Research Shows What State Standardized Tests Actually Measure
From Forbes.com
A new paper from Jamil Maroun and Christopher Tienken sets out to determine whether a state’s big standardized test measures student learning, teacher effectiveness, or something else. The answer, it turns out, is something else.
“The tests are not measuring how much students learned or can learn,” says Tienken. “They are predominately measuring the family and community capital of the student.”
Tienken has studied this territory before. He started his career as an elementary teacher, and served at various levels of school administration before entering his current work as an associate professor of leadership, management, and policy at Seton Hall University. In 2016 he published a study that showed how, with some census data, he and his team could predict what percentage of students at a school would score proficient on the state standardized test. The results held true for several different states, whether the district was rich or poor.
In other words, one could, with a high degree of accuracy, predict the results of the annual test of student learning and teacher effectiveness without actually giving students a single test.
Maroun and Tienken’s new publication, “The Pernicious Predictability of State-Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States,” focuses on standardized state math tests in New Jersey, finding the same result and offering an explanation for the effect.
No news to those of us who've been following the topic for decades. These tests are used by policymakers as a proxy for their "fidiciuary" oversight responsibliies while there's been precious few examples at any level of significant resource reallocations toward disadvantaged students. Worse, as the study shows but isn't highlighted, local districts are complicit in continuing the practice because it's easier and cheaper than actually altering instructional resources for those kids on a sustained basis so they could actually acquire the missing background knowledge their situaitons have deprived them of through no fault of their own. Sadly, their parents aren't organized enough to have the influence of the historic majorities on boards, administrations and unions so the status quo maintains, as it has for twenty plus years. Meanwhile, testing companies prosper.
Hello! I appreciate your work so much. However, I do support student achievement testing when it is used ONLY for intended, as designed, purposes. For example, most state tests (e.g. NC where I live) are designed to measure student progress toward achieving state standards (reading, math, science). The add-ons such as teacher evaluation are not part of test design or development. They're invalid policy add-ons and should be dropped! But test data do show us important things. In NC, they have been used to argue for better state funding for schools because students are not achieving academically. Without the test data, the argument would be much harder. I guess what I'm asking is that you shift from what I'm perceiving as an anti-test in all cases stance to a stance against inappropriate uses of tests. I do believe there are sound ways to use test data. Without it, we wouldn't have the Leandro case in NC. This webinar about Leandro gives a good background. It's incredible! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDlLF7Oqf4