Education Reform Now

With the recent adoption of the new national, oh sorry meant to say Common Core State Standards, by most states, it's now time to turn to the bigger challenge of redesigning educational testing in this country. 

While some on the far left and right will no doubt worry about the soon to arrive black helicopters if states were to adopt a national test, the real stress should be about the quality, use and time to develop the tests.  We could have used good ones yesterday.

Some of the recent news on the LA Times release of teacher's student test scores or the latest controversy in New York about exaggerated state scores (but still improved achievement) point to the need for quality tests, a much greater understanding of what different student assessments measure and how they should be used for what use.

By the way, I'm all for more educator accountability for student results but publicizing teacher names with accompanying test scores in the LA Times not only crosses an ethical line but could cause reform backlash.  I'm guessing that Diane Ravitch and a few in the NEA couldn't be more pleased for the overreach.  While I applaud much of what has appeared in the articles, it seems patently unfair for the LA Times to publically shame a select group of elementary teachers because the retrograde teacher union and spineless administrators have been unwilling to do their jobs.  Less than 1% of LA Unified teachers were rated "below standard" by administrators according to a recent New Teacher Project study and only 13% of fourth graders are proficient readers.   Do you think there's a problem?

Mark Twain's famous phrase "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" seems to apply more than ever in this era of data mining, accountability and battles over education reform. 

While I'm ever thankful for NAEP, National Center for Education Statistics, the occasional journalists for helping to keep us honest, I worry that serious efforts at school improvement and reform could be jeopardized without more thoughtful attention to what's measured and currently missing in terms of support and resources regarding achievement testing in districts and schools. 

I'm not much for national commissions but educational testing is a topic where I think we need to take a hard look at what we are doing, where we are headed and determine what's really needed, this is not the time to layer on one more assessment without looking at the big picture.  Ask your kid if you are wondering if the current patchwork of testing is working, too much is riding on a system that looks a bit like medicine looked prior to the invention of high quality microscopes.