6 Reasons To Halt City Assessments
Quotes below from educators are drawn from responses to an NYC Opt Out survey initiated after Round 1 of the MAP/Acadience/iReady “screeners” (Fall 2021)
REASON #1 Now is the time for Banks/Adams administration to show they care about student and teacher well-being.
DeBlasio instituted these assessments on his way out the door.
Banks/Adams can call them out for what they are: a misguided, expensive boondoggle—and be heroes for stepping in to do the right thing by scrapping them and getting back to teaching, learning, and supporting the whole child
At the very least, it should be made clear to families (as it was for DESSA) that parents can refuse the academic assessments—though stopping them altogether is the preferred outcome.
REASON #2 The assessments are no better at identifying students who need support than were the methods teachers were already using. As this was purportedly a major reason for purchasing the tests, it points to a major failure of purpose.
Among 109 survey respondents, only 2% agreed with the statement "The assessment data recently collected identified students who need support who have not been identified through other means."
Literacy coach (District 6 ): “These screeners are insanely time consuming and did not identify any students who were struggling who had not already been identified using school-based data.” This educator had spent more than 14 hours training, administering, and reading reports from the screeners.
HS teacher (@school for new immigrants): “The majority of our students are ELLs. Both the English and Math tests were administered in English, way above their English level. I'm not sure how useful the data is since the language barrier means the tests may not have actually been measuring the skills they were designed to measure.”
HS teacher: “The test questions that I saw …were too narrow in scope and did not represent skills that are of value in measuring a student's reading and writing potential. The subsequent results provided zero resources for improving student skills and the lexile reading scores seem wildly off, based on demonstrations of skills that I have seen from students outside of the testing experience.”
69% of survey respondents said, "Administering these assessments took time that would have been used to offer individualized support to students"
61% of survey respondents said, "Children lost instructional time while teachers administered the tests to students individually"
32% of survey respondents said, "Students with IEPs did not receive services during the test administration window because intervention specialists were administering the tests”
Intervention specialist (@District 1 elementary school ): “I was pulled from regular intervention work to cover for other classroom teachers that needed time for administration etc.” This person also said they spent more than 12 hours on these assessments between training, administering, doing data entry, and reading student reports.
59% of survey respondents agreed: "Students showed signs of stress because they were being tested on end-of-year benchmarks"
65% of survey respondents reported: "Administering these assessments interfered with our ability to focus on trauma-informed practices"
3rd grade teacher (ICT, Brooklyn): “I spent much time building kids back up after taking the tests because they felt so badly taking a test they didn't understand. I teach special education and many of my students' goals are about confidence, self-esteem building, etc... This assessment runs counter to working on these students' goals.”
HS teacher (@Title 1 school): “My school chose to use an entire school day to administer all MAP tests. The students sat in the same classroom all day long with a break for lunch. Teachers took turns proctoring. They completed the math test in the morning and the ELA test in the afternoon. The students were miserable, I felt so bad for them. We lost an entire instructional day to administer this test.”
Intervention specialist (@D1 elementary school): “In some cases, administering these assessments broke trust with students who were not ready to be tested on these benchmarks”
REASON #3 At a time when schools are experiencing serious staffing issues, pulling educators away to train for, administer, and interpret tests of dubious utility is unacceptable and unconscionable.
Schools are struggling to cover classes as it is, with teachers out due to their own or their families’ COVID exposures or illness, and their mental health strained by the extra burdens imposed by having to grapple with fallout from year 3 of the pandemic.
HS teacher (Title 1): “My school attempted to train us sufficiently in setting up the test. I still spent a great deal of time re-reading and finalizing the assessment set up. It also took several hours of team discussion and prep to design the testing scenario and attempt to support students. For those who finished, students took well more than an hour to complete the assessment. Many students were unable to complete the assessment in 2 hours and their tests were invalidated. That was lost class time as well.”
Teacher (@Title 1 D79 alternative and transfer high schools): “We had to complete the training on our own time; no paid time was given to us for these extra tasks. The training materials are extremely dull and lengthy. If whoever made them were judged as a teacher, they would have been found ‘ineffective.’ We were not given time before the MAP administration to put into practice what the training specified. We were not given time to peruse student data after the fact, so the whole thing felt like an extremely pointless waste of our time and much needed learning time in the classroom.”
AP (elementary school, BK): “Instead of teaching whole-class lessons and working directly with students during reading/writing/math workshop, teachers administer 1:1 tests for several days in a row while students work independently or play games without teacher support. To meet the mandates annually, K-1 teachers will have to assess instead of teach for 18 days of reading and 18 days of math each year.”
A visual representation of how much time standardized testing is now sucking away from instruction (from an elementary AP):
REASON #4 It’s unclear whether schools have even been able to use data from Round 1
Although Round 2 is supposed to begin in January, as recently as December teachers reported not receiving data for all test takers
63% of survey respondents said, "Student absences made it difficult/impossible to test all students during the test administration window"
Even when results were received, they are not applicable to the real-life, on the ground circumstances in NYC public school classrooms right now (erratic student attendance, staff shortages, teachers out of subject area)
REASON #5 The assessments also raise concerns about privacy, cultural responsiveness, and schools’ tech infrastructure
69% of survey respondents experienced technology issues (availability of computers; accessing networks, as well as crashes/glitches during testing; difficulty logging students in; failure to generate formative tests properly)
HS teacher (@Title 1 school): “We don't have enough devices or headphones for the whole class, so it was hours and hours of disruption. This involved a lot of tech support. Also, their scores were visible to other students at the end.”
Anecdotally, it has been reported that personally identifiable student data had been uploaded to third party servers (of testing companies)--even for students whose parents had opted them out
Concerns around DESSA (the social-emotional screener purchased from a private company headquartered in the south) include:
not created with mental health experts
blatantly not culturally responsive
labels being given to students
data potentially being included on records/transcripts, possibility to be used in admissions, class assignments, etc.
REASON #6 The squandering of money on these instruments, contrasted with the scramble this month for high quality masks, COVID tests, access to WiFi for all students, continued lack of HEPA filters in schools...
$56M for MAP/iReady/DESSA
$18M for DESSA
