[MUSIC] The nice thing about standardized tests is they are standardized. So it ideally is not the case that a child in a school has a different test than a child in a different school, so that all children have the same standard. The problem with that is I don't think the instruments do a good job yet of capturing those things that we believe are important. In order for that to happen, you need more time and more money than we currently are willing or able to spend. A standardized test is just a shortcut. It's away to quickly take someone's temperature, but that means we are not determining the degree to which that person may be healthy or not. It's just a shortcut. But I don't know how you can have something that is both standardized and individualized, and I think that's what we really need. >> I don't know that test scores are really the only indicator, or the most important indicator, both to a student's capacity, a student's potential for success in life beyond the classroom, and also to the efficiency of a school. If we just dive into the weeds here for a minute, all of a sudden we're just looking at test scores and we're saying well test scores make a school great. Then of course the schools that take in students who test really well are going to get better results and then get better achievement results on those tests. This isn't to say that highly selective schools aren't good schools. Its just saying that they're inheriting students who do better on a certain matrix than schools that might not be getting students that do really well on those same test. And I don't know that that's the way that we want to measure how efficient a school is, how effective a teacher is. We also know through our research that test scores for the most part probably predict test scores. You know, there's recent research that's coming out of the consortium on Chicago school research that says that grades and attendance are probably much more predictive of how likely a student is to graduate from high school, and how likely they are to graduate from college. If we can organize accountability not just around a single test, but perhaps multiple matrix, multiple factors, all of sudden, you'll get a different story and you get a better assessment. I compared it to possibly going for a check up. And, maybe my blood pressure is high. Right? But there's ten other tests that I need to take that give me the whole picture of how I'm doing as a 42-year old, right now. If I just get my blood pressure, I don't know exactly what I'm like. I don't know exactly how healthy I am or I'm not. And I think just looking at the test score just gives us a limited view into how well a student is doing or how well a school is doing. >> Standardized test scores are useful for knowing what skills students have at a certain point in time, where they are in terms of their reading level, where they are in terms of their general math skills. Other than that, they don't provide a lot of information. They're useful for doing things like ability grouping, so if you want students who have different reading skills to be with other students who have similar reading skills, to make instruction easier. They're good for identifying students that are very far behind other students so that you can give them supplemental instruction to try to help them catch up. There are a lot of myths that are out there about standardized tests. I think a lot of people believe that most students at a particular age or grade level have similar ability levels or similar tested skill levels, similar reading levels or math skills. And then they learned throughout the school year, and then the next year they're at a much higher level of performance. And so for example, fourth graders are very different from third graders, and there is a fourth grade reading level, and a third grade reading level, but that's not actually the case. In reality the differences in reading skills and math skills among students at one grade level is equivalent to about the growth you get across eight years of school. So in any one grade level, you will have students with vastly different skills and they will learn, all students learn over the course of the year, but the amount that they learn is very, very small relative to the differences that exist in the first place. So we have a lot of accountability policies that are set up saying, all students should reach a certain skill level, say at a certain grade, all right? But because students learn so little each year and they start out with such differences in performance, that basically means that some students don't have to learn anything to meet that standard. While other students have no way of reaching that standard, even if they show achievement, if they show growth that's the strongest of all students out there. >> I think what's lost in all of these evaluation systems is the kind of the impetuous, that's probably not the right word, is the foundation of the system is to help people get better. And if all it is, is a sorting system, then we've missed the boat. Because we have to be able to use these new systems to help everyone no matter where you are to get better. >> Because it's complex, and this is a piece that I feel like we get into with education and the debate around school change and school communities, because things are complex, it doesn't mean they're impossible. They're just complex. And this is one where, certainly in my experience, being able to say to students, the test does not define you. It does not define you but it is important. And you can do well on it and we want to not teach to the test, we want to teach through the test because we've got to go through it. It's real but we also value you as a human being and value who you are, and we believe that this is just one of those things in your life that is an obstacle. And you're the kind of person that can overcome obstacles, so we're going to get this one like we get the rest. But, that's not the same as saying it's not important, and it's not the same as saying it's all important. It's just another important thing that kids need to do. >> I think one of the interesting things to do is sort of step back a little bit and think about where did all this come from? And I like to point to Frederick Taylor and his notion of scientific management. Brilliant concept. Hugely impactful, in terms of doing things like helping organizations make more cars. This whole notion of scale, right? It's built into this concept that you actually need data in order to make informed decisions, in order to improve something, in particular. The challenge I think, is in the framework that is being used right now in education, is again, there isn't any improvement component that's built into it. There's a punitive component that's built into it. I mean, from Taylor to Deming, all of them in their sort of instantiations of scientific management, worked on the improvement piece, and we are not really working so much on the improvement piece here. We're working more on the identifying what's not working and getting rid of it and bringing in something that theoretically might work or could work. As opposed to, okay so, let's figure out where kids are at on these particular assessments, and let's try and figure out how to get them the resources that they need to get to improve those particular outcomes. The other, I think, important thing to point out is that these assessments are only good as trying to understand how well students are doing on these assessments, right? There isn't any indication that these assessments help us understand whether or not Jose, or John, or Mario are going to be productive citizens in this country. Productive both on an economic standpoint, but also productive on a political standpoint. It's just about this particular measure. >> Whether or not our young people have the skills they need to be successful in our country. I would say it's something we ought to have our best minds on as a country, and really working hard to really figure that out and then improve it year after year. Rather than sort of leave it up to, well, it's the ACT, it's the SAT, it's the College Board, it's the different companies. This is one where the more I kind of ponder it and think about it, I wish we, I just wish we had one standard that we could work on and improve that standard. Because it is extremely distracting to have a high stakes situation where you're preparing students for a test that you don't believe has real meaning. That is destructive to a school community, that's destructive to students. It's just a bad idea because you want to make sure that you could look your students in the eye and say, if you can do these things on this test, under this kind of pressure, weird pressure situation, you will actually, it's a good way to tell if you can do the other things that you need to do in your life. >> It was interesting because I came into the role because the numbers of our school were low. And so, I certainly did have to reconcile it in the sense that our students were going to have to take these tests. And they were going to need to do well on them. But in my mind I really believe that best teaching practices would bear out on high stakes test that the students would do well. If we stay true to delivering high quality instruction and putting forth high quality tasks that were demanding of our students, that whatever measure was put before them, they would do well. And we actually started to see that. But we did use data, a lot of data to drive that. So, if we put an assessment before our students and it told us that they were weak in an area then we went back to the drawing board to figure out other authentic experiences to teach and re-teach whatever that aspect was that they were weak at. So it wasn't about ignoring the data or ignoring the high stakes test but it was using that data to teach students to mastering. We were real time data users, so the more you have and you can turn it on a dime and see the results the next day, then that was helpful for students and for teachers to see to just kind of bring the shoulders down. That we do not have to drop everything and then just do this skill and drill workbook for three months to prep for this assessment. Actually, the way in which we teach in the best practices that we honor, that we've been delivering all yearlong will sustain and get our students through this assessment. >> We're measuring teachers, we're making sure teachers and schools, making sure students are making progress. But we need to think about the pressure that's put on teachers. We need to think about the perverse incentives. So, if you have too much pressure that are placed on these metrics, it really can, if you have too much pressure, or if you have expectations that can not be met, where we have no known way of actually meeting the expectations. Then you're going to encourage bad practice and you will have negative incentives of the school. So let's think about putting in place expectations that actually are reachable and that we know are obtainable that we have seen are obtainable. We have actual evidence you can obtain those goals. And then make sure that teachers and schools are getting the supports they need to reach those goals, not just being punished because they don't reach those goals. [MUSIC]
