Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Evidence
Review: "Kill the Messenger" presents a compelling case in favor of standardized testing. The evidence presented by Phelps is stunning. His treatment of the subject is quite thorough. We do not allow other industries to dictate their own performance measurements. Why do we allow it in education? And as we continue to trust our educators, our children are lagging sadly behind those in other countries. Obviously our current approach to education is not working and yet we allow our educators to sing the same song and dance the same dance.

Rating:
Summary: The Value and Importance of Standardized Testing.
Review: "Kill the Messenger" by Richard Phelps is an effective and extensively documented defense of standardized testing and the flawed and fabricated arguments of its opponents.
As a teacher of Advanced Placement U.S. History, I "teach to the test," a national test that over 100,000 students take each May. Colleges, the military and many employers find applicants' standardized test results useful, because they can usefully predict future success.
Does anyone think that a college admissions committee can find no useful, predictive value between one student's SAT math score of 420 and and another's 620 out of a possible 800? In the real world of high schools, within one school system and even within one school building, the same year-long performance by one student might receive a grade of D or F with one teacher, while another might assign it a grade of A or B. This is the reality of American education that parents, students and teachers across the country know all too well.

By employing a common set of uniform measures, standardized tests allow a college admissions committee to see which sets of grades appear to be more reliable.

Phelps shows the contradictions in the arguments of testing opponents: "Most of us would argue that it is not fair to make high-stakes judgments of students based on the mastery of material to which they have not been exposed. Most testing opponents concur. They criticize vociferously when high stakes tests cover subject matter that students have not had an opportunity to learn. Then, sometimes in the same argument or speech, testing opponents will criticize just as vociferously the process of teaching material thatis covered on a test - that is wrong, too, that is 'teaching to the test.'"

Since public education is supported by tax dollars, the public has a right to know how its schools are performing. Standardized tests document the abject failure of many school systems to educate large numbers of students and simultaneously attest to real success, wherever it appears.

Phelps targets other evocative but baseless accusations against testing, including: "testing distorts instruction" (sad to say, the force of standardized tests often leads to the first effective teaching in a class or school!), "ignores each student's individuality," "penalizes the use of innovative curricula and teaching strategies" (could it be that these strategies, such as wasting huge amounts of instructional time on group projects and group activities, may prevent students from learning the material they are expected to know?), "unfair to women and minorities" (In reality, standardized tests reveal that many school systems are so dysfunctional that they fail to provide adequate instruction for minorities.), etc.

In a chapter that should interest all parents, Phelps examines the misleading criticisms of "The Big, Bad SAT," which almost two-thirds of U.S. colleges include in the mix of criteria for making admissions decisions. Colleges use the SAT [and AP scores] or the ACT because they are reliably predictive of a student's academic performance during his or her first year in college, which is when most drop-outs occur. Since grade inflation in many high schools masks lackluster performance and achievement, colleges need a more objective standard - and parents should be thankful that one exists. The SAT or ACT creates a common national measure that "college admissions counselors rate ... as a more reliable measure than .. high school grade point average, extracurricular activities, recommendations, essays and so on." If SAT tests had no future performance validity, colleges would not require them.

Phelps also looks at test preparation companies' claims that they they can raise SAT test scores and cites studies that show limited gains from "test coaching" - far short of the exaggerated claims. He cites one 1998 study of the recentered SAT I that found an "average effect (increase) from 21 to 34 points on the combined SAT I score scale" of coached students over those who received no coaching.

In other chapters, Phelps explains the testing systems and how and why other countries use standardized tests, looking specifically at the "testing systems of the 29 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), essentially the wealthier countries of the world, plus China, Russia and Singapore," the countries with whom US students are most frequently compared in media reports of international test results.

Phelps also examines the debates over testing in Texas and the tendency of the media to give more space to opponents of testing, while rarely subjecting their claims to critical examination.

In exposing the illogic of the arguments of testing opponents and the flawed use of evidence they cite, Phelps' work enables readers to understand some of the obstacles to improving student achievement. The next time one hears criticism of standardized testing by Alfie Kohn, FairTest, Gerald Bracey, Howard Gardner and many others, a quick check in "Kill the Messenger" might find that Richard Phelps has already examined and dissected it.

Phelps' readable prose makes this often mystifying component of modern education understandable to all of us who need to understand it: parents, teachers, school board members and interested members of the public whose taxes pay for our public schools.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Evidence
Review: "Kill the Messenger" presents a compelling case in favor of standardized testing. The evidence presented by Phelps is stunning. His treatment of the subject is quite thorough. We do not allow other industries to dictate their own performance measurements. Why do we allow it in education? And as we continue to trust our educators, our children are lagging sadly behind those in other countries. Obviously our current approach to education is not working and yet we allow our educators to sing the same song and dance the same dance.

Rating:
Summary: The General Patton of the Testing Wars
Review: A week doesn't go by, without a mainstream media story on the "horrors" of standardized testing, in which reporters tell of widespread testing error, of how testing is causing students to drop out of school, or of how testing is causing an epidemic of cheating.

The story behind the stories is that the relative prevalence of testing error is infinitesimal, that journalists stressing the dropout factor are mindlessly repeating a myth spread by radical Boston College teacher education professor Walter Haney, and that cheating is more easily prevented on standardized tests than with their alternatives.

For years, the American public has been force-fed a diet of test-bashing by the establishment media, the teachers' unions, professors of teacher education and well-financed anti-testing organizations, in which test-bashers have twisted existing data, ignored contrary data, and fabricated data outright. So reports Richard Phelps in his brilliant, new book.

As Phelps tells it, Kill the Messenger "is as much about censorship and professional arrogance as it is about testing." The author contends that the teachers and administrators who control the public education monopoly, and the teacher education professors who monopolize teacher credentialing, oppose standardized testing in order to shield themselves from public scrutiny and accountability. "... it is disturbing, because school administrators and education professors represent a group of public servants who should serve as models to our children. We pay them high salaries and give them very secure jobs. Then, we give them our children. Is just a little bit of external, objective evaluation of what they do with our money and our children really asking so much?"

Influential test-bashers include Walter Haney, Linda McNeil of Rice University, Harvard's Howard Gardner, University of California president Richard Atkinson, writers Alfie Kohn and Nicholas Lemann, and the organizations Fair Test, UCLA's CRESST (National Center for Research on Evaluations, Standards, and Student Testing), and Boston College's CSTEEP (Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy).

Phelps argues persuasively that objective, external, standardized, high-stakes testing is the best measure we have of how much students have learned, and how well teachers, curricula, and textbooks have done their respective jobs. The tests give us a tremendous amount of information on children's academic strengths and weaknesses, so that we may help them improve. "Objective" is in contrast to classroom grades, which are increasingly subjective, politicized, and inflated. "External" means that school officials with a stake in the results do not control examination grading. "Standardized" means that a test "is given in identical form and at the same time to students in more than one school, and all the results are marked in the same way." And "high stakes" means that test scores have consequences, so that the test serves as a powerful motivational tool. Alternatives such as classroom grades and "portfolios" of work lack the advantages of standardized testing, while being much more vulnerable to manipulation and cheating.

Phelps sets out test-bashers' strategies and tactics; presents case studies of campaigns against the SAT, the Texas teachers' literacy test, and the 2000 October Surprise attack on the "Texas Miracle" of educational progress under then-Gov. George W. Bush; media coverage; the "benefits of testing"; legitimate concerns about testing; and "alternatives to standardized testing." Two appended glossaries translate test-bashers' Orwellian jargon, and explain testing terms.

Richard Phelps drives through the armies of test-bashers like Patton's Third Army cutting through France in the summer of '44, cataloguing and refuting the misrepresentations they have spread.

For instance, test-bashers have for years insisted that American students are tested more than students in any other country, and that high-stakes, standardized testing causes dropout rates to increase, and educators to "teach to the test." And liberal reporters eat this stuff up!

Phelps scolds the test-bashers for being too lazy to make a couple of calls abroad, to determine that their assumption is false. "Virtually every other industrialized country in the world tests its students more, and with greater consequences riding on the results, than we do." He shows how education professor Walter Haney inflates dropout figures by stealthily employing a highly irregular definition, whereby he counts anyone who fails to graduate on time with his age group as a "dropout," and then leaps to the baseless conclusion that the fictional dropouts were caused by standardized testing. Noting that it would be irresponsible not to teach to the test, Phelps responds to that charge, "So, they should instead teach material that the test will not cover? They should 'teach away from the test'?"

Kill the Messenger could have been called "Coloring Education News," since it does for education reporting what William McGowan's Coloring the News did for journalism in general. Phelps' analyses of media bias, including statistical breakdowns showing how the media let test-bashers dominate the testing debate, provide a model for media criticism. He also reports on the undisguised hostility some reporters and producers show scholars who fail to tow the party line. (Full disclosure: Phelps praises my education reporting.)

Phelps suggests that the most insidious test-bashers of all, are those who claim to support testing - just not any existing test. "Given all the variety and all the experience, anyone who cannot be satisfied by any current testing program can never be satisfied with any testing program."

Ultimately, Phelps writes, "Most of the attacks on student testing, indeed, are attacks on measurement - of any kind - or, more specifically, any measurement made by groups 'external' to the group being measured." Phelps cautions the reader, however, that any test is only as good as the curriculum and instructional theory it is tied to.

Written largely in a conversational style, notwithstanding its staggering scholarship, Kill the Messenger casts much needed light on a public policy issue that affects us all, but which those holding the public's trust have kept shrouded in darkness. As Phelps argues, "the debate on testing ... is part of a war for the control of our country's schools ... The booty is our children's futures. The stakes are enormous."

Men's News Daily, March 10, 2004.

Rating:
Summary: Is rote process really the same as an educated mind??
Review: Having battled my own share of standardized testing programs, I wish there was a 'zero' star option.

Confusing rote obedience with intelligence, the authors selectively ignore cases (I and many others) that could not pass our state's standardized exams (now the political vogue) yet maintain a 4.0 average, ironically the mark of excellence. This is not an accident or misprint, but reflects a calculated war against anybody labeled different.

Because schools can no longer exclude students with disabilities (and higher education institutions must admit otherwise qualified individuals) standardized testing programs prey on politicians fear and ignorance of this changed landscape, and subconscious longing to return to a supposedly more serene time when we were either barred----or allowed to attend only under the blessing of individual family connections. That this earlier arrangement also did not measure an individual's real intelligence and academic capabilities was less important than feeding stereotypes routinely confusing disability with inability.

Unlike components for the general degree plan, the 'accommodations' option (regardless of how simple the provision such as a four function calculator, colored overlays etc...) for Texas's higher education testing program is not available at every state institution, wrongfully implying that disability is an 'extra', and reinforcing the idea students with disabilities are not 'real' members of the academic community. Once we are devalued, it is easier to justify overall discrimination against people with disabilities.

If nationally revered and non-punitive tests such as the SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT are required to provide disability testing accommodations at all of their sites, the states and their own programs have no excuse for this current arrangement. If the real focus is measuring ability, and not reinforcing a disability (including the lingering sociopolitical stigma), the same officials would not have implemented such contradictory and ill-conceived programs.

At one college, I was actually told by that school's disability testing office the state guidelines did not allow accommodations---despite my having qualified for them. Although this same standardized test was supposed to measure MY academic skills, the state of Texas saw nothing wrong with staffing a civil rights office with a woman openly incapable of comprehending the law---and hence job descriptions for which she was entrusted with. If state institutions themselves need education on their rights and responsibilities, who are they to presume we are arriving without our basic skills.

Bundled with program completion limits for all students, the many entrenched bureaucratic hurdles would make many present testing champions wake up...if they really wanted to. Standardized testing may be politically popular, but it is not moral or intelligent.

Rating:
Summary: Kill the Messenger
Review: In Kill the Messenger, Phelps offers a welcome antidote to the many writers who have criticized the increasing use of standardized tests. While he clearly understands the technical side of testing, his writing is easily accessible to anyone interested in learning both sides of the controversies swirling about testing. As a former president of the Milwaukee school board, I found particularly satisfying his skewering of the claims by some of the more irresponsible critics of the tests.

Rating:
Summary: The War on Standardized Testing in the Public Schools
Review: Standardized testing in the public schools -- the measurement of the results of public education -- has now reached federal proportions worth billions of dollars. Anyone at all involved in the debate (or war) needs more than newspaper columns and horror stories to go by, and this book's systematic account is a necessity for those who sincerely want real information. That Phelps is in favor of standardized testing is of course evident from the title, for "Kill the messenger" is plainly what he believes the opponents of testing are urging; yet Phelps's account of the battle represents a great deal more than advocacy. It contains facts, insights, and reports of research (real and phony both) that every teacher, supervisor, professor of education and legislator needs; and it is fascinating reading as well.