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Another
Brick in the Wall: High Stakes Testing in Teacher Education - The California
Teacher Performance Assessment By Perry M. Marker
A paper presented
at American Educational Studies Association 2002 Annual Meeting Omni William Penn
Hotel Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania October 30-November
3, 2002 We don’t need no education We don’t need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teacher leave the kids alone Hey teacher leave us kids alone All in all it’s just another brick
in the wall All in a all you’re just another
brick in the wall Roger
Waters, 1979
“ In speech after speech, it is
our corporate CEO’s who state that an educated, literate work force is the
key to American competitiveness. They pontificate on the importance of education.
They point out their magnanimous corporate contributions to education in
one breath, and then they pull the tax base out from under the local schools
in the next. Business criticizes the job our local schools are doing and
then proceed to nail down every tax break they can get, further eroding the
school’s ability to do the job” (in Bracy, 2002) Former Senator Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio Roger Waters wrote these words for
70’s rock icons Pink Floyd before it became fashionable in to place the
blame for education’s “failures” on the shoulders of our teachers. In today’s
world, blaming teachers for the education’s perceived
“failures” is part of the conservative culture of criticism that has made
teachers the culprit in every imaginable aspect of education decline. We blame P -12 teachers
and university professors for the “failure” of the schools. We blame them
on a lot of levels. We blame their professional teacher education; we blame
what they teach; we blame how they teach. The simplistic, and punitive reform
efforts that have resulted in the
creation standards and the development of high stakes testing reflect the fact that, for over twenty years, teachers
in public schools and institutions of higher education have been blamed
for all that is wrong with education. This paper will briefly explore
the context for standards in public schools and universities in California, and the relationship between standards and the latest
volley in the quest for standardization of the curriculum - now aimed at
teacher education - the California “Teacher Performance
Assessment.” The Initiative Process:
a non-deliberative democracy
In 1975,
the passage of Proposition 13 (Jarvis-Gann) is a germane way of dividing
the post World War II California,
between that postwar exhilaration --
with its huge investment in the public infrastructure era and its strong
commitment to the development of quality education systems and other services
-- and a generation of declining confidence and shrinking public services
(Schrag, pp. 10-11). The squeeze on public services that Proposition 13 brought about came at the time California was experiencing
significant demographic change -- moving from a society that thought of
itself (albeit incorrectly) mostly as white, middle class, to one in which
whites became another minority. Latinos, Asians, and
African Americans now constitute a sizable majority of school enrollment
and the use of public services. The revolt
against government taxation that Proposition 13 set in motion in California
resulted in the increased use of the initiative process. Initiatives-- once
a bastion of “the people” and their power to influence public policy --
are now most often used by well organized political and economic entities
on the left and the right, and by incumbent politicians from the government
on down. It is those interest groups, backed by media consultants, direct
mail specialists, pollsters and others, that usually finance the costly signature
drives that costs millions of dollars to get measures on the ballot. And, it is the advertising campaigns that drive
the support for the initiative, or effectively block, through the influx
of millions of advertising dollars, the measures of
its opponents (Schrag, 1998, p. 11). It is interesting to note that the
further the initiative process proceeds, the more problematic effective
citizenship becomes. Each initiative moves control
further from the public and the legislature, and
closer to the special interests. This non-deliberative democracy, as found
in the California style initiative process, has no
public hearings, no rules of procedure, no formal debates, and no informed
voice. Non-deliberative democracy fails to present downside arguments, to
outline implications, to control the cost, and to speak for minorities. On the national scene, some twenty four states have some
form of initiative or referendum in their constitutions. And, there is increasing
pressure to use it as an agent of political reform. Non-deliberative democracy,
based on the initiative process, is undermining the people’s faith in our democratic processes. During
the period of time since Proposition 13, initiatives have been passed that
imposed specific spending formulas on schools, abolished affirmative action
in public education, denied public schooling and public services to illegal
immigrants, and eliminated bilingual education. California’s schools, which
thirty years ago, had been among the best funded on the planet, are now
in the bottom quartile among states in virtually every major indicator of
educational progress and success.. California has an average class size
of over 32, and in many cases, there are over 40 students
in classrooms designed for 25. A vast
majority of California’s educational facilities are
at least 30 years old, and many are over 40 years of age, and are in various
and dangerous states of disrepair. In California,
we have chosen to spend less on education and more on prisons. California is currently 41st out of 50 states in per capita
educational spending. The fact is, that during the past twenty-five years,
the best educational system in the world has been fundamentally and systematically
dismantled. Lost
in this plethora of initiatives, budget cuts and decline of funding, is the fact that despite what politicians and the popular
press would like us to believe, during the last decade standardized scores
have been holding relatively steady, with modest
increases in both math and reading scores (Berliner and Biddle, 1998). In an international comparison United States nine year
olds were second only to Finland’s nine year olds, and United States’ fourteen
year olds finished ninth, well above average, and a few points from the
top (Bracy, 1992). This despite the fact that more students are taking the
tests than ever before whose first language is not English. Berliner and Biddle conclude that there is no support
for the myth that American students fail in reading achievement, or any other subject. Simply put, schools
are in better shape than we are led to believe and teachers have done incredible
work despite that fact that the educational system in California has been
crumbling around them. Standards and High Stakes Testing: no rich kids left behind As teachers have become convenient
scapegoats for all that is wrong with education, “education reform” has
turned its attention to students and punished them
by the introduction of plethora of standards and
high stakes testing proposals. These standards and
high stakes tests have used concepts such as ‘world class,’ ‘accountability,’ ‘competitive,’
and ‘standards” that are taken directly from the corporate world. Kohn (2002) makes
the argument that “anyone whose goal was to serve-up our schools to the
market-place could hardly find a shrewder strategy than to hold schools
‘accountable’ through wave after wave of standardized tests” (p. 117). All too
often, these proposals result in a racist, one-size-fits-all
approach to education that is designed to present a singular and simplistic
view of knowledge, truth, and learning that ignores the diverse needs of
our children of color and those who live in poverty. These
so called “reform” efforts are intended to blame teachers
and punish students for the problems of education by mandating a focus on
drill and practice, and “teaching to the test,” instead of fostering students’
critical thinking skills. As a result of these efforts to blame teachers
and punish students, we are relinquishing control
of the classroom and curriculum solely to those who construct the tests. Martha Rapp Ruddell (2001) quotes
Elliot Eisner who reminds us that standards in education are not new; “they
are in fact a ‘recapitulation’ of behavioral objectives that so preoccupied
us in the 1960’s, and actually grew from the ‘efficiency’ movement in education
of 1913-1930 that was based on an industrial model of high productivity.” Ruddell goes on to further quote Eisner: “Uniformity in curriculum content
is a virtue if one’s aim is to be able to compare students in one
part of the country with students in others. Uniformity is a virtue when
the aspiration is to compare the performance of American
students with students in Korea, Japan, and Germany. But why should we wish
to make such comparisons?” (p.11) Susan
Ohanian (in Ruddell, 2001) notes that framers of
standards regularly ignore the developmental reality of adolescence. She
says: “Now you and I know that anyone
who says high schoolers should read Moby Dick 1) doesn’t know any
fifteen year olds; 2) has never read Moby Dick or 3) has read Moby
Dick , has a fifteen year old in the house, and wants to get even” (p. 12)
Perhaps
the most astounding thing about standards and high stakes tests is the there
is no research evidence whatsoever
that their use enhances student achievement and learning (Black
and Wilam, 1998). Still, tests have become so all
consuming that more than 20 million schools days were devoted to them in
one year. The case for high stakes testing and standards is based on simplistic
solutions designed to raise the self esteem of politicians, businesspersons,
and policy makers. High stakes tests, coupled with standards, sustains and maintains a classist and corporate system
of education where a small and select number of schools receive an embarrassment
of riches. Our fixation
on standards and high stakes testing was demonstrated when, the day after
the tragic killings in Littleton, Colorado, high schools continued their
scheduled standardized tests rather than postpone them and discuss the incomprehensible
events that shocked students and adults throughout
the country and world. One is left to wonder how high the scores were on
that day of testing? Will teachers be blamed, yet
again, for these “low” scores? Things are bound to only get worse
with standards and high stakes testing. Schools will lose funding or may
even be closed if their test scores don’t improve. The
test scores of schools will be compared with others regarding how well they
do on the tests. Teachers in “low performing” schools may be subjected to
disciplinary pressures, and even firing, if their
students don’t score well on one test. And, “low performing” schools may be taken over by the state and/or assigned to for-profit
corporate entities. Standards and high stakes testing
determine the form of most teaching, since for any
given exam, there is a best way to prepare for it. Repetition, forced memorization,
rote learning and frequent quizzes leave precious little time for more creative
approaches where students convey, exchange and question facts and ideas.
Course content is determined by the exam, leaving
little time for any materials not on the exam, such
as student reactions, reflection on main issues of the day, alternative points
of view, or anything else that is likely to promote creative, cooperative
or critical thinking . High stakes tests have proven to
be very reliable predictors of factors related to
socio-economic class, and poverty. Standardized testing
is a strong indicator of where the wealthiest schools are,
and where children of poverty go to school.
Students of color, second language learners, and children
in poverty consistently score lower on all standardized tests. High stakes
tests are strong indicators that children of poverty get an education that
does not compare to that received by wealthier, white students. What these tests seemingly predict and ensure - with their
enormously high price tags - is that no rich kids
will be left behind. The National Commission on Testing
and Public Policy (1990) says that as early as 1990
standardized testing in America consumed more than $900 million in one year.
A decade later, the price tag is much, much higher. Alfie Kohn (2002) argues that standardized
testing promotes the presence of corporations, and a corporate ethos, in
public schools. Kohn states that testing promotes
a corporate mentality that does testing four things very effectively: 1)
testing brings in hundreds of millions of dollars
to the handful of corporations that produce the tests; 2)
testing serves as a sorter and screener
of students for the convenience of industry; 3) testing fosters a corporate
ideology where assessment is used to compare and evaluate people in uniform
ways; 4) testing is used to shock the public into a need to “improve” education
through vouchers, and for-profit schools (p.116). Corporate
influence and the quest for profits that is encouraged and supported by testing What testing reveals - more than
any other factor - is the absolute certainty is that
testing does not serve the needs of all students in a democratic
society, and the democratic goal to help all students become
enthusiastic learners. A Nation at Risk? One can pinpoint
in time when the clarion call for accountability began.
In 1983, the Regan administration, amid
much fanfare, released the incendiary report on the state of American education
entitled A Nation At Risk , prepared by a prestigious
committee under the direction of then Secretary of Education Terrell Bell.
A Nation At Risk made sweeping claims attacking the
conduct and achievement of America’s public schools and documented these
claims by “evidence.” The “evidence” provided in A Nation At Risk made the case that the failures of the public schools
were damaging the nation, and if not addressed, stood to weaken our democratic
future. Though some of the claims had validity and were made to genuinely
improve public education, a disproportionate number of these claims can
be construed as blatant attacks that were contradicted by sound research-based
evidence, and were outright hostile or untrue. As more and more of the attacks
denouncing public education made the front pages of the news media and the
six o’clock news, business persons and governmental leaders were endlessly
repeating the attacks, and giving life to these distortions and falsehoods.
Ironically, many prominent members of the educational establishment often
supported the attacks that were endlessly reported by an unquestioning press
( Berliner and Biddle, 1997). David C. Berliner and
Bruce J. Biddle (1997) in their examination of the rise of the standards
and accountability movement argue that: “..it is small wonder that many
Americans have come to believe that education in our
country is now in a deplorable state. Indeed, how could they have concluded
anything else, given such an energetic and widely reported campaign of criticism,
from such prestigious resources, attacking America’s public schools? To the
best of our knowledge, no campaign of this sort has ever before appeared
in American history. Never before had an American government been so critical
of the public schools, and never had so many false claims been made about
education in the name of ‘evidence.’ We shall refer to this campaign of criticism
as the Manufactured Crisis.” (pg. 4) The most recent results of the 34th
Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward Public
Schools (Phi Delta Kappan, 2002) support Berliner and Biddle’s assertion
that there is a disconnect between the public’s attitudes toward education
and the critics unfounded attacks on education. The poll reported that national
public support for and reliance on public schools is strong and increases
as people have more contact with schools. This trend for public support
of schools has been steadily rising since 1992. Regarding testing, the public attitude
toward testing remains remarkably stable over time. Even when the call for
testing is increasing, 47% of those polled indicated that the amount of
testing is about right, down from forty eight percent in 1997. Thirty one
per cent think there is too much testing up from 27% in 1997. When asked
which is the best way to measure student achievement - by means of test scores
or by classroom work and homework - fifty three percent
support classroom work and homework over test scores, while only 23% think
test scores is the best way to measure student achievement. When asked how
they would grade schools in their own community 47% give schools an “A” or
“B.” Interestingly, 24% think the schools in the
nation deserve an “A” or “B”, while when asked to grade the school their
oldest child attends, a stunning 71% give that school either an “A” or “B.” Finally, 69% of those polled support reforming the existing
system while only 27% think we should find an alternative to a “failing”
system of schooling. Seldom do we see these results that
support the work of schools reported in the media. What seems to be the
case is that the public is not inclined to believe negative and unfounded
media reports when it comes to schools they know and trust to educate their
children - even when deluged with negative attacks daily in the media. In
spite of a continued negative avalanche of unsupported attacks on public
schools, the public remains, as it has for the past decade, unconvinced that
schools are as terrible its conservative critics suggest. The California Teacher Performance
Assessment In the wake of the testing mania
that swept through P-12 education like a firestorm,
the hegemony of accountability and standardization of the curriculum has
finally arrived at the door step of teacher education and it is embodies
as the California Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA). Senate
Bill -2042, signed into law by governor in 1998, requires
all preliminary credential candidates to pass a high stakes teaching performance
assessment, the TPA. The law provides that professional teacher preparation
programs may use the TPA or they may develop their own assessment. Prototypes of the TPA were developed
and piloted to measure thirteen Teacher Performance Expectations, TPE. The TPEs purportedly describe and measure on a singular
exam “what California teachers need to know and be able to do” before receiving a preliminary credential.
There are four performance tasks that collectively measure the TPEs in the
following areas: (adapted from the California Department of Education Pilot
Draft of the TPA) Task I: Principles
of Content-Specific and Developmentally Appropriate Pedagogy- students are asked to demonstrate
knowledge of principles of developmentally appropriate pedagogy and current
specific pedagogy from four specific prompts Task II: Connecting
Student Characteristics to Instructional Planning- students demonstrate their ability
to learn important details about a small group of learners and to plan instruction
that is shaped by those student characteristics. Task III: Classroom
Assessment of Academic Learning Goals - students demonstrate their ability
to use standards-based, developmentally appropriate student assessment activities
with a group pf students. Students will demonstrate their ability to assess
student learning and diagnose student needs based on their responses to
the assessment activity Task IV: Academic
Lesson Design, Implementation and Reflection after Instruction - students
demonstrate their ability to design a standards-based lesson, via a 30 minute
video tape, for a particular group of students, implementing that lesson
making appropriate use of class time and instructional resources, meet differing
needs of individuals within the class, manage instruction and student interaction,
assess student learning, and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the
lesson Currently, many “early adopter”
credential programs are engaged in piloting the TPA and its four tasks. These
“early adopters” have been given the task of trying to determine how best
to administer and field test the TPA. To date, little information is known regarding the success
of the state’s pilot program. However, a closer examination of the TPA raises
some interesting issues, questions and concerns.
The TPA: a time worn, top down ideology
At first
glance, the TPA is a somewhat innocuous measure of
teaching effectiveness. It is based upon Teacher Performance Standards (TPE) standards that, for the most part,
remain unquestioned by most teacher educators. The four tasks that comprise
the TPA assessment are based upon ideas in performance-based assessment
that has been used widely by teacher educators across the country. Many
educators believe the concept of examination to determine
teacher readiness is not a bad idea. Witness efforts by the University of
California and Stanford Universities to develop their own high stakes examinations
as substitutes for the state developed and administered examination. These
efforts remain unquestioned by even the most radical opponents of curricular
standardization and the TPA. Many teacher educators object to
the top-down nature of the TPA process. Not only does it ignore the professional
commitment professors have toward building effective teacher education programs,
the TPA also moves the State of California’s historical
responsibility for teacher education from
accrediting teacher education programs, to externally
controlling and effectively mandating
what should be taught and how it should be delivered in Universities. This change of course is viewed
as political, and driven by a genuine mistrust of teacher educators - led by policy makers and large corporations (Kohn, 2002). M ore importantly, this top-down regulation undermines
the ability of teacher educators to prepare highly qualified and effective
teachers. Bertell Ollman (2002) in “Why So
Many Exams?” details eight myths that surround exams and testing in our
society. Among these, is the largely unquestioned
belief that exams are unbiased and that it is possible to produce an exam that is “culture free.” It is
this largely unchallenged assertion that drives the examination mania that
grips our culture. The fact remains that there is no singular high stakes
examination that has been proven to be totally unbiased.
More importantly, this myth of unbiased
testing supports the assumption that a complex set of concepts and behaviors
embedded in a year-long teacher education curriculum can,
and should be measured in a singular
examination. Teaching is an ever-changing enterprise.
It has been estimated that a teacher, in the course of a single day, makes thousands of decisions that impact the quality of
education for their students and ultimately how well they perform the complex
tasks of teaching. In teaching, the ambiguity of not
knowing what can and will happen from moment to moment is as frightening
and as it is challenging. To consider that the task of teaching should and can be measured
by a singular high stakes examination reduces the complex
act of teaching to a fragmented, de-contextualized set of unrelated exercises
that have no real meaning. The fundamental assumption and largely unquestioned
belief is that teaching can be simplistically measured by
a single examination. Rather than testing prospective
teachers, we need to be working with our future teachers
to expand the idea of assessment to provide multiple,
yet rigorous, ways for students to demonstrate what they know. We cannot expect prospective teachers in the 21st
century to adopt new means of assessment in their curriculum and for their
students, if their future careers are based upon a hackneyed, high stakes,
testing ideology rooted in 19th century beliefs about testing. Among these
beliefs is the time worn notion that students learn best when performing
short, segmented tasks - stressing speed and neatness -
to the ticking of a clock. This ideology is embedded
in the work culture of late 19th century America where students
were being prepared to work in factories. Most would agree that the world
of the 21st century teacher has changed
inestimably since the late 19th century. . Political Ramifications, Economic
Costs Perhaps the most dangerous aspect
of the TPA is the fact that its existence increases
the likelihood that the scores it generates will be used to compare - for
political purposes - students, institutions and ultimately
professors. The TPA will serve as a bellwether, as has been d one with most
standardized tests, to the public as to the institutions that are” best”
doing their job of educating teachers. The scores of students will most likely
be reported to the public with lower performing schools with rewards and
punishments being distributed accordingly. In response to this kind of application
of standardized test scores, Nancy Kober (2002) reported that high stakes
test scores do not seem to generalize to any other index of achievement other
than its own. In fact, Berliner and Amrein (2002)
discovered that in states where high stakes testing scores were on the rise,
math scores on the NAEP, ACT and SAT fell. Higher
education may wish to enter this highly questionable area of test score interpretation
and application with some degree of trepidation. There is also some discussion that
individual TPA scores would be released to schools who are hiring new teachers
for the purpose of screening sand evaluation. With the meaning of these
test scores under question, such a development could possibly prevent hundreds
of potential teachers from becoming employed based upon a singular score
on the TPA In a era of declining educational
budgets, the economic costs of the TPA have yet to be resolved. However,
the main accrediting body of teacher education, the California Commission
on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) has entered into a $3.7 million contract
with the Educational Testing Service to develop a prototype TPA examination
(see Appendix 1-IV). No exact figures have been agreed
upon regarding the direct costs of the TPA will have for School of Education,
but it is clear that issues such as administering the test
and “training” teachers to score the
TPA exams will place additional burdens on already overwhelmed and under-supported
schools of education. One educator stated that archiving the 30 minute video
tapes (each tape must be kept for 5 years) and supporting documents that
are required of the TPA’s four tasks will require that the California State
University to “buy a barge and park it in the San
Francisco Bay for the purpose of storing the tapes and documents that the
TPA will generate.” Ultimately, some believe that the
TPA may actually be part of a maneuver to discredit and weaken schools of
education, and open the door to the idea that teacher education be disseminated
by districts and private corporations, leaving schools of education out
of the process. High Stakes in High Stakes Exams The TPA is the first volley for
standardizing the curriculum of higher education. The TPA is a high-stakes
process that holds severe consequences for students, professors and the university.
Its ultimate success will determine how much teacher education and the university
will succumb to even more demands of the standardization movement. Teacher educators, not state bureaucrats
or professional test makers, are best equipped to develop demanding and
yet inclusive proficiency exit standards that combine student portfolios,
and performance based projects - not just one high stakes
standardized test - to credential teachers. If we are
move to a new age of assessment that rejects 19th century idea
ideas and practices, multiple assessments need to determine the success
of a program, provide information to students regarding their achievement,
and hold schools responsible for how well taxpayers’
money is being spent to prepare high quality and effective teachers. It
is time to demand that our nation, and our state and its schools stop relying
on a single, corporate influenced, standardized, measure of student achievement
and adopt a variety of student assessments that: 1) are designed to provide feedback
that improves student learning; 2) involve students, parents, teachers
and the community collaborating for improved student learning and better
schools; 3) allow a variety of measures that
focus on individual student learning; 4) do not limit the curriculum to
a singular, standardized, assessment based on a high stakes approach. University and teacher educators
need to be reminded of the truly high stakes involved in the high stakes
examination called the TPA. The control of the curriculum
and its assessment by teacher educators is at risk. A closer look by all interested in teacher education is warranted. References Berliner, D. and Biddle, B. (1997).
The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Frauds and the Attack
on America’s Public Schools. Longman, USA. Bracy, G.W. (1992) International
Comparisons and the Condition of American Education, Educational
Researcher, 25(1), 5-11 Bracy, G.W. (2002) “The 12th
Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Bloomington Indiana, October. Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998)
Inside the Black Box: raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, Bloomington Indiana, October. Kober, N. (2002) “Teaching to the
Test”, TestTalk for Leaders, Center on Educational Policy,
Washington, D.C. June. Kohn, A. (2002)
“The Gorilla in the Classroom,” Phi Delta Kappan,
Bloomington Indiana, October. Phi Delta Kappan (2002) “34th
Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of Public’s Attitudes Toward Public Schools”,
Phi Delta Kappan, Bloomington Indiana, September. National Commission on Testing and
Public Policy (1990). From gatekeeper to gateway: Transforming
testing in America. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston
College. Olman, B. (2002) “Why So Many Exams,
a Marxist response: Z Magazine, October 2002) Ruddell, M.R. (2001). Teaching Content Reading and Writing, (3rd
ed.) New York: John Wiley and Sons. Schrag, P. (1998) Paradise
Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future
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