My thesis is that you’re missing the point with your argument: Steven Weinberg’s first sentence in this post is, “Many people wonder why teachers object so strongly to the use of standardized test results to evaluate their teaching.”

Standardized tests are NOT being used to evaluate teaching. OUSD seniority is.

With miniscule exception, teacher seniority is the only metric that is used in deciding whether teachers are hired, fired, or given raises.

Teachers could be teaching students nothing and they could be scoring far below basic on every one of their exams and nothing would happen to them. Alternatively, you could have one of the most amazing teachers in the district who is only teaching in Oakland for her second year teacher (maybe she’s a young teacher, or maybe she’s a highly experienced teacher who just moved to the Bay Area). This teacher will be laid of next year because she hasn’t taught in Oakland Unified long enough.

If you want to talk about unfair teacher evaluation practices, this is what the focus should be on.

Admitting my bias because of the strengths that I see in my kid, do we really want *education* in this country to be defined by what can be easily tested via bubble tests? IMHO, we need a citizenry that can think critically about what they hear on talk radio, read in the Huffington Post or Wikipedia, watch on TV, or observe at a rally.

A number of my student’s high performing friends who are burnt out from the SATs, AP exams, etc. are threatening to try to attain *Far Below Basic* scores on the CST. They don’t see the tests as impacting their personal futures. I am sure they are not the only kids in the state who blow off these tests. See Sharon @ 15 and Steve Weinberg @ 16.

I think the testing has gotten out of hand. We test too much. Testing at beginning of classes each school year and again at end of year should do it.

I am on record as opposing tying pay to test scores. It creates an unreasonable incentive to work with the bright children and to shun the dulls. OUSD has a lot of dulls. We don’t need any additional disincentive to working with them.

Beyond this I disagree testing dull students on any college prep material. They (dulls) should not be in OUSD to be force fed college prep. They need basic education and vocational/life-skill ed. If they do well there they will NOT; be in prison, dead, std infected, unable to drive, parents of children they can’t support or unemployed (which are in themselves are a form of testing).

Why is this a waste of time for teachers to argue about?

Under the current system, the measure of a teacher’s effectiveness is not a test score, but the number of years that teacher has taught in Oakland Unified School District. This seems like a even more ridiculous measure to me of how good a teacher is, but I don’t hear any teachers complaining about this.

Layoff and pay decisions are made based on SENIORITY, not based on TEST SCORES. Teachers are NOT held accountable to test results.

How many teachers in their 3rd+ year have been fired because of test score performance? How many teachers have been fired because they are in their first or second year at Oakland Unified, regardless of how they have actually performed in the classroom? The second group is far larger than the first.

When you say that the CSTs are not difficult, and that “the large majority of students who are on track to be college-ready will score proficient/advanced on the CSTs, dumb questions and all[,]” aren’t you saying that the tests are largely irrelevant? Yeah, smart, motivated, hard-working kids (ie, college ready) will do better on any test you give them. So, since there is no pretest, isn’t the test mostly just a measure of
what kind of kids walk in the door? (In fairness, the State does try to control for that by issuing a “similar schools” score)

BTW, if the tests aren’t hard, then there is something wrong with them. If I give nothing but easy tests, then I will never know who has truly mastered the material.

More to Steve’s point, though, is that if the test is supposed to measure how well schools are teaching, then they should only test what is on the standards. If Steve is right, and many questions are not on the standards, then the test is a waste of time. After all, the standards don’t say, “get kids ready for college.”

Moreover, the test does not really measure college readiness, other than maybe re: math. This test does, though: http://www.cae.org/content/pro_collegework.htm

1. Are there dumb questions on the CSTs? Yes. There are idiotic questions on teachers’ tests, the SAT (“an exam that really matters”), and every other test as well. Ever had a job interview? You’ll get dumb questions there too. Knowing the teacher who wrote these questions or the interviewer who asked them doesn’t seem to impede this from happening, and telling people that they shouldn’t play in a system that isn’t 100% fair is naive.

2. Is every question on the CSTs dumb? No. Some of them test very basic skills that anyone with a basic grasp of the subject matter should be able to answer. The CSTs are not a difficult exam. Yes, there are external factors that make life very difficult for many students in Oakland, and yes, teachers get students with all different levels of ability at the beginning of the school year, but at the end of the day, the large majority of students who are on track to be college-ready will score proficient/advanced on the CSTs, dumb questions and all.

Net net? My beef with your post is that you (and many teachers) are focusing their energy on nitpicking something that doesn’t really matter. I would recommend that teachers focus more energy on teaching students what they need to learn (because even if we had a perfect testing system in place today our kids still wouldn’t be learning what they need to survive) and the scores, imperfect measures and all, will follow.