Whom do you trust?
So much in life comes down to that simple question.
When two groups disagree, which one do you believe?
If it’s a matter of fact, you can look at the raw information yourself and come to your own conclusions. But often the matter under discussion is so complicated and the field so rarefied that you can’t hope to make a rational decision alone.
So we appeal to the experts.
In education, the experts are basically classroom teachers and standardized testing companies.
Sure there are students who experience all of their own educations. But that experience is by definition subjective and applies only to them. Something similar can be said of parents who experience the process second hand through their children. They can make decisions about the individuals in question but don’t have enough information to fully generalize about the entire system.
Those with the most exposure to the most diverse educational experiences are teachers and testing companies.
On the one side you have teachers who instruct students for at least 180 days a year, giving formal and informal assessments throughout to provide a classroom grade. On the other you have the testing companies that give students a single assessment over a period of hours or days.
And often they come to different conclusions.
Many times children get high classroom grades but low scores on the standardized test.
So let us ask the question that the media never does: which should we believe?
News sources almost always act as if there was no question in the first place. They invariably go with the test as if it were a pure matter of fact. But it isn’t. There are economic reasons for this sleight of hand – not academic ones. After all, the huge media conglomerate that ultimately pays the journalist’s salary often owns the standardized testing company or the publishing house or technology company that provides remediation for that particular assessment.
It’s also more interesting to write about failing test scores than kids doing well in school. An alarmist narrative certainly sells more papers. Would there even be a story if a reporter wrote “Majority of Kids Pass Courses and Graduate Again This Year”?
So we’re bombarded with doomsayer stories about failing schools, failing teachers and failing students.
Education Week ran a story last week titled “U.S. Parents Think Reading Instruction Is Going OK—Until They See National Test Results.”
And another called “Students’ Grades May Not Signal Actual Achievement, Study Cautions.”
It’s too bad the article never explains why we should take standardized test scores over classroom grades.
The first story even centers on a misreading of test scores.
The test in question is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) . Sometimes called the Nations Report Card, the assessment is given to a random sampling of elementary, middle and high school students in participating countries to compare the education systems of nations.
According to the latest NAEP results, about 2/3 of US students read below “proficient.” And when parents are told this, a new survey finds they lower their opinions of students’ reading abilities.
However, what the article fails to mention is that “proficient” on the NAEP is a misleading benchmark and always has been.
On the NAEP, “proficiency” does not mean students can read at grade level. Being able to do that would actually earn them a “basic” score.
If you read the NAEP’s own Website about how to interpret the scores, you’d see that:
“The NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade-level proficiency, but rather competency over challenging subject matter. NAEP achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution.”
So why are journalists continually spreading false claims about the tests that the test makers, themselves, dispute? And why have they been doing so for decades?
Part of the problem is the NAEP has not revised a purposefully misleading grading scale since it was first given in 1969. As much as representatives will dispute the interpretation of scores if pressed, they could do something about it if they cared to do so. They could even put out press releases about how the organizations’ scores are being misread. But that never happens. They remain quiet unless you ask them specifically about the scores and – surprise – education journalists are not very curious about this issue. It would ruin their stories!
Only about 1/3 of US students were below NAEP’s Basic score. In other words 2/3 of US students read at or above grade level – the exact opposite of what journalists are reporting based on their interpretation of the results! However, even the meaning behind that is debatable because each state has a different definition of reading at grade level. A more accurate metric might be reading at age level, but NAEP scores don’t really correlate with it. Good luck getting anyone interested in reading about that.
Then we have the article about student grades not showing actual learning achievement.
The story is about schools in Washington state where students earned increasingly higher classroom grades but lower end-of-the-year standardized tests scores.
Why did the education journalists decide the standardized test scores were accurate and the classroom grades were not?
Good question, but you won’t find the answer in the story. This is taken as an article of faith.
Obviously the standardized tests scores are better. They were given by a corporation. Classroom grades were given by teachers.
This just goes to show the media’s glaring bias against educators and in favor of big business.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary of public school teachers in Pennsylvania (my home state) is between $53,000 and $59,000 per year.
Meanwhile, more than $1.7 billion is spent on standardized testing in the US each year, according to a study by the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings. Another $669 million is spent on elementary assessments. Between $34-65 per student per year is spent by the states on standardized testing.
To put that in perspective, perhaps the biggest standardized testing corporation, Pearson, reported revenues of $5.511 billion and profits of $762 million in 2018. That doesn’t include $89 million in additional profit for Pearson from its ownership stake in Penguin Random House Publishers, a major world school textbook publishing company.
Pearson’s main competitor, Educational Testing Services (ETS), reported revenues of $2.1 billion for the same time period. And the College Board, maker of the SAT test, reported another $1.068 billion in revenue in 2017.
Standardized testing companies want people to believe there is a crisis in our public schools and that children are not learning well unless they are held accountable by the same standardized tests these companies make and manufacture. These companies make the tests, grade the tests and then sell school remediation materials when kids don’t pass.
There are certainly real problems with our educational system.
For instance, the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world – if not probably the ONLY country – that funds schools based largely on local taxes. Other developed nations either equalize funding or provide extra money for kids in need. In the Netherlands, for example, national funding is provided to all schools based on the number of pupils enrolled. But for every guilder allocated to a middle-class Dutch child, 1.25 guilders are allocated for a lower-class child and 1.9 guilders for a minority child – exactly the opposite of the situation in the U.S.
If we want to compare the US to other countries, this is a perfect place to start.
But a focus on test scores obscures the differences.
Virtually all of the top scoring countries taking the NAEP exam have much less child poverty than the U.S. If they had the same percentage of poor students that we do, their scores would be lower than ours. Likewise, if we had the same percentage of poor students that they do, our scores would go through the roof! We would have the best scores in the world!
NAEP scores just mirror back to us our child poverty rate – that more than 1/3 of our students live below the poverty line and more than half of public school students qualify for free or reduced lunches.
But this myopic focus on standardized tests also blinds us to the ways our system is superior to that of many other countries.
We do something that many international systems do not. We educate everyone! Foreign systems often weed children out by high school. They don’t let every child get 13 years of grade school (counting kindergarten). They only school their highest achievers.
So when we compare ourselves to these countries, we’re comparing ALL of our students to only SOME of theirs – their best academic pupils, to be exact. Yet we still hold our own given these handicaps!
This suggests that the majority of problems with our public schools are monetary. Pure and simple.
A 2018 review by Northwestern University found that in 12 out of 13 studies increased spending had a positive effect on student outcomes. And that result has been verified by studies since then in California, Texas, Wisconsin and other states.
Money makes a difference.
Money spent on students – not more testing.
The bottom line is that standardized tests are not accurate assessments of student learning. They are corporate propaganda.
Standardized tests lie, and the corporate friendly education media feed us those same lies as if they were fact.
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gadflyonthewallblog 
A prime rule says not to trust the greedy.
Most if not all corporations are built on greed, the failed trickledown theory.
Individual wealth, corporate wealth buys power. And “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton
WHO IS LORD ACTON?
“Described as “the magistrate of history,” Lord Acton was one of the great personalities of the nineteenth century and is universally considered to be one of the most learned Englishmen of his time. He made the history of liberty his life’s work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty.”
Then there’s what the Bible says about power and greed.
Jesus warned in Luke 12:15, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Timothy 6:10 ESV
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
The Quran doesn’t disagree:
“Muslims are taught that their wealth does not follow them in the afterlife. Muslims are warned in the Quran not to hoard their wealth and to be aware of greed.”
Buddhism:
“Our greed is a burning desire, an unquenchable thirst (tanha), craving, and lust; we want the objects of our desire to provide us with lasting satisfaction so we feel fulfilled, whole, and complete. The poison of greed creates an inner hunger so that we always seem to be striving towards an unattainable goal.”
Hinduism:
“We harm ourselves with our greed. Therefore, Ṛṣi Parāśara says in the Mahābhārata: Sage Parāśara said – “The wise man should not abandon the rules of Dharma to earn wealth by questionable means because wealth obtained in this manner is not said to lead to one’s welfare.”
Confucius said, “Good People are generous without being wasteful; they are hardworking without being resentful; they desire without being greedy; they are at ease without being haughty; they are dignified without being fierce.”
“another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.” Jefferson understood that for a republic such as the Unites States to work, everyone must share in its rights, responsibilities, and benefits. He believed “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth” was a threat to the American experiment in representative government. -Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“A new study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Climate found the wealthiest 10% of Americans are responsible for almost half of planet-heating pollution in the US, and called on governments to shift away from “regressive” taxes on the carbon-intensity of what people buy and focus on taxing climate-polluting…”
“According to an October 2001 report in the industry newsletter Educational Marketer, Harcourt, CTB McGraw-Hill, and Riverside Publishing write 96 percent of the exams administered at the state level. NCS Pearson, meanwhile, is the leading scorer of standardized tests.”
As President and Chief Executive Officer at HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT CO, John J. Lynch Jr. made $3,390,052 in total compensation..
Pearson Faces Fresh Investor Pushback on CEO’s $11 Million Pay
How much does the average middle class family earn annually?
Middle class:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income in 2021 was $70,784. So American families earning between $47,189 and $141,568 are technically in the middle class, according to the Pew Research Center’s definition. However, other factors must be considered.
Poor:
What is the U.S. poverty threshold? The U.S. Census Bureau annually updates its list of poverty levels. Preliminary estimates show that the average poverty threshold for a family of four people was 26,500 U.S. dollars in 2021, which is around 100 U.S. dollars less than the previous year.
Test scores don’t stack up to GPAs in predicting college success
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/test-scores-dont-stack-gpas-predicting-college-success
It’s GPAs Not Standardized Tests That Predict College Success
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2020/01/29/its-gpas-not-standardized-tests-that-predict-college-success/?sh=2cf95d8732bd
Research Finds that High School GPAs Are Stronger Predictors of College Graduation than ACT Scores
https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/Research-Finds-that-High-School-GPAs-Are-Stronger-Predictors-of-College-Graduation-than-ACT-Scores
Corporate and/or CEO greed vs what works, GPA.
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I love your responses, Lloyd. They’re almost blogs in themselves. It’s nice to have all the extra evidence supporting the same theme. Thanks as always for reading and commenting.
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Thank you. I also have blogs through WordPress. Still when WordPress switched to the block editor and made it really expensive to keep using the classic editor, that I learned how to use and used for about a decade, my blogging almost stopped. I do not find the Block Editor easy to use and stress free.
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I agree. It is a bit of a pain in the butt.
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That “pain in the butt” is why I’m setting up a new landing page and blog through Google’s Blogger platform, that will link to my exiting blogs still on WordPress that are still getting several hundred views a month for the thousands of posts that were there before the Block Editor. That Block Editor also doesn’t make it easy to repost from someone else’s WordPress blog, and the confusion is getting worse. While struggling to learn how to use the Block Editor and failing, Happiness Engineers told me that others were also finding the Block Editor frustrating because it’s changing all the time and making their jobs difficult too. Most of the time the Happiness Engineers would tell me what to do to make it work, but the changes to the Block Editor were happening faster than they could learn them so they were a few steps behind. Nothing they told me to do worked.
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Thank you for this blog. It’s like the average American (and the average journalist) missed the critical-thinking lessons in high school. Oh wait — that wasn’t on the test!
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It doesn’t matter if the average journalist (reporter) has critical-thinking skills. The final decisions on what ends up in print is made by editors, who want to keep their jobs, and the CEOs, with the power of dictators, tells the editors what they want the bias to be.
Everything a reporter writes has to go through an editor before the public sees it. Even the editors may have good critical-thinking skills, but fear of poverty overrules that thinking when they know being totally honest with the public might get them fired.
Most corporations are dictatorships.
And do you know about the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird? Sometimes even the CEOs don’t have the final say.
https://schoolhistory.co.uk/modern/operation-mockingbird/
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I’m not surprised. Even today, European news about the US reveals facts never mentioned here.
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You are very welcome. I was going to write something very similar to Lloyd, but he beat me to it. I was a reporter before becoming a teacher. That’s pretty much what it can be like. Advertising and the editor can make a big difference to what they allow you to publish.
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Ha, I forgot about the power of corporate advertising in the final decisions to report the news. The media doesn’t want to anger the hand that feeds them. Look at what’s happening to “X” (formerly Twitter). Musk is angering advertisers with his racism and insanity, and they are jumping ship. Still, I don’t think Mad Musk cares. He has enough wealth, and the power that buys, to do whatever he wants with “X” and keep it floating.
Jeff Bezos is doing something similar, without the insanity, with his pet newspaper, The Washington Post.
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The SAT’s own appendices confess their scores are only 58% accurate at predicting students whethet can pass their freshman year with a B. That’s little better than a coin toss. These tests say nothing about whether students will graduate or otherwise succeed. Question: if college admissions offices rely on the SAT, which is only 58% predictive, does that mean 42% of otherwise qualified applicants are turned away unfairly?
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[…] Credit goes to the respective owner! […]
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Correction: Test scores indicate the percentage of students who earn an arbitrary cut score that may or may not correlate with grade-level reading comprehension. Scores are consistently skewed downward by three notable sub-groups who tend to struggle with test taking for obvious reasons: Learning disabled, English language learners, and economically disadvantaged.
In the case of NEAP testing, when 2/3 of students score at or above, “basic”, it means that 2/3 of students scored reasonably well on a “no-stakes” reading test that fails the, “Does this count?” threshold required for reasonable effort. In my experience, students have little trouble understanding what they read given developmentally appropriate text and sufficient relevant background knowledge in their long-term memories.
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[…] NCAA requires a minimum grade point average, standardized test scores, and successful completion of core courses in order for athletes to participate in college […]
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