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Student learning is at the heart of what teaching is all about. But we have made a huge mistake when we take what is a very indirect measurement of all the learning that ought to be occurring in a classroom -- a test or set of tests -- and mistake that for the sum of learning, and then start attaching negative and positive consequences to that. When we do this, instruction becomes distorted, and learning becomes all about test performance. The purpose for both teaching and learning is up-ended, and becomes about satisfying an external authority rather than pursuing what ought to be developed as an intrinsic passion. And this would be true even if VAM was accurate!

Louisiana's "School Performance Score" (SPS) is the state's primary accountability measure, and it determines whether schools are subject to high-stakes decisions, most notably state takeover. For elementary and middle schools, 90 percent of the SPS is based on testing outcomes. For secondary schools, it is 70 percent (and 30 percent graduation rates).* The SPS is largely calculated using absolute performance measures - specifically, the proportion of students falling into the state's cutpoint-based categories (e.g., advanced, mastery, basic, etc.). This means that it is mostly measuring student performance, rather than school performance. That is, insofar as the SPS only tells you how high students score on the test, rather than how much they have improved, schools serving more advantaged populations will tend to do better (since their students tend to perform well when they entered the school) while those in impoverished neighborhoods will tend to do worse (even those whose students have made the largest testing gains). One rough way to assess this bias is to check the association between SPS and student characteristics, such as poverty.

We've all become accustomed to this selective, exaggerated presentation of testing data, which is of course not at all limited to NYC. And it illustrates the obvious fact that test-based accountability plays out in multiple arenas, formal and informal, including the court of public opinion. Some of the errors found in press releases and other official communications, in NYC and elsewhere, are common and probably unintentional (e.g., all three of the mistakes I discussed in this post). In other instances, however, results are misinterpreted in such a blatant fashion as to be a little absurd.

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school "gaming" of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school accountability. The lack of research is primarily due to the unavailability of appropriate data to carry out such an analysis. This paper brings to bear new evidence from a remarkable five-year survey conducted of a census of public schools in Florida, coupled with detailed administrative data on student performance. We show that schools facing accountability pressure changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways. In addition, we present medium-run evidence of the effects of school accountability on student test scores, and find that a significant portion of these test score gains can likely be attributed to the changes in school policies and practices that we uncover in our surveys.

The public debate about the success and expansion of charter schools often seems to gravitate toward a tiny handful of empirical studies, when there is, in fact, a relatively well-developed literature focused on whether these schools generate larger testing gains among their students relative to their counterparts in comparable regular public schools. This brief reviews this body of evidence, with a focus on high-quality state- and district-level analyses that address, directly or indirectly, three questions: Do charter schools produce larger testing gains overall? What policies and practices seem to be associated with better performance? Can charter schools expand successfully within the same location?

Walk through the doors of Bergen Arts & Science Charter School in Garfield and you'll see a computer kiosk that lets parents see all their kids' test mistakes so they can practice more at home. The database also gives information on the day's quizzes, homework and any demerits for misbehavior. For live updates, parents can tap into a "student database app" on their cellphones. At a time when many parents and teachers worry that schools have gone overboard in testing children and lament the time spent on test preparation, families here embrace the school's intensely data-driven approach.

Faced with mounting policy pressures from federal and state accountability programs, school leaders are reallocating curricula, time, even diet in an attempt to boost student achievement. To explore whether they are using test score data to reallocate their teacher resources as well, I designed a cross-case, cross-sectional study and explored principals' reported staffing practices in one higher performing and one lower performing elementary school in each of five Florida school districts. Findings show that school leaders are "staffing to the test" by hiring, moving, and developing teachers in an effort to increase their schools' overall performance. The paper discusses the implications of evidence-based staffing for policy, practice and future research.

When the National Research Council published the results of a decade-long study on the effects of standardized testing on student learning this summer, critics who have long opposed the use of exams as a teaching incentive rejoiced. But Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University economist who is influential in education research, now says the "told you so" knee-jerk reaction was unwarranted: In an article released Monday by Harvard University's journal Education Next, Hanushek argues that the report misrepresents its own findings, unjustifiably amplifying the perspective of those who don't believe in testing. His article has even caused some authors of the NRC report to express concerns with its conclusions.

The year 2011 was monumental in education - monumentally good or monumentally bad, depending on your view. School reformers who believe in using business principles to run public schools had a banner year. More states expanded the number of charter schools, promoted vouchers and moved toward using student test scores to evaluate teachers. It was a tough year for those who believe that school reform cannot happen without taking into account the social context in which students live. Yet, toward the end of 2011 there were real signs that educators, parents and even students were pushing back. test yourself on 2011 issues that will continue to play out in 2012.

Here are some obvious conclusions from the study: Teachers are really important. They make a lasting difference in the lives of their students. Some teachers are better than other teachers. Some are better at raising students' test scores. The problems of the study are not technical, but educational. The Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff analysis points us to an education system in which tests become even more consequential than they are now. Teachers would work in school systems with no job protection, and their jobs would depend on the rise or fall of their students' test scores.

On Jan. 8, 2002, then president George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law, ushering in an era of standardized test-based school reform. This assessment of the NCLB decade was written by Lisa Guisbond with Monty Neill and Bob Schaeffer, all from the National Center for Fair and Open testing, known as Fairtest, a Boston-based organization that aims to end the misuse of standardized tests. Guisbond is a policy analyst, Neill is executive director and Schaeffer is public education director.

Just this week, Florida announced its new district grading system. These systems have been popping up all over the nation, and given the fact that designing one is a requirement of states applying for No Child Left Behind waivers, we are sure to see more. I acknowledge that the designers of these schemes have the difficult job of balancing accessibility and accuracy. Moreover, the latter requirement - accuracy - cannot be directly tested, since we cannot know "true" school quality. As a result, to whatever degree it can be partially approximated using test scores, disagreements over what specific measures to include and how to include them are inevitable (see these brief analyses of Ohio and California). As I've discussed before, there are two general types of test-based measures that typically comprise these systems: absolute performance and growth. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Florida's attempt to balance these components is a near total failure, and it shows in the results.

The state's private-school voucher program in New Orleans -- the test case for Gov. Bobby Jindal's new statewide voucher push -- has yet to produce enough raw data to show whether it is really boosting student achievement. The governor's office is backing the voucher idea with figures that appear to show impressive test results for New Orleans students who get state aid to pay private school tuition. But in truth, limited test-score data and the lack of comparable public school numbers make the program's effectiveness almost impossible to judge, according to some of the country's leading number-crunchers in the education field. At best, state data offer only a snapshot of how those students are doing, and even then results are mixed.

Los Angeles Unified School District is embroiled in negotiations over teacher evaluations, and will now face pressure from outside the district intended to force counter-productive teacher evaluation methods into use.  Yesterday, I read this  Los Angeles Times article a lawsuit to be filed by an unnamed "group of parents and education advocates."  The article notes that, "The lawsuit was drafted in consultation with EdVoice, a Sacramento-based group. Its board includes arts and education philanthropist Eli Broad, former ambassador Frank Baxter and healthcare company executive Richard Merkin."  While the defendant in the suit is technically LAUSD, the real reason a lawsuit is necessary according to the article is that "United Teachers Los Angeles leaders say tests scores are too unreliable and narrowly focused to use for high-stakes personnel decisions."  Note that, once again, we see a journalist telling us what the unions say and think, without ever, ever bothering to mention why, offering no acknowledgment that the bulk of the research and the three leading organizations for education research and measurement (AERA, NCME, and APA) say the same thing as the union (or rather, the union is saying the same thing as the testing expert).  Upon what research does the other side base arguments in favor of using test scores and "value-added" measurement (VAM) as a legitimate measurement of teacher effectiveness?  They never answer, but the debate somehow continues ad nauseum.  

Nearly 40 years have passed since the Fiscal Crisis budget cuts and our public schools now face a challenge more insidious and perhaps, more formidable. All across the nation, a poisonous coalition of multi billionaire business leaders, test and technology companies, charitable foundations and elected officials are pushing a nationwide education agenda that involves the introduction of high stakes testing at all grade levels, evaluation of teachers and schools based on student test scores, and the introduction of "competition" into public education by the creation of independently managed charter schools given special advantages in funding and recruitment.

There have now been several stories in the New York news media about New York City's charter schools' "gains" on this year's state tests (see here, here, here, here and here). All of them trumpeted the 3-7 percentage point increase in proficiency among the city's charter students, compared with the 2-3 point increase among their counterparts in regular public schools. The consensus: Charters performed fantastically well this year. In fact, the NY Daily News asserted that the "clear lesson" from the data is that "public school administrators must gain the flexibility enjoyed by charter leaders," and "adopt [their] single-minded focus on achievement." For his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed that the scores are evidence that the city should expand its charter sector. All of this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how to interpret testing data, one that is frankly a little frightening to find among experienced reporters and elected officials.

The study claims they found that if they gave teachers several thousand dollars at the beginning of the year and told them they'd have to return it if their students didn't do well on math tests, then students did better on those tests (there was no impact on score improvement for students of teachers in the group that were offered bonuses after the test -- the more typical merit page scheme).  The study only included teachers from nine schools and student scores were also not tracked past one school year.

Only a month before nearly 120 Louisiana schools are set to welcome their first voucher students, the state has finally released a slate of standards that approved schools must meet in order to receive both students and concurrent state dollars. And while the standards, created by Superintendent John White and approved by the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) this week, are widely considered a step in the right direction, voucher opponents say the standards fall far short from the accountability they sought. Where every public school in Louisiana is subjected to a standardized slate of testing, the voucher students - who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from "failing" public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations - will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.

Teachers and parents both know that a child is more than a test score. That is why more than 70% of public school parents reject a proposal to greatly increase the weight of a single state test score in evaluating teachers, according to a recent poll conducted by Hart Research (PDF). The statewide poll, conducted January 20-23, was taken while discussions were ongoing between NYSUT and the State Education Department around teacher evaluation processes.

The tests also matter because students who score seventy-five or better on the New York State English Regents are exempt from remedial reading and writing classes in the City University of New York. But that is only part of the story. Three-quarters of the 17,500 freshmen at the community colleges this year have needed remedial instruction in reading, writing or math, and nearly a quarter of the freshmen have required such instruction in all three subjects. Thanks to a recent article by Michael Winerip in the New York Times we now know why students score much better on the English Regents. The exam is much easier than the others. In fact it is so easy that it does not even measure basic student literacy. It also calls into question the reliability of standardized tests to measure anything about schools, let alone teacher performance, and the whole federal Race to the Top program.