The New
Bedford School Department has made the news lately after the district’s
positive results on statewide standardized tests were released last week. For
the first time in several years, New Bedford has made substantial gains on
these tests. The district has gone from having one school in the state’s
highest accountability level (Swift) to three (Swift, Pulaski and Taylor).
Other schools in the city have shown tremendous growth on these exams — more so
than their peers across the state and outpacing their peers in other Gateway
Cities. If you subscribe to the theory that these tests are a valid measure of
students’ mastery of state standards for their grade level, this is an
indisputable win for city schools and further evidence that progress is being
made.
What
troubles me, though, is that I’ve heard more people lauding the school
department’s increase in test scores in the last week than I’ve heard lauding
any other tangible improvement to the system in my two years on the School
Committee. Test scores are certainly part of the equation, but we must
constantly consider the emphasis we place on them in modern education. As
former Mayor Lang wrote in 2011, “Standardized test scores are not the only
indicia of accomplishment, and there is a growing consensus that their overuse
is harming public education in the United States.” This rings true in 2015, a
year in which the district has enjoyed a number of accomplishments worthy of
celebration long before the release of these scores.
It’s
hard to forget that test scores have been used all too often to unfairly malign
the district and our schools in the past. They’ve been used to make the claim
that our schools, our educators and our kids have not done as good a job as
their peers in other communities. These sorts of claims ignore the myriad
challenges our schools, educators and kids face that their peers do not. Recent
studies suggest that neither PARCC nor MCAS are particularly useful predictors
of college readiness or college success (which was the impetus for the creation
and switch from MCAS to PARCC). Indeed, what these sorts of high-stakes
standardized tests predict best is poverty. It is no coincidence that New
Bedford’s three Level 1 schools are in more affluent neighborhoods. According
to 2010 Census data, the area surrounding Taylor School is host to families
with an average income of $80,204. Pulaski? $70,852. Swift? $51,873. Compare
those figures to the area around Hayden-McFadden, a Level 4 school in need of
“a decisive plan for significant and dramatic change,” according to the state.
There, the mean household income is $26,241. More than 46 percent of households
in the census tract surrounding the school have a household income of less than
$15,000.
While
many point to MCAS and a system of standardized testing and accountability as
the reason Massachusetts has led the nation in education over the last 20
years, it’s worth noting that the state has made very few inroads in closing
the “Achievement Gap” between affluent white students and their low-income,
minority peers and students with disabilities. According to the National
Assessment of Educational Progress, while Massachusetts may be No. 1, the state
is among the worst in closing the achievement gap in reading and math.
I would
never imply that students coming from backgrounds of poverty cannot learn. I
grew up in a single-parent household with household income well under $15,000
myself and I learned just fine in New Bedford Public Schools. As a state, we’ve
had trouble closing the achievement gap because we’re seemingly unwilling to
admit that a system of high-stakes testing and accountability doesn’t mesh with
urban education, likely out of fear of lowering expectations for many students.
That would be wrong. We must hold all students to a high standard, but give
them the supports they need to achieve. When New Bedford has raised these
issues about testing in the past, it was dismissed as defensiveness over plummeting
scores. Well, now they’re on the rise, but the system is still flawed.
I would
encourage anyone who shares these concerns to involve themselves in the debate
as the federal government shifts from No Child Left Behind to a model that
empowers states, and as Massachusetts looks to shift assessment systems over
the next few years. Keep in mind the several other states, New Hampshire and
California among them, that have started to reimagine their assessments,
eliminating punitive aspects and creating more of a true diagnostic tool of
learning through performance-based learning.
So when
you read about improving test scores, you aren’t wrong to file it away as a
success. The scores aren’t completely meaningless, but they hardly reveal
anything we didn’t know already. Our teachers and administrators dedicate their
lives to their students and work tirelessly to hone their craft. We didn’t need
increased scores to know that to be true. The pat on the back for bringing
scores up is, in a way, reinforcing the hyper-emphasis and misuse of testing.
It ignores the hard work and educational advancement that happens in our
schools every day that can’t be quantified. Education researcher Dr. Ricardo
Rosa aptly questioned why schools send a letter home to parents asking that
they make sure their children get a good night’s sleep and eat a hearty
breakfast just before testing begins, as if the day of the test is more
important than the day a student starts a new lesson or plays a violin in the
holiday concert. Why is that? In 1993, the system was created to measure
student learning and diagnose systemic shortcomings to ensure public funds were
being used efficiently. Twenty years later, the system is arguably the main
driver of education and it’s all too easy to confuse increased test scores as
an end in itself, instead of creating educated students who are equipped with
the skills they need for a good life.
6 comments:
Josh, good letter but don't overlook the fact that Durkin is destroying the school system.
It's best to remember that scores can always be presented to the public in whatever light behooves the system. And consider this: Just because one 4th grade scores higher than a previous 4th grade, it doesn't speak about only the teaching that has taken place, but the different set of students who took the test.
Late to the funeral. Few left to hear the eulogy. We needed this from him at the start of his term not now when we are ready to vote him out.
Too late Josh!
True....where has he been through all of this...silent...most teachers will not help him this time............
He's been growing a beard. Looks like it may take a while.
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