Assessing proficiency in private schools

[Anonymous]

Well, maybe you'll succeed in lobbying local government (or the feds) to require publication of such information for private schools.

[Anonymous]

Of course some private schools may prefer not to conceptualize their relationships with parents of students primarily along a business-consumer model. And, to the extent that they conceive of themselves as selling something, it wouldn't be ERB scores.

And, abstractly, there's lots of true but unhelpful information that's more likely to mislead than protect consumers -- the immediate example that comes to mind is "Contains no cholesterol" on foods that are high in fat and that increase cholesterol production.

Who gets to make the call re which information is helpful vs. misleading is a different question, of course. But the categorical statement that more information is always better and helps protect consumers strikes me (a political/social scientist rather than an economist) as empirically untrue.

Amazing how one can be mislead with SAT, ACT, SSAT and ERB scores released by schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, maybe you'll succeed in lobbying local government (or the feds) to require publication of such information for private schools.

That's not my point and you know it. We're talking voluntary disclosure.

I'm trying to understand the fear over releasing this data. So far we have "rumors and a visit were good enough for me when we applied to the big 3" combined with an apparently inchoate fear that "teaching to the test" will take over even the most successful schools. The first is useless outside the big-3 or 5, and the second seems pretty overblown unless she's able to explain it.

FEIW, one of my kids is in the Takoma math magnet, a successful school by anybody's standards. There is absolutely NO teaching to the test, just a week of taking the test in the spring. Lots of non-math, non-English electives in the curriculum despite the MSA. I presume the same "cruise through the test would apply to the top privates. And for the poorly-performing privates, nobody has explained yet why they shouldn't be exposed.

[Anonymous]

Please tell me what makes private independent primary schools in the D.C. area unique and so sensitive about releasing test scores compared to secondary schools, colleges and universities in the area and throughout the land? What is so special about the DNA of administrators (and others) in these primary schools compared to secondary schools, colleges and universities? The pediatric mindset that fastidiously exposes their students to this annual ritual yet cowers and hides these scores from the paying public consumers of education seems a farce. What's the fear? Who will put a gun to your head and force your teachers to teach to the test .... the pre-K to 8 pupils...your teachers...the public...the State...the government? Are you not already teaching to the test? Can you explain to us why your students and children spend billions of dollars annually being tutored and prepped to these abhorent standardized tests in the first place? For folk who abhor these tests you certainly don't protest but dutifully sit for them, brag about your results on DCUM and open up your wallets for your children to prepp for these abhorent tests in school, after school, on weekends and summer vacation. In fact, I understand many children sit for these abhorent standardized tests multiple times, in season, out of season, and before any school even requires it. Why do the very schools that abhor these tests, go on to administer these standardized tests to their students, and to take it a step further, turn around and require it for admission to their very schools. And those that object to standardized tests and the release of school scores as one metric of school teaching performance for the paying public education consumer, turn around in the same breath and brag about their lofty 99 percentile scores and those of their children a generation later.

Like our students, it seems everyone is afraid of math, numbers and their inability to understand and apply it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
1. Could you explain why you fear a revolution in "teaching to the test" (without using loaded words like "test-crazed parents like you" as you have done, but instead using actual descriptors of the changes you think this will bring to school culture, and why)

This has been answered numerous times and in a variety of different ways throughout this thread. I don't know why you feel it's unanswered but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and try one more/last time to spell it out even more concretely and in even more detail. Apologies to others for the repetition -- I've tried to highlight major points for easy reading:

1. Standardized tests are a problematic way of capturing educational outcomes:

a. they typically cover only a few subjects (math/reading)
b. they evaluate learning in those subjects by focussing on fact/skill acquisition rather than higher-level analysis, problem-solving, creativity and/or communications skills.
c. grade-level proficiency tests (which are what you're asking for) don't give you a real sense of what level a class is functioning at -- relying on them is like assuming that you could deduce/rank drivers' abilities based on a pass-fail written driving test.
d. such scores are highly-correlated to socio-economic status and generally tell you more about who a school is teaching than what or how well a school is teaching.
e. unless you want to do tons of this testing (lots of days, lots of questions), there's a real tyranny of small differences. The lines drawn are arbitrary and based on very limited information. Aggregation may compensate for this to some extent, but not when you're talking about small and relatively homogeneous cohorts.

2. Yet, for a variety of cultural reasons, people cling to them as the most important or objective indicator of school performance. (See this thread, see NCLB and its carrotier successor RttT)

3. In systems where test results have economic consequences, a series of undesirable practices have emerged:

1. Teaching to the test, often in a drill and kill format. So, great, now instruction suffers from the same shortcomings as the test themselves do -- and it gets more boring/less engaging. The subjects/skills that are measured and that people make judgments based upon become the things that get emphasized and valorized. Concrete private school outcome: Saxon Math replaces Everyday Math. Or foreign language or science gets less time so English and Math get more.
2. Emphasis on demographics to create a student body that performs well on standardized tests. How/will this affect admissions decisions for promising kids with learning disabilities or whose parents aren't college-educated or who think outside the box or just plain suck at standardized tests? Do we counsel out kids who bring down our average even if they are obviously contributing to/benefiting from the school?
3. The mediocritization that occurs when proficiency is treated as if it were excellence and people start demanding ever higher scores long beyond the point at which there's any educational payoff. Look at DCPS and how the highest-performing schools are now failing to make AYP because, realistically, there's nowhere up left to go. At the point at which your entire student body is proficient and most are advanced based on these measures, it's time to focus on other things. But if private school X has 93.7% "advanced" and private school Y as 90.3% advanced and "educated consumers" are choosing X over Y for this reason and that makes parents at Y nervous (especially the parents whose kids entered in the year Y outperformed X by 1.4%), does the school get pressured to spend more time on test prep? For a parallel example, look at how competition among privates based on #of APs offered drives out more innovative and challenging course than freshman level college survey courses.
4. Cheating in various forms -- "erase to the top," test-shopping, encouraged absences, etc. Not something I'm worried about at my DC's school, but the list wouldn't be compete without it.
5. Driving great teachers out. Teaching isn't high-status and it isn't lucrative. What it is, when you do it right, is challenging and fun and creative and intellectually rewarding. Take that stuff away and people will leave. In fact, one of the reasons that some local privates get such good teachers is that they can and do provide the space and support that enables good teachers to do their jobs well and be appreciated for that. If privates start functioning more like publics on this issue, then they lose their comparative advantage. Once job satisfaction (or lack thereof) is comparable, things like higher salaries, job security, better retirement packages, and shorter commutes start to matter much more when you decide where to work.

2. Why exactly do you oppose having really bad test scores from apparently failing schools made public, so families can know?

I don't. I'm fine with an accreditation process through which governments ensure/require a minimum standard of performance from private schools and publicizes the records of schools that fail or are at risk of failing to meet that standard.

[Anonymous]

I don't see any fear of math on this board. Nor do I see claims that private school teachers/administrators are superior to public.

We're saying that the politics of standardized testing is fucking up public schools and we don't want to see it do the same to private schools.

Brief and constructive enough for you?

[Anonymous]

Why do you and the schools spend millions of dollars a year administering, prepping and tutoring to those standardized tests for your students and children? I not referring to public schools but private schools.

[Anonymous]

I don't see any fear of math on this board. Nor do I see claims that private school teachers/administrators are superior to public.

We're saying that the politics of standardized testing is fucking up public schools and we don't want to see it do the same to private schools.

Brief and constructive enough for you?

Then why do private institutions use and relay on them spawning a huge industry? Big 3, Little 3, Ivy League. These are not public schools. Why don't they set the example rather than haughty, hypocritical, hysterics.

[Anonymous]

I have not read all of the post so this may have been mentioned but private schools do prep for standardized tests. You may have heard your child mention working in a workbook called scoring high or something similar to that. That is test prep. Also the schools do not include the scores of children with learning differences in the profile. The test companies allow them to exculde a certain number of students. In recent years children in some privates have been taken on vacation during the test week to avoid the low scores and because their parents do not like their children to be tested. I prefer they don't release the results when the results have manipulated. You have to be your child's number one teacher and make sure they learn the skills they should at each grade level whether in public or private school.

[Anonymous]

Re test prep. Depends on the private. We deliberately chose one that doesn't spend time on it.

[Anonymous]

1) Kids are not tutored for ERB's.

2) If a private school is failing in its educational mission, the private school community and potential applicants will know pretty quickly. Current students from K-8 will have trouble getting into HS or parents will talk about how their kids are having lots of trouble because with the academics at their new school.

3) As far as k-12, 3-12 or 9-12 private schools, college acceptance and how kids are prepared for college will be the factor in a school having passed or failed in its educational mission. Yes some legacies will get in despite poor grades and continue on that path however, the biggest indicator of how a school did is how well the kids handle college. In our case, we hear how well prepared the kids are for college.


4) Private Schools are not special, they are private and hence can do what they want. There is an accreditation process and many schools follow the NAIS guidelines for curriculum. Many also conduct reviews of curriculum and process, many times with consultants to update curriculums and change how things are implemented.

The anger as to what privates are hiding and why won't they change is baffling. If you don't like how the private school is handling an issue, any issue don't apply. If you are at a school and you don't like how things are going, don't resign a contract. Find another school.

[Anonymous]

Two schools- never once prepped for ERB's. (that is in 9 years of school so far)

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your remarks. Some folk here prefer to think teaching and prepping to the standardized test is a public school phenomenon. Yet there a few private schools or students that attend private schools that are not a significant contributors to this mega dollar industry in America.

When the Big 3, Little 3 and the Ivy League have the intellectual and moral guts to do away (in substance) with standardized tests and not follow in sheepish lock step with public school culprits (as some posters intimate) then some of this hypocrisy will fade. For now, private schools, their students and families are one of the most significant consummers in the standardized testing marketplace.

[Anonymous]

Two schools- never once prepped for ERB's. (that is in 9 years of school so far)

Nice intermediate term follow-up. Have you ever prepped for any standardized test? Do you plan in future to prep for a standardized test?

[Anonymous]

I am baffled as to why this thread continues on and on and on. The posters explaining why they oppose publicly releasing ERB scores have provided very detailed explanations as to why they feel that way. The posters that don't agree have more than made themselves heard. We need SAM2 to create a quick poll so we can vote and move on. All five of us.