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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsElementary School Principal Writes NYS Commissioner John King About The Shockingly Flawed ELA Exams
Dr. John B. King Jr.
New York State Education Commissioner
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12234
Dear Commissioner King:
I urge you to carefully review this years state ELA exams. I have been principal for 13 years and have read the tests each year. Although there are always issues with selected questions, generally it is only one or two per test that the assistant principals and I cant quite agree on. I am genuinely shocked that with the increased importance of state testing, there are so many more flawed questions than ever before. I wish I could go into detail here, but it violates test security for me to discuss the content of the tests or the questions, which is why I feel so strongly that it is important that you see these tests for yourselves.
In particular, I would recommend that you carefully read through day one of the fifth grade ELA. The reading passages themselves are not too challengingsurprising since the passages in the 4th grade test were not particularly easy and the Common Core Standards call for more rigor. However, the questions were nothing short of ridiculous. Several of them were ambiguous and seemed designed only to trick children (and adults
.the answers were not clear to many of us). Overall, the questions did not serve to determine whether or not children had good reading comprehension skills. You could have excellent comprehension skills and miss many questions. Although to me the fifth grade was the most outrageous of the elementary school exams, there were problems with the other exams too. It is puzzling to me that in 2012 in New York State, a testing company that won the lucrative contract to develop these exams did not think it was important, on day one (the most heavily weighted day) of the 4th grade exam, to include any selections that were in urban settings. Children who spend a lot of time outdoors and in rural or suburban settings definitely will find friendlier texts, both fiction and nonfiction. Take a look so you can see what I mean. Fortunately, day two is better in this regard.
I would also urge you to actually do the listening section of grade 3 (first part of day 2). Have someone read aloud this incredibly thin, brief passage two times as required and then see if you can answer the questions, including the short and extended responses, without looking at the text (since kids are not permitted to look at this text). The questions are not really ones that you can answer well from the text, even if it is sitting in front of you and you can refer back.
Because I am an elementary school principal, I do not see the middle school exams. However, a middle school principal from outside of New York City wrote this to me after day one: As I reviewed the exams for the sixth through eighth grade yesterday, I was appalled. I felt that sixth grade was the most difficult of the three exams, followed by eighth, with the most fair exam being the seventh grade. There were so many questions that contained answer choices where the ELA teachers could not decide which answer would be 'best'. I felt terrible for my children, especially for my English Language Learners and my special education students. And 8th graders, who really cant be controlled in terms of not talking about the test, are having a field day on the internet mocking what appears to be one of the most ridiculous selections ever included on a test!
more . . . http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2012/04/elementary-school-principal-writes-nys.html
GreenPartyVoter
(72,377 posts)what is going on with testing.
Cerridwen
(13,252 posts)summerschild
(725 posts)My first instinct is always "Follow the money".
Who will profit when these children (and teachers/schools) perform poorly on these rigged tests?
Chorophyll
(5,179 posts)There is an element out there that has been trying to destroy the public schools for years. These shitty tests will provide the "proof" that schools and teachers are "failing."
Privatize everything!
lunasun
(21,646 posts)except to say if you do not have kids in grade school you have no idea how terrible it is now days
and give a + rec to this OP
thank you for post
not surprised
nenagh
(1,925 posts)Several days ago I looked over what grade 3 math students were expected to achieve on a test in south Florida.
I do not know if it was a class end of chapter test or the real Florida wide test.
Both the math component was extremely difficult..starting with a fraction of 4/7.. IIRC, but the words used in the problem section were also unnecessarily long and complicated.
Frankly, I wondered after reading the test, were these children being set up to fail??
I feel really sorry for those grade 3 children...who sets the lesson plans and and writes the test math problems with complicated long sentence structure and difficult to understand words?
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Is it university of Chicago curriculum-Everyday Mathmatics?
That is pure doublespeak title since it is nothing like everyday math and from the home of the free markets economic group leaders
Our school dist finally got enough complaints or a new kickback after 4 years and a new curriculum will be used in the schools but who knows if the replacement is any better or...a sure fail
pacalo
(24,721 posts)justabob
(3,069 posts)and I don't just mean poorly designed questions. My son (15 yo) was telling me just yesterday how bad the editing is on the tests, full of typos and grammar errors. It definitely makes you wonder. Then there are all the scandals regarding teachers and admins changing answers etc to keep their stats and funding up. No good can come of this.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)kids have great scores/grades and a poor education
a real farce now
patrice
(47,992 posts)This blogpost reads as though the issues go beyond those normally associated with the problems of cultural diversity, within the normative processes of test standardization, into the core of semantic competence that makes ANY kind of collective understanding possible.
It makes me wonder if grammatical and mechanical dysfunction have achieved critical mass ((as in, "The centre cannot hold ... " thank you W. B. Yeats)) in conventional standardization processes. Normal sample selection WOULD pick up SOME inherently flawed data, but it should be so specific that there wouldn't be enough of it, in a valid sample, to skew the standardized product (i.e. the test). Maybe that kind of data is no longer that specific, no longer so limited to certain subsets of the sample . . . ?
Or - Maybe a machine is picking the answers . . . ?
Or - They're standardizing already standardized material . . . ?
just brainstorming here: H - O - W, exactly, did the comprehension component get THAT bad?????
belcffub
(595 posts)I asked her each day about them and how she thought she did... She had no complaints... I guess we will see when the scores come home....
Now my third grader on the other hand complained about everything... but she's autistic and thats par for the course... I have no idea what her scores will be... could be just about anything...
frazzled
(18,402 posts)It's my new motto.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)frazzled
(18,402 posts)There was one thing I admired in the otherwise completely loony test passage: they very clearly tried to make sure that all possibly unfamiliar vocabulary words were explained within the course of the passage ("hare"
was a skinnier and faster rabbit; a pineapple was a tropical fruit; "trick up one's sleeve" was explicated in other terms).
This was a huge problem I tried (unsuccessfully) to fight against for several years in Minnesota in the late 90s, when I was engaged in working with kids who had failed at least once the state's high-stakes exams for readinga test that had to be passed to earn a high school diploma. Of course, all my failing students were non-native speakers of English, and unfamiliar vocabulary was one of their biggest challenges. I would try to teach them how to look for clues to meanings of an unfamiliar word within the context of the story ("asylum" for example, in a passage about the journalist Nelly Bly). I recall one particularly lost Vietnamese girl I worked with for 3/4 of a year, who had actual reading problems in addition to vocabulary problems. We were finally at the point where I thought maybe, just maybe, she might be able to pass. Then the teacher of the class handed me the previous year's exam passages to give to her, in preparation for the test the following week. The girl and I looked at them and my heart just sunk. The first was a cheeky editorial from a newspaper, written by a doctor, and the main subject of it was "lo-fat Twinkies." The other was a passage about a knotty-pine den. My heart just sunk, and she looked totally panicked and defeated. There is no way in hell this teenager from Southeast Asia (here only for four years) was going to have any idea what either lo-fat Twinkies or knotty-pine dens were. The cultural myopia of these tests was astounding (especially for a district in which more than 60 languages were spoken). I'm glad it's improved at least in New York State over the past 15 years.
That said, the sleeveless pineapple story was a huge misfire: I think they must have picked it thinking it would amuse the students; of course, it only enraged and defeated them. As usual.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)It is too clearly written, with too many specifics, details and examples. It uses too much proper grammar and lays out the problems without being too preachy. It is too logical, too coherent, and too convincing.
For these reasons, want to bet it gets ignored?