Less Large Scale Assessments in the Horizon?

I have been thinking about some the things that Governor Jerry Brown said about education in his State of the State address on January 18th (http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17386).  Below is the section of his speech related to education.


"Next, I want to say something about our schools. They consume more tax dollars than any other government activity and rightly so as they have a profound effect on our future. Since everyone goes to school, everyone thinks they know something about education and in a sense they do. But that doesn’t stop experts and academics and foundation consultants from offering their ideas — usually labeled reform and regularly changing at ten year intervals—on how to get kids learning more and better. It is salutary and even edifying that so much interest is shown in the next generation. Nevertheless, in a state with six million students, 300,000 teachers, deep economic divisions and a hundred different languages, some humility is called for.


"In that spirit, I offer these thoughts. First, responsibility must be clearly delineated between the various levels of power that have a stake in our educational system. What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level. For better or worse, we depend on elected school boards and the principals and the teachers they hire. To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students. Yes, we should demand continuous improvement in meeting our state standards but we should not impose excessive or detailed mandates.


"My budget proposes to replace categorical programs with a new weighted student formula that provides a basic level of funding with additional money for disadvantaged students and those struggling to learn English. This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need. It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams.


"Given the cutbacks to education in recent years, it is imperative that California devote more tax dollars to this most basic of public services. If we are successful in passing the temporary taxes I have proposed and the economy continues to expand, schools will be in a much stronger position.


"No system, however, works without accountability. In California we have detailed state standards and lots of tests. Unfortunately, the resulting data is not provided until after the school year is over. Even today, the ranking of schools based on tests taken in April and May of 2011 is not available. I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments, such as a site visitation program where each classroom is visited, observed and evaluated. I will work with the State Board of Education to develop this proposal.


"The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions. My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition—not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come."

There is obviously a lot of rhetoric and it is difficult to determine exactly what action will take place, but there are some promising ideas in there.  I liked his statements about the state testing and accountability.  There is a lot of bureaucracy that goes along with "accountability" and I often wonder how much of the money in education is being spent on not just the tests and scoring of the tests (which is A LOT of money), but also on filling out required paperwork and reports that end up having no actual impact on students.  As Governor Brown says, the state test results are not available for months after the students take the test.  And the results do not provide teachers with any information that they do not already have.  Teachers know which kids are below standard and which kids are above standard without these tests.  What they need to know is how to support those kids who are below standard while still pushing the kids who are above standard.  No test score is going to tell them that.  It seems to me that "accountability" infers that teachers just are not trying hard enough with all the kids in their classroom.  We want to make the teachers accountable for the kids who are not learning at school.  I don't think that's fair.  Kids come from so many different backgrounds and experiences that no one person can possibly reach all of them.  That doesn't mean we don't try, but it means that we offer more support for kids and teachers, not just add more levels of bureaucracy that end up costing more money and don't do anything to support our kids.

Education and Finland

I really enjoyed this recent article from The Atlantic, (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/). There was a lot of interesting information, but one of the things that stood out most to me was the fact that Finland does not have large scale testing at every grade. They have well educated teachers who are taught how to design good classroom level assessments. What a concept! To actually train teachers to design and implement classroom level assessments designed for their individual teaching style and the individual students' in their classroom rather than relying on a large scale tests (which we know have measurement error) for everything.  In the US we keep standardizing everything more and more,  not only standardized tests, but standardized curriculum with pacing guides to make sure that all teachers are teaching the same thing each day. As if by making every classroom the same we are making everything fair and equitable. Perhaps if every kid had the exact same knowledge and experience when they walked in the classroom and every teacher had the exact same knowledge and experience that would work, but that is not how things are.  Even my identical twin girls with the exact same DNA in addition to being raised in the same household have very different strengths, needs and interests.  They don't learn everything at the same pace.  If teachers are not allowed to individualize their instruction (which includes assessments) to the needs of the students in their classroom than most kids are not going to succeed.