If we’re talking about tests within the classroom, right on. If we’re talking about standardized tests, I call B.S.

When students aren’t held accountable for test performance, why should they take it seriously? And if students don’t take it seriously, how can standardized test data be an indication of the quality of teaching going on in the classroom? Until students have consequences for high and low performance on standardized tests, those results only give, at best, a vague indication of what’s happening in the classroom and say very little about how good or poor a job a teacher is doing. Unless we’re holding teachers accountable for getting their kids to take a test seriously that has absolutely no impact on their lives.

I’d like to have the kind of test data you’re talking about. I’d like to have that much faith in standardized tests. But I don’t have either of those things.

We are talking about the CSTs on the STAR test, right? You’re going to offer a grade-level increase when? When you get those results in September of the following school year? And how can you say that they aren’t useless to you when they don’t drive your instruction for the current year’s kids? Are you writing about the standardized tests that actually exist or the ones you hope for? Is something different in math, then? ‘Cause I don’t see those results until September of the following school year.

I don’t pitch the ideas that you’re suggesting I do. I don’t care if testing costs cash and consumes time, but by your own ratio, that time damn well better be properly spent; the cash, too. Do you really think that’s the case currently?

I advocate for better testing, perhaps more frequent testing once that better test exists, and for the test to mean something to the students. Until those things happen, though, I can’t judge a student’s grade by a single test that he may or may not have taken in all seriousness given the other assignments on his plate. I’m shocked that you can.

Did you really mean that you’d raise a student’s grade just because of one test taken in April? Would you also lower the grade of students who perform poorly? I’d respect your consistency if you did that.

If you admit that there’s a translation involved in learning a concept in your class and demonstrating it on the test, then that test data is flawed because it necessarily implies that your students successfully sythesized that content. It should simply test the student’s knowledge of the concept, as purely as possible. If they didn’t sythesize correctly, they didn’t do well on the test. But that doesn’t mean that you didn’t teach effectively, right? It just means that the kids couldn’t translate into STAR language. That’s exactly why the test data only means so much. It does mean something, but it ain’t golden.

The primary reason I argue they are inconsequential is because they don’t mean anything to the students. On the original post you quoted, I mentioned that we failed as a school system to get kids motivated to take these tests, but I don’t feel like it’s a classroom teacher’s job to think of ways to make that test meaning something when it doesn’t. Again, kids who fail and kids who ace it, nothing happens to them. You seem to have come up with a way around that, but there could be some problems.

As for grade changes in September of the following school year, what if that effects their course placement (they fail your class, ace the STAR, so earn a passing grade, but are repeating your course already because your grade change came too late, so now they transfer classes 4 or 5 weeks into the school year)? What about students you don’t see again (they transfered schools)? What about it circumventing the grade as a marker of student ability to perform their job as a student during the regular school year, not just during one testing phase of the second semester? That’s also a part of what you grade means, not just content knowledge. It’s an interesting idea and I might give it a shot with my juniors this year. I don’t particularly have a problem with it, now that I’ve thought about it all day, but I’m not entirely certain it’s legal to change a grade the following school year (you could get around it by selecting “handed in missing work” or something, but that’s a cheat). I’ll check with my administrators on that tomorrow.

Are you telling me that your school gives you the test results from last year’s students? I only get my current roster’s test results, not the students I had last school year. I have to hunt those down and don’t get those until November or so, and only then after I ask and ask and ask and ask. And if my students are only being tested in April, that doesn’t help too much. That’s a long time to wait in order to find out if what I did was effective. And even worse to find out I was ineffective.

Was it my teaching that caused the increased results on this year’s test data or did I just get lucky with a group of astute kids this year? Students tested in September AND in April might tell me something. That way, I have baseline data and can see the growth. Measuring progress against last year’s test results don’t help either; that’s an apple to orange comparison when the standards change (English/Language Arts has a set of standards for 9/10 and a set for 11/12).

So you both know, I’m speaking only of student performance in high schools. I don’t know if my ideology about all this holds out at the lower levels. I do not advocate for no testing, but for better and more meaningful testing.

How can CST test data be part of planning scheduling? Those results aren’t received until August at best, September more typically. The schedule is usually set in place by the beginning of August, mid-August in a bad year. I don’t doubt you, TMAO, I just wonder how your school makes that possible. Do you have massive schedule changes once those test results come in after the school year has begun?

TMAO, assuming that you’re right (I don’t know that CST results are used for reclassification in ELL; I haven’t seen that happen at my school, though I can’t say for sure), that’s a very small pool of students for whom the CST matters. What about high school students that are not ELLs and not enrolled in Algebra I?

Communicating the importance of these exams is fine and I tell my students how these tests matter to the school and to me, but there is no importance for students (excepting those students you mention, again a small percentage of the overall population). That’s the point you are not getting. Everything we do to make these tests matter to students is a lie because those results do not impact their journey through high school or on to college.

Dan, checking with my administrators and having a fairly heated argument over it (during which I took your side, by the way), no one among all department chairs thought it a good idea, several called it unethical, and the administrators believe it’s actually illegal to make grade changes for the reasons you suggest. Grade changes after the year is over for something that was never considered a part of your classroom grade opens doors for lots of parent complaints and doesn’t seem wholly honest. Do you mention this on your green sheet? That might take care of my honesty concern. Do you have any students that take advantage of this generosity and bank on doing well on the CSTs, blowing off your homework and tests in the meantime?

Arguments that came up against the idea of letting CTS results impact grades: class grades are not a demonstration of student mastery of standards on a single test. They are a demonstration of student mastery of standards over time in your class. Grades are an indication of the type of student a person is during the 180 days of the school year, not the 3 days of STAR testing. Grades are not standards based. What of those students who catch wind and blow off your class yet somehow manage to score proficient? That D suddenly becomes a C or that F becomes a D? And to my idea of consistency I suggested last time, if you grade isn’t good enough compared to CST results (the student who scored proficient or advanced should get a better letter grade than the one you assigned), then your grades are also too good in some cases and the student’s grade should be appropriately lowered.

We are now thinking of gift certificates and iPod giveaways to encourage strong performance on the CST this year. I’ll be among a crew of teachers going from class to class explaining what the CSTs are and what the results mean, showing classes average scores, comparing our scores to other schools in our district, showing individual students where they scored and what that communicates to the world about their skills.

I don’t mind lying about the significance of these test results in order for students to try harder, but I want to call a spade a spade. It’s a lie because the results don’t mean anything to students unless they have an intrinsic reason to be broken up about doing poorly. If we can start using those test results to impact their lives, my students will be the first to know how they are being used and what they can do to be on the winning side of the bargain.

Not every student in that 25-50% population of ELLs is being redesignated any given year. Carve out the percentage that would really be impacted by the CST results in their redesignation process and you have a much smaller chunk. I’ll ask the ELL chair about using CST results at my school.

Admission to honors classes is by teacher recommendation and an entrance essay. In social science, AP courses are open enrollment; in English, it’s teacher recommendation; I’m not sure the process for science and math, but I believe it’s teacher recommendation and course history.

How are you seeing that breakdown of test results so quickly? Where is “there” that you are getting those results from? At my school, teachers do not have access to test data until just about September. The system that holds all that is called the Cruncher and we only have access to this year’s students in the Cruncher and we can only access the Cruncher from our classroom. We have no idea how instruction impacted last year’s kids unless those results are hunted down, which I’ve done for the last 2 or 3 years. This is the first year our administration handed out those results to all staff members, but I don’t think we got it until late September, early October. And even then, very little training for making sense out of the data (I know what it means, but lots of other teachers do not).

Kids classify for course offerings based on prerequisites; a few courses require teacher recommendation. My school offers lots of AP classes and that’s one of our selling points, the number of AP offerings we have. And out of all those AP classes, I’ve been told that we removed 1 student from an AP class who tanked on the CST. That’s the only way CST affects course placement and I believe that student was more of an example than a pattern. Out of 2500 students, 1 kid’s schedule was affected. Students in honors English classes are there because of teacher recommendation and an entrance essay, not CST results. We schedule those classes long before the test results come our way.

Does that bring anything to light? The CST data doesn’t impact our kids at all. So how does performance on the CST tell us much of anything when there’s no incentive to take the test, no punishment for failure and no reward for success?

And now I’m on board.

For the past 2 years, from the beginning of the year, I’ve been telling administrators that we need to start talking to the kids about STAR now; it’s never too early; let’s discuss the scores with parents at back-to-school-night; let’s mention that if we meet our API, we’ll revoke the no-hat policy, but let’s mention that now so students are thinking about it all year. It’s January and we’re just now getting started in pimping this test.

We’re looking into gift certificates and an iPod giveaway, but you’re right about the ROI on that one. Plus, I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep that up nor how long it will actually interest the kids. But if that’s all it takes to see a big leap in scores, what’s that say about test? The system that demanded we give these tests needs to come up with a way to hold the kids accountable for doing well (or you may choose to call that giving kids an incentive for strong performance; six of one, half a dozen of another). That message needs to be loud and clear.

In the meantime, however, school sites need to get creative and figure out ways to let students know that it’s an important test for us and get those carrots out in front of the students. But then that means these tests are more a measure of how well we motivate our kids, not how well we teach them standards. And you (heart) these tests? To me, these are just another flaw in a horribly flawed system. Yeah, the tests are here and we have to make the best of them, but let’s not gloss over the fact that these tests don’t quite test what they should. If motivation equals better performance, the tests don’t measure skill; they measure motivation.

The words you quoted from me represent exactly the way the world is as far as I can tell. At my school, the CSTs are used for nothing (apart from, perhaps, ELL redesignation). Without the school using the CSTs for something, they don’t matter to the students. Try assigning 10 pages of homework, but make sure your students know it won’t go down in the grade book and you won’t discuss it and their score on that assignment won’t be known until after you’ve filed the final grades for the school year. In fact, you won’t even look at the assignment until August and students can just drop it into a box you have waiting for them. What percentage of your students would even attempt the assignment, let alone spend the time needed to do a good job on it? If you collected that assignment later, do you really think it would give a good indication of how strong your teaching is and how skilled your students are? I don’t think it would. That’s the CSTs at my school.

What’s the assertion that we’re on different planets about? I don’t follow.

You’ve assessed my hypothetical perfectly. Yet you still believe that this coloring assignment can lead to reliable data about attainment of standards? You really think that all it takes is a teacher pep talk to get those kids to color seriously? Maybe that’s why we are so far off from each other on this. It takes more than words, to quote that thankfully long-lost 90s hair band.

I believe that if students don’t have any tangible reason to do well on something, they won’t (except a small handful). I see evidence of that every day. So do you. Look at your grade book and see the amount of effort put in to work that *does* have meaning. Or maybe 100% of your students faithfully attempt every single assignment. I envy you if that’s the case. Do you honestly think the amount of effort is going to increase if we take that meaning away, as is the case for the CSTs at my school?