Bernie Madoff and school accountability

"Mindful of H.L. Mencken's observation that, 'for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong,' the new Obama administration should avoid making the mistake of previous administrations in equating accountability in education with high-stakes test scores."

So what can Bernie Madoff teach us about the folly of testing for accountability?  Four lessons:

1.  What's wrong is often "hidden in plain view."  Just as Madoff's guaranteed investment returns of 10% or more were too good to be true, evidence is emerging that "...high-stakes test design can't tell us what we need to know in order to drive education reform." 

Tests, in short, are largely "insensitive to instruction.

2. Secondly, from Madoff we learn that, in order to be taken in, or bamboozled,  "... our fears need to be played to."  That's the role of the test-based No Child Left Behind.

"The consequences of teaching "test taking," as opposed to substantive math or science, are likely to be profound in their long term implications, especially for children attending schools currently deemed underperforming."

3. In order "to forestall the day of reckoning", as Madoff did,  make sure that you're totally in charge of both establishing and interpreting standards of success. 

In school testing for accountability, a handful of testing companies are

"...essential both to ongoing test construction and to the interpretation of the results for nearly all of the high-stakes tests developed in the country."

4. Finally, in order to continue the fraud, it's necessary to surround oneself with "true believers."

If one truly believes in the potential of testing to really gauge how much students are learning, it's much more difficult to recognize, and then admit, that testing really isn't the answer.

"Professional reputations are on the line."

Class  adjourned.  Instead of testing the material covered, how about writing a short essay summarizing the lessons learned.                   

Comments

[Craig]

Would the essay you propose be graded? If so, is that not a test?

Shall we abolish the SAT, the PSAT, and the GRE?

[howard]

For over 30 years I have been making note of Elementary, middle and high sdhool test scores in PPS. I consider any school getting 75% or more of its students up to grade level to be doing a good job. Interestingly, the "good job" clusters stay the same year-to-year and the "bad job" clusters stay the same.

This seems to be most pronounced in large districts and le3ss pronounced in smaller districts; particularly the districts in which all students share an elementary, middle or high school.

[Terry]

Essays are indeed an assessment of what a student can do --an authentic, or performance, assessment. And unlike standardized multiple choice achievement tests, they're used by the teacher for feedback to the student and for formulation of strategies for more effective instruction.

High stakes tests threaten the viability --the very existence-- of public schools. Essays don't.

The tests you mention are not high stakes tests. Many colleges no longer require them for admission to their schools. The more enlightened of them ask for portfolios of a student's actual work.

Like essays they've written.

[Craig]

You taught English, where the essay, can and probably should be used in the way you describe. But what about math or lab science? How would you propose to assess student performance in those subjects?