Standardized Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

standardized tests the fastest way to terrify any child with five letters outside of just whispering the word it's currently testing season all over the country and with that comes the usual flood of anxiety and school produced videos designed to get kids in the mood what does the test say job number two pencils out your number two pencils out get your number two pencils out what the tests say you - number two pencils out get your number two pencils out the standardized tests look like amazing fun I wish I could take one right now bring me a pencil I'm number two please but it gets better because one Elementary School in Texas even held a test themed pep rally featuring a monkey mascot look let's all agree there is no scenario in which the words here comes the monkey can fail to pump you up just imagine what now all it was your surgeon and I said to you I'm about to put you under there's about a 20% chance of survival and I have four important words for you pointings those those videos and monkey mascots would have you think that testing is amazing which is why this spate of recent news stories has been so surprising in the lower Hudson Valley many districts reported that more than 25% of their students opted out more than 1,700 elementary middle and high school students opted out of taking the PARCC test those five kids houses they took the test yeah like almost the entire auditorium was filled with kids that didn't take it not a single junior showed up to take the Common Core smarter balanced test this week Wow the entire class boycotted the test the only other thing an entire class of juniors has ever managed to agree on is that The Scarlet Letter could be told much simpler with emojis we got it read lady finger finger devil baby we've all read the book is a good story that American students are sick of tests between benchmarks diagnostic spree and mock tests they take a lot of them students are taking between 10 and 20 standardized tests depending on the grade a total average of 113 different ones by graduation 113 is a lot of tests it's approaching the amount that you'd ask your doctor for the morning after you woke up from a one-night stand with Colin Farrell just just give me all of them twice and this amount of testing can take a toll teachers have reported kids throwing up kids crying especially the younger ones and it's the pressure that's true in fact this happens so much that official instructions for test administrators specify what to do if a student vomits on his or her test booklet and something is wrong with our system when we just assume a certain number of kids will vomit tests are supposed to be assessment of skills not a rap battle on 8 Mile Road Oh mmm why did your mom make you spaghetti she knew tonight was rapid battle nights so how did we get here what the explosion of testing can be traced back to the 90s when you probably remember stories like these about the state of public education when 40 Nations recently took the International math and science test American students scored near the bottom and that must have hurt especially because you knew the French children weren't even trying go on play with your silly numbers they tell you nothing of the true nature of the solar a week before you in response to statistics like that President George W Bush on just his third day in office announced his No Child Left Behind program it passed Congress with bipartisan support because of course it did voting against No Child Left Behind is like voting against no puppy left unsnag 'old what what monster would do that his name is patches and he needs love the program was designed to be data-driven and involved testing children every single year in order to identify and fix failing schools in the counter billi system must have a consequence otherwise it's not much of an accountability system it's hard to argue with any of that unfortunately accountability is one of those concepts that everybody's in favor of but nobody knows how to make work like synergy or maxi dresses no matter who wears them they look like a poncho to waterfall you look like the ghost of Gwyneth Paltrow future I only haunt Branch goo No Child Left Behind increase the number of federally mandated tests from 6 to 17 and the fixation on testing was something which our current president seemed to be against as he ran for office don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test we know that's not true Wow that man knew how to pander to teachers and yet you know what else they should be pool tables and the teachers lounge and every year you should be able to slap one parents vote for me I'm out of here what's this breakthrough took office he didn't get rid of tests instead he added his own education initiatives like race to the top which encourage states to adopt the common core which featured a logo of snails sixty-nining and again the intentions here were good because we do have underperforming schools and there are major economic and racial disparities in the quality of education children receive and anything that can help us narrow those gaps is obviously a good thing the problem has been the implementation for instance many states now tie teacher pay to performance using one particular approach it's called value-added analysis rating teachers based on student test scores for instance if a student who ranked in the 60th percentile test higher at the end of the year the teacher gets a better rating if the student Falls the teachers rating Falls okay well that explains why many teachers class and decorations that used to read believe in yourself now say don't come me on this and what well the idea of trying teacher pay to student improvement sounds great in theory here's how it can work in practice I have four students who's predicted scores were literally impossible one of my sixth-grade students had a predicted score of 286 point three four however the highest a sixth grade student can earn is 283 the student did earn a 283 incidentally despite the fact she earned a perfect score she counted negatively towards my evaluation because she was three points below her predicted score that is ridiculous the only way she could have hit her predicted score was if she answered everything right roped a few extra questions of her own got those right and then stapled them to the test that teacher lives in Florida which uses this formula to assess teachers a formula which looks like the kind of thing that aliens carve into an anti-semites cornfield and many of these formulas on which teachers careers depend were partly inspired by research and this is true that modeled the reproductive trends of livestock basically we judge the nuance of what happens in the complicated world of a child's mind the same way that we judge this look I don't know what we did wrong but your child is going to either pass algebra or birth a healthy calf I don't know flip a coin with the stakes this high the tests had better be good but there is ample reason to suspect that that is not the case just look at the Florida Comprehensive Assessment test or FCAT a Florida school board member was concerned and a little suspicious when he learned that only 39% of his state's tenth graders had performed at or above grade level in reading so we had an idea I asked the district at that point to give me the closest thing they could legally to the FCAT reading and math test and I took it that test labeled me as a poor reader and I have a couple of master's degrees and I've been reelected four times and I teach 39 graduate courses at six universities in this country okay okay okay we get it the test sucks anything else you want to brag about there I also know how to play mary had a little lamb on the recorder and guess who could do 16 non-consecutive push-ups King guy look he does have a point he does have a point if a test fails to reflect ability there are human consequences because one shy Florida eighth grader who had a near-perfect score in her advanced language arts class was asked to leave it last year due to her inexplicably low scores on the FCAT and last fall she told a school board meeting exactly how that felt every year I do good in school but I get locusts but I get low test scores on the up cap and it feels like it's much of the stomach this is unfair and I don't want to lose my opportunity to take my classes or get because what test that is just awful I take back everything I said about wanting to take a standardized test in fact you know what bring out the monkey with you what is wrong with you you made that little girl cry think about what you've done no no don't you don't you don't sit off you can't think about what you've done Oh shame on you this one you have to ask yourself if standardized tests are bad for teachers and bad for kids who exactly are they good for well it turns out they're operated by companies like all these and let's just focus on the largest one Pearson as of 2012 they had nearly 40% of the testing market almost triple their nearest competitor and if you've never heard of them then congratulations but just mention their name to any parent or teacher in a state they operate in and you see what happens because Pearson are the educational equivalent of Time Warner Cable either you've never had an interaction with them and don't care or they have ruined your life Pearson have a shocking amount of influence over America's schools so much so that at this point a hypothetical girl could take Pearson tests from kindergarten through at least eighth grade but a test by the way that she studied for using Pierce and curriculum and textbooks taught to her by teachers who were certified by their own Pearson test if at some point she was tested for a learning disability like ADHD that's also a Pearson test and if she eventually got sick of Pearson and dropped out well she'd have to take the GED which is now guess what also a Pearson test in fact the only test they have no hand in is the HPV test you might take in college I can only assume that they'll get on that as soon as they see this show Pearson has enjoyed spectacular growth and profits and yet their track record is littered with complaints concerning technical glitches slow grading and even the contents of their tests take take what happened in New York just a few years ago almost 30 different test questions have now been declared invalid because they're confusing or have outright errors they'd already pulled six questions from an English exam related to a bizarre passage about a talking pineapple talking pineapple well at the risk of sounding like a DreamWorks executive talking to a CGI animator tell me more about this talking pineapple students had to answer questions about the story which they say goes like this a pineapple challenges a hair to erase other animals figure the fruit has a trick up its sleeve but the hair wins and the animals eat the pineapple it ends with the moral pineapples don't have sleeves I was really confused because I expected a lot more from them that article about the pineapple in the hair was stupid and absurd yeah she's not wrong about that because we looked up that test section and we couldn't work out all the answers that pineapple item doesn't remotely work as a test question it barely works as a doors lyric but it's it's not just Pearson's questions that are a problem it's how they check the answers the company posted this ad to Craigslist it's to find people to grade the exams Craigslist they look for scorers on Craigslist Pearson chooses tests graders the same way that you'd look for a mattress full of bedbugs or a no-strings-attached hand job and to be clear here just to be clear this is not just a Pearson problem across the whole testing industry you can find former graders who will tell you horror stories we looked at an essay every two minutes a short answer every five seconds every ten seconds we don't understand your kids we don't understand anyone's kids that is not an acceptable answer from a person who may be responsible for the future of your child it's barely acceptable from the manufacturers of American Girl dolls we make dolls for a hundred bucks that kids can't play with in case they get them dirty we don't understand your kids we don't understand anyone's kids as another score points out sometimes great are given out not based on merit but on quota I was told when I was beginning a project that last year you know there were a certain amount of to a certain amount of three is a certain amount of force we expect that to be similar this year if that's not similar they will tell you we're scoring too many threes we're scoring too many fours they'll say you have to learn to see more papers as a three you have to learn to see more papers as a four that makes no sense if the content of what you're looking at has not changed that's not telling a baseball umpire hey we've got a problem with averages you need to see more home runs and strikeouts and more strikeouts as doubles do it now and I would love to show you more questions from these tests but unfortunately that's not only difficult it's often illegal because both states and companies have fought to keep test questions secret for having teachers and students signed statements like I will not use or discuss the content of secure test materials and while they'll say that this is to protect against cheating it does seem odd that even if you see something wrong on a test you can't tell anyone standardized tests basically enforce the rule that all subway riders instinctively obey if you see something keep it the to yourself we've all seen someone vomit in a purse before leave it focus ahead and leave it bury it look look we've had more than a decade of standardized testing now and maybe it's time to put the test to the test the original goal was to narrow the achievement gap and boost our scores relative to the rest of the world well a 2013 study found no support for the idea that no child left behind an hour at the achievement gap and our scores on the international tests have not only failed to rise they're slightly down and I do not want to hear what that French kid thinks of those results cause this time and all this money and your highs to the top has been how you say a meandering jog on a treadmill for a middle of what both presidents asked for when selling their reforms higher standards are the right goal accountability is the right goal an accountability system must have a consequence otherwise it's not much of an accountability system right so let's look at that because as far as I can see this is a system which has enriched multiple companies and that pays and fires teachers with a cattle birthing formula confuses children with talking pineapples and as the same kind of rules regarding transparency that Brad Pitt had for Fight Club so so for Pearson the other companies and all the lawmakers who have supported this system the true test is going to be either convincing everyone it works or accepting it doesn't work and fixing it because at the risk of sounding like a standardized test score your numbers are not good and if it seems unfair to have your fate riding on a complicated metric that fails to take institutional factors into account and might not even tell the whole story well you're not wrong about that but you do not get to complain about it and if all this pressure to increase your numbers is making you feel nauseous like you might vomit at any second and don't worry I've got four words for you that'll make you feel better here comes

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 14,247,331

Rating: 4.9027495 out of 5

Keywords: hbo, standardized testing, pearson, race to the top, no child left behind, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program)

Id: J6lyURyVz7k

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Wait.

Holy crap.

I could have opted out?

[u/Cackerot]

I love how he ripped into Pearson. Cost me thousands in textbooks.

[u/localafrican]

Man Pearson has been making money off of me from elementary school all the way through college.

[u/Kazundo_Goda]

Here in India,all curriculum is set by the Department Of Education and main exams are set by the department of education too.The idea of letting private companies do this is for profit is a massive betrayal to both the teachers and students.

[u/Nantook]

Watching that 8th grade girl break down was absolutely heart-breaking

[u/lrflew]

In case anybody else is curious, I found the pineapple story. It's worth reading.

[u/tencents123]

The Ontario Ministry of Education's standardized testing program has an infographic mocking the one of the United States

Source

[u/drax117]

The fucking cringe in the first 2 minutes with all those songs.....

Dear lord. I feel sorry for our children.

[u/Annies_Boobs_]

mirror that's working at the moment:

https://vid.me/YTOr