years?

Did these tests not exist for people that helped with the space program, or any technological achievement of the 20th century?

I think perhaps what BW might mean is that they way these tests are approached has changed the educational landscape in this country. I don't remember ever being "taught the test" or given any kind of prep before taking these tests when I was in school. We were taught core knowledge, which should prepare the student to do well on these tests. But now, so much is tied to the results, such as school funding, and teachers being able to keep their jobs, that the entire curriculum has shifted toward teaching the test. And what is sad is that even when doing this, the scores are still abysmal in some schools. And so many "modifications" are made for students with every condition, illness, and diagnosis under the sun, the results are so badly skewed that it is difficult to tell what the school is actually working with. I wish schools would just teach core knowledge, have everyone take the test cold, with no accommodations for your ADHD, low blood sugar, or whatever other excuse students are given these days for not working at the top of their game, and then take the results for what they are: a more accurate picture of what gaps exist in the curriculum, and then move on from there. This is why we have always gone with private school, because they seem much less caught up in this testing nightmare. I fear that by teaching the test, schools are creating "academic bulimics," where they swallow this material, then puke it back out on a test without actually ingesting it, and using it as a base from which to deepen their education.

...by teaching the test, schools are creating "academic bulimics," where they swallow this material, then puke it back out on a test without actually ingesting it, and using it as a base from which to deepen their education.

Precisely.

It is horribly blind people like you that continue shoving test on everyone that really do not fairly measure abilities. While there is a difference between CRTs and Norm Reference tests, they both heavily rely on clumsily worded questions designed more to trip up students with wordplay they are not used to, and will likely only see on these tests, than to ensure that they know the material. Having excellent reading comprehension and a knack for knowing English like only some native speakers do will ensure you do better, even when your subject knowledge is the same or worse. Second language students and those not naturally adept and understanding the complex wordplay on standardized tests will always be at a disadvantage, even when they study the tricks that test makers use to trick people.

If you are a PHD, you know that there are many types of intelligences , and many other means of assessments than just fill in the bubbles. We might need some form of standardized tests, but that does not mean that standardized tests must always be fill in the bubble. We certainly do not have to shove the same disorganized misc general college prep courses at all high school kids, regardless of what they want to do with their life, then throw a test which some students are always naturally better than others as the single thing which can fail them out of school.

School A has 39 special needs 10th graders that are all failing miserably. School B has 41 that come very close to passing but that just miss the mark. We have the nerve to start the process of shutting down school B and forcing it to tell the parents and the community that it is failing, while School A gets great passing marks all because one is above a magic number of Sped kids and the other is below? Get real.

If it were up to me, I would first instead of making every high school in a big metro area virtually the same, I would have one or two specialize in medical and science related fields, one or two in tech, a few trade focused, and others for other purposes like business and entrepreneurs. All would still learn a core that would leave them ready for college, but it would interest them and prepare them more effectively. When grading, rather than putting so much emphasis on standardized tests, I would keep them, make them more fair, but put more of an emphasis on grades and projects. College level high school classes already have grading that is very well examined by a standards body. We could easily monitor all types of schools I listed above while using a more vast array of tests than just fill in the bubble to grade both kids and schools. It takes thinking out of the box, and implementing things right, but it is doable.

I do not give anything for comments made by people who continue to make the problems worse. Beginning violin teachers are sometimes told to try playing with their wrong hands so as to remember how hard it is to learn the instrument. I think you are out of touch and focusing on the wrong problems. Good tests should at least somewhat emulate how students will need to use the knowledge. I am not sure of any profession where you fill in bubbles for a living.

I am not sure of any profession where you fill in bubbles for a living.

Statistician?

(Sorry statpro, I couldn't help myself. No genuine offense intended. I thought your comment was quite accurate as to pinpointing the nature of the misinterpretation problem.)

weemee at #13 - Are you talking about the ITBS developed and used since the 1930's or the No Child Left Behind emphasis begun around 2001?

I could not agree with your last sentence more. I have educators in my family, have volunteered and been on the local school board, and know many teachers. They all love their students and know their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities in each subject. They all lament the standardized testing. For each minute used teaching to the test is a minute diverted from nurturing that child's ability to truly learn. Curiosity of the child and fostering love of learning is tossed out the window.

Some things will never be measured by a No.2 pencil, a round little circle, and a computer.

People of all ages (and especially children) tend to retain facts when they are presented in a way to which one can relate. That's where our best (and creative) teachers come in. Heck, I passed an organic chemistry exam recently. But challenge me to explain an isotope? Basically? DUH on my part. I was taught to the test and so lousy retention.