of poverty. bill moyers is from oklahoma. think about the great things he's done that's extraordinary. and the two-time pulitzer winner who gave his life in the course of covering stories about war. first of all i want people outside of oklahoma to know we are a literate state that we are a state producing an extraordinary number of incredible writers. the iraq elephants come invisible man for goodness sakes. the 100 best books of the 20th century. i've heard it mentioned suzi had created a genre of young adult literature. john berryman, that has made a national -- international impact with their work. i want to make people more aware of that. but i want oklahomans to be able to embrace their own heritage. we need an oklahoma to celebrate

and embrace all of these wonderful writers that have given voice to let them help us emerge from the stereotype. >> now, anya kamenetz books that standardized testing in today's education system. it ranges from the introduction of common core state standards to the cost of tax payers up to $1.4 billion per year. >> my name is monica golden and above passage is very happy to welcome him anya kamenetz and her latest book transfixed why schools are excessive standardized testing, but you

don't have it be. the test is about the failures of testing in american schools. children are more than test scores but in the last 20 years schools have dramatically increased standardized testing. in the era of no child left behind and the common core america's schools are sacrificing learning of favorite testing. how do we preserve states for self-directed learning and development, especially when we so want all children to hit the mark. npr education reporter explores all sides of the problem and my parents and teachers can do to help. the review data assembled an accessible form -- with abundant data in an accessible anyone in the educational system or any parent who has a child old enough to enter preschool. please give a warm welcome to anya kamenetz.

[applause] >> thank you monica appeared thank you all for coming. i'm thrilled to be able to visit this amazing bookstore. i was here five years ago for my last book and it's such a great pleasure to tory bookstore because i love bookstores. they are my favorite name. so i wrote the test to resolve a dilemma, which was how to educate my daughter. i've previously written about innovations in education and reducing cost quality and access and without the technology of technology and other kinds of approaches to student centered learning. i wanted to write a new book for education with children. i wrote a proposal to talk about project based learning and social emotional learning and makers spaces and blended learning and it just wasn't that convincing. attacked my agent about why and

i said nine out of 10 kids go to public schools and what i'm hearing is there's not a lot of room for innovation in public schools because the schools are being held accountable for this week in limited standardized tests in the test scores don't capture what teachers are trying to accomplish with these other sorts of experiences and models. so that is why it feels like not very convincing innovation story here. my agent said you've got to write about that. you got to write about the gorilla in the room, which is standardized testing. so i set out bravely but afraid to combat what i thought would be very dense project in terms of -- and it turned out to be sordid history policy. when you read about higher education, it is very diverse and independent sector of our society. in case 12 this is really

america. this is public. this is one of our biggest public expenditures. it is again nine out of 10 schools come the 50 million children. half of these children are poor. you can't write about a school in america without writing about politics, race and class and all of these issues come into the testing story in a really strong insert an unsettling way. you have to go on the way back to the beginning to discovery the bell curve and its earliest applications of what is known as psychometric human minds. i was really personally floored to discover how the foundational mind to it rather psychometrics and who was determined many many more did so fundamentally from a conception of intelligence who is hereditary.

that is the g5 there. that is what was called i.q. and they really believed everybody had in their brains a microprocessor with a speed and if you measured that you'd be able to sort people and then to plan and predict the best outcomes for those people. the guy who got us the foundational figure, a cousin of charles darwin, a child prodigy also coined the term eugenics. he created many foundational social science techniques regression analysis, correlation coefficient to measure what he believed was a fixed quality in human beings. and testing -- psychometric testing became employed in many different contacts to sort and correct for amongst people.

as we establish this brought society in america and try to make it a land of opportunity, it's also extremely competitive and the benefits in our society were unequally distributed and had always been unequally distributed. the ideal of a meritocracy or depiction of a meritocracy determined by testing became a safety valve. we have this conversation who gets what in societies what resources, the pinpoint to educational tests as they are in the path forward for people who work hard enough and are smart enough and therefore we have an open society. what is really astonishing when you look at the history of up to that point is after brown versus board of education, standardized tests, now called achievement test took a very different turn and they began to be sort of put forward as an instrument of equity and something i was going to be raised at vestiges of the

legacy of race for the in the process of desegregating schools. we would use these tests to measure what would now be called the achievement gap in the differential achievement of people from that runs primarily lower income and minority groups with now is something that would be overcome with rigor and hard work. i believe many people who adopted the vision for well-intentioned. there was a strong undercurrent in educational theory in the 60s and 70s to talk about the fact we need to raise our education. we can't be complacent about the hard work of making sure every child has the resources they need to achieve. when you talk about standardized testing and no child left behind, the number one argument you hear from people is we didn't have a comment and teachers wouldn't care about these kids. they wouldn't have to be responsible for these kids and they would just say, you know

as long as kids are getting breakfast i'm doing my job. i've never heard a teacher professes. it's an opinion you put on someone else. nevertheless, this is the idea. and so this is a dilemma we have right now. we have these tests. they have severe limitations in educational and commit. assessments are tools that teachers use every day to give feedback about burning man to diagnose and to help students direct their efforts and help teachers direct effort. assessments are not the problem. the issue right now is high-stakes standardized assessments have not been reading and we've known for a long time and if you talk to the folks at the big test companies the ones i got on the phone will tell you that these tests are used in ways they were never intended for. they were never intended to be the sole ground on which we base enormous decisions about which

schools opened and closed in which teachers lose their job. even whether students are promoted from one rate promoted from one-way to the next. especially not that. standardized achievement test are optimized for looking at the population. they don't tell you all that much about the individual students. however, tests are being used in all kinds of ways. it doesn't mean that we don't need clear and actionable data about the performance that every single student in every single school. it may well be we do need that and for schools to improve they need that kind of information. the impasse we are at right now is not just the expression of we are sick of these tests and want to get rid of them, but the question above replace the past. i spend the first half of the book go into arguments against testing. the arguments about how it impacts teachers, how it impacts teachers and families and the cause of equality, how diverse

schools are the ones that are more in danger of being sanctioned by the no child left behind that obviously we are wasting money on the test because the money that is spent is not going towards improving learning. a slight slight improvement was seen under no child left behind and student achievement are in no way greater than what we saw before no-caps left behind happened. no event has been a beneficial effect in making the achievement gap smaller or improving our international standing. i talk about the common core and the common core test that students are taking right now and the fact that they were touted as a huge improvement and many teachers i talk to see some value in the standards, but the test them selves or not enough of a departure of what's gone on before. the independent experts at columbia teachers college reviewed the balance assessment

concluded that they do represent an improvement. but nothing like what is needed. kind of elaborated me that you know they don't actually match the standards because it is impossible to produce a larger machine graded tests that cost $30 to administer in-house at ss for learning. this is sort of the error we run to again and again in our system where we believe it's more scientific to optimize their education system to the outcomes of many tests. the more tests we have come at a lower quality each test becomes any of the situation right now for the individual items are read by low-wage, low wage workers and as well when you have a written portion of the test, it is graded by the same type of person. so the more that we -- the more

attention would put on these tests, the more problems we get because we are trying to cheap out by adding to many tests to the roster. a new study has come out showing the large urban school districts. how many tests would you get students are taking, standardized tests alone kindergarten through eighth grade 79? between 10 and 30 here and 30 year, 30 of highest we've seen. except with 331 year. these tests are not only delivered by the state. the mandates are following from districts as well because when you touch so many high stakes to a testament to the school district is going to want to administer a test to see a kid do on the test. pretest on the protest

diagnostic tests, benchmark test. there are many purposes none of which are completely clear to parents of coors and also teachers as well. i want to talk a little bit about the solutions i address in the boat and then throw it open to questions. every single one is different. people focus on different aspects and it depends what you come in with as far as experience. i want to spend plenty of time on the question. i look at it into cars. we need better accountability and better assessments. the accountability system, the stakes attached to the test right now under no child left behind in your state tests are tied to score your organization enclosure. increasingly tied to teacher evaluation. they are tied to funding decisions in the money being

held up her states in many different ways by the federal government to get them to agree to certain things and then they are also affecting students and families that is the most detrimental effect because we no assessments are part of a students formamide that an attitude around learning and the fact we make school about these tests really inculcate the fixed mindset going back to what the original site from attrition spot a value in achievement is something you are born with. that is not the kind of attitude we are trying to instill now put his research suggested is anyway after it. there are many detrimental effects to testing by without the stakes they would be not much more than an annoyance. thinking about how to do accountability if you care about accountability, and it is fair that the proposals right now to reauthorize no child left behind on the republican side are talking about basically

eliminating federal standardized testing requirement and going back to an older situation where states just have to submit good faith statements to the federal government about what they're doing for student achievement. some people feel that is too high a too high of a degree so had we produce accountability that is balanced. one proposal comes from linda darling miss hollister student. they talk about resource accountability or reciprocity and accountability in the idea being that white allegis holder schools accountable for the outcomes that we don't hold districts and states accountable for inputs, knowing that family income and zip code is such a massive factor in determining student success and only 14 states attempted equalizer makes a fun game to rich districts and poor districts. we tolerate these and we expect those who have the least to work the hardest to overcome what has been conceptualized as the achievement gap.

he could talk about the resource gap. it's what we're talking about. that is one way of looking at it. another interesting approach is lucky not long-term fight areas, local factors. now many more states are attracting students from pk into the work force. this raises some questions in terms of data and privacy but also the ability to ask a much bigger picture question about what make students successful at it is that longitudinal information that gives us the insights such as the idea that half of what students need to succeed is not cognitive skills, nonacademic skills. that comes from high school to the workforce. the preschool project providing this ironclad evidence about the affect of hot audi preschool on students throughout their lives. that was achieved by tracking students throughout their lifetime. instead of asking questions about proficiency we could use

longitudinal evidence to talk about his schools performance district performance, student course over a lifetime and what we as a community could do to help the child succeed. those are some of the approaches i talk about in the book. and then there's testing at valve. we know the we know the test have a fault to concept a faulty construct to the idea of this i.q. even if you want to say there is a natural variation but so what. once you've mastered that how is the person giving you information in term of the education or how you help them learn. we really need to know how they approach learning, what is the motivation, how they work overtime. there are self assessments. this is the idea that all of the

assessment that teachers gave in a classroom on a daily basis if we could somehow john padget, we would get a richer picture in a big data approach. student learning over time with various software programs coming to play it now that would be possibly getting really broad-based evidence of student learning over time and trajectory of students earning overtime is what we are interested in. so i talk in the book about the value of performance-based assessment and why it's important for students to have an understanding of knowledge and interdisciplinary research projects that allow them to demonstrate skills and these come with technology. it is a way of doing school and testing. they were integrated into the learning process that teachers and performance assessment schools in new york city that has 28 high schools that don't get state exams have much better outcomes in terms of dropout rates and college assistance.

the key metric i find convincing as the teacher turnover rates are so much lower because teachers are committed because they are working as true professionals and they are collaborating across the sector, across different schools. i talk about technology and other waste technology could use to gather broad-based evidence of student achievement. we have the 19th technologies that tree which comes from who has invented a meter that could read a graphite pencil and electrically score many test pages in the standardized testing. we are still pursuing a model today even though we have the internet. what is the 21st century model for assessed aquatics a color tv and recorded about a customized the mythical as the idea is many of ours didn't have an

experience, a great experience of getting feet back through games. games teach you how to play them. games give you instant information about where you are going. there's always a chance to try again and do better the next day. organizations here in redwood city are working on creating games for learning and assessment, where the game is gathering evidence that the student for decision making and creating sort of models of how students understand higher order contest. the first version was a version of the game called sin city. has anyone here played since city clinics you are the mayor of the city. you've got to place the power plans you have to worry about pollution, jobs, electricity and all of these things interact in different ways. this is a game that is a tested systems thinking.

the idea is the supermassive black rock city of eight causes via or as a able to role of different variables over reducing an outcome of the desirability of the outcome. the game has evidence that is the basis of a judgment by a human being because what we reach for in the next generation of test is an arbitrary verdict by a machine that information that a data-driven teacher parent, student can make better decisions about student learning and where they are at a point in time. that is all well and good when it comes to technology, but there are policies not based on the best or most available evidence. the question we have right now is parents and teachers and student is what happens next the toxic parents of the opt-out movement who decided that the best way to respond to the test is not to take them. i talk to leaders in the teacher

who see testing as the focal point of a broader debate of how we support public education in this country and where we are going with this. i do believe this will be decided just as much at the ballot box as it is in the realm of research in the rubble of accountability. the question for anybody who has kids in the school system or anyone who has any relation ship to the teacher at all what are you going to hear about the testing situation. that is my 30 minutes. thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> i was so interesting. i have three kids. so different. how i see it from those three

examples, 99% and one like a 20 percentile tester is the emotional factor that is involved. i can't say this chat i have is clearly slower than this child, but they are so emotionally different. i'm one of them freaks at the testing, but he actually tested -- the weird thing is a tested superhigh unlike a pc and for a speed dating the super low-end something else. it makes no sense. >> the social and emotional aspect of testing is way important. test anxiety effects 25% to 40% of test takers strongly enough to depress the results. so it is a hugely overlooked fact there because of what you are really lucky not if the performance of people who aren't affected by anxiety and the people who are who were in no

way worse achievers or will be worse than other contacts. so we are missing out on a ton of talent and we are telling successful people wrong messages about who they are and what they are good at. [inaudible] i have one kid who is quiet and is very comfortable testing and definitely a superhigh tester. offering my kids relatively the same grades. for the same reasons. >> so my performance techniques can help with the negative self talk and what comes in and distracts people. so can learning about gross mindset of the fact the brain gets stronger with the muscle. so there is research on that and started step-by-step test the blood taken. the great things about techniques as opposed as they

make you better at other things too. not just taking tests. >> did show must have discovered the s.a.t. and the azt because when i think about the testing i think i hate that they are taking on these tests. on the other hand they need a lot of prior is once they get to the king of all tests. it is so essential to their moving on. >> that is really interesting for the common core has moved on to the college board and is now kind of offer to relaunch of the sats asserted further integrate the sats. i think it can work either way. in some places it is integrated as cells as bad as the test that students take and so for middle-school onward. they take apart this test in the s.a.t.

it can be a tool to reduce testing when it gets parents and teachers on the same page. it can be a tool to reduce testing is getting parents and students and teachers on the same page will just give the college admissions test and will be directly practicing for that. performance assessment in kentucky that i visited overhauled the curriculum and the performance-based assessment. they take the compass which is a pre-azt and now is something that kind of help parents who weren't so sure about the transition to get on board. he had i will say on the other side there's 800 colleges that have given up the s.a.t. for admission and made it optional. the test optional admissions. 800. they are large and small. colleges you've heard of on the list. in some ways you could say cynically that colleges are in a

market crunch and they're having to be broad-minded in how they look at people. but on the other hand you could say sats don't predict college performance over and above high school gpa. they are actually not that helpful for colleges, but they have been turned into this very handy metric. if you have a kid who is a terrible tester, they are not doomed to take the s.a.t. if they don't have to. they don't have to in all cases. >> the social and emotional learning. i think 11 school districts in california are being assessed. 20% or school cultures and 20% for social and emotional learning. how are they going to assess that out in how they going to do it without totally missing the point? >> this is a great question. i talk about in the book some

things we are asking. the number one instrument schools across the country are using for his social and emotional climate is a simple survey. it is an inventory of questions that students answer, teachers and parents and they are pretty simple in terms of i'm excited to come to school every day. there's somebody who cares about me. when you integrate the data into the accountability formula to make at high stakes, there's a chance of gaming the system. measurement can be undermined. in montgomery county public schools which also introduced a measure they instituted a social emotional walk-through. it became a component at the schools are going to be punished for information that they have to integrate into the school improvement plan and the metrics they were caused to include very clear things like absenteeism, turnover and behavioral issues.

the walk-through is really a way of assessing on a personal basis and it similar to what is done in the u.k. were school inspections are a cornerstone of the accountability process. i have no doubt that there is going to be a lot of interest in developing new instrument. i talked to folks at eps trying to figure out how to link was social emotional learning and a multiple-choice format. i think the behavioral tracking stuff is pretty valuable. just make it not an outcome that trick by itself, sick days for students fighting explosion, various behavioral types of things can be very powerful with indicators that the overall health of the school as the system. [inaudible] -- and the other thing is do you

see a tendency to realize that objective testing is not always the way that we have to start trusting the subject to can you speak about that quite >> this is a quarter-point because they'll make assessments every day and we all have to deal with judgments every day. you know, the impulse to our data is a strong one in our culture right now and we are all living our lives via external metrics but we don't necessarily understand the quality of the data that goes into the metrics are the nature is that the algorithms that produce the outcomes. i feel like we are adding medieval level in terms that the coders and they create these algorithms and we just all believed that is what they say is real. the solutions to bad data is better data. sometimes the solution is literacy and curiosity and

asking hard questions about the nature of the information of the judgments. honestly, there are fair-minded folks inside all the companies who are scientists who if you asked them, they will freely admit the nature of something like a fish be that proficiency had never been legislated for 100% of student. we defined the proficiency with reference to a bell curve than the idea that 100% of students will pass that point. you know, it is a laudable ideal, but an absurdity of practice. >> i am going to reach her boat. i wonder what examples for the younger grades and how to need that seems to be one of the plays to stop top of families about this is where your child goes through. one way to show what they know. there are other ways.

so that's a good question about the pushback from the youngest grade. at my school we have the yearly regular outcome and core standardized testing. we feel a different way in terms of what expect it. >> yeah, i agree with you. i think teachers at younger children have a younger role to play in terms of speaking loudly about what is this about environmental trajectories of growth. i believe that the expansion of pre-k provides an opportunity to talk about what is a high-quality school assuming that you can't believe in the test data you get from four euros. there are going to be tested and introduced standardized assessments. the new test for inadvertent omissions in new york city as an academic test with academic material as it was never included before. it is unlikely to be valid in

terms of what they are trained to do. i do believe there is ability to have counterweight. parents who come into kindergarten as they talk about in the book when you have a child, everybody tells you children develop at their own rate. don't worry about the percentile. there is a broad range of normal development in children are all different. what is important is that they are thriving and happy at all of the sudden that rhetoric grinds to a halt and if you don't learn to read by the time your third grade you are doomed forever and you'll never graduate college. i think you stand right in the middle of it. i hope you read it and give it to all the parents to work with. [inaudible] >> pool, thank you. >> i was reading about this thing that we have in california where the kid -- where children are in control of their own

content because their children and they put content online and the idea is failed their content and make a brighter day. it's been proposed in other states as well. but it is here. however, it doesn't affect what happens in the rooms of the school so when kids are taking their task the system knows whether their parents are divorced, you know, they don't take into account the days are bad days there may be that the kid is going through a tough time or maybe -- so i guess the concern and i think that there are laws being proposed with regards to including schools. as technology stars coming more into the school system, this is a bigger concern with identity

theft and misuse their mishandling of information. >> date for bringing that a period this is an enormous issue that will get much bigger before it goes away. it is not just for students, the student privacy issue is at the forefront of the overall privacy issue. some of the best minds are working on student privacy because it is their children that really matters. california is considered to have the strongest law that is potentially model. in the house tomorrow has bipartisan sponsorship in the national federal house that file is fun to some of what california does that not all of it just a student privacy issue isn't just about testing. although testing is an important one because it is consequential information about student performance. i will just wait us out there in terms of a potential issues are.

there's different aspect to the data collected by schools and then by the vendors they work with. so there is security, which is my student's data will be misused or divert the exposed and misused or used for identity theft are used to make money somehow. then there is commercialization which is my student's data will be made available to a third-party vendor who who will target advertising our products. when she is doing her hallmark. it is very difficult to define in some ways in proper commercial misuse because the school is already outsourced basic function and any information that goes into a for-profit vendor will be used to improve the product itself. the more people use a product like google or google docs the

better the product becomes. in some sense we have turned information into commercial gain and how to limit the harm of that and understand the harm is not straightforward. thirdly, from a nebulous that was most of the point of what we talk about rate here is privacy of my student, but in a sense the idea that permanent record. information collected on my student about my kid is going to be used to make decisions about them in ways we can't control. you can see the sort of innocuous analytics, predictive analytics. predictive analytics is that is what target uses to try to tell if you are pregnant before you do. they do your searches that make conjectures about people in certain places and tell you products. predictive analytics in schools as i look at the data and i have a lowered kid coming in from the community and they have this

great in middle-school and so i believe that they are at risk to drop out. you look at the data and you made a decision or a prediction about the kid and not prediction could be used to help them intervene on their behalf. it is also inevitably shaping beliefs about that kid on behalf of any professional that looks about i/o. said that file is following you around and we all know when teachers are given information about students, if they are led to believe that students are really gifted, then they treat the students differently and the students achieve more. so what is the impact of having a comprehensive dossier of information that the readout says this kid is a dropout, a potential drop out. that is the question that the law is so far away from getting not in the bin and public

opinion about whether it's helpful, harmful, one would like the kids to be forgotten. should they tear up the record when they graduate high school or what about the value of the information on personally identifiable as we talk about changing policies in general. so it is very very complex and totally fascinating and a little scary as well. more than a little. depends where you are sitting. >> status 25 years from now. you are in a book tour with the test the sequel. what would you be talking about quite >> that's a great question. i would love to be talking about how enough generation of assessments really opened up her eyes to each and every person's capabilities that allowed us that each student who will be graduated with a robust record of their own learning that they

owned and controlled a used to qualify themselves to a future employer that our schools would be places of collaboration and play and creativity but also very robust and you could see a student using dashboard type information to get cray pointers to improve how they learn and get insights into what motivates them. if i could call up the sum total of the papers i wrote in the first grade through high school i would have such an interesting record of my own thinking i may have goes and my own interests. so the promise of the power of big data is all in how you use it. [inaudible] >> not so much standardized testing. i don't know how they deal with that. so competency model and mastery.

that sounds like what you're talking about for the future. is there some synergy between not model incorporating that into standardized testing quite >> areas. an odd alliance. and getting interest from tech companies to believe they are the ones to reduce the burden of testing by making it invisible. integrated, invisible assessment. i was talking to a tech company last week and they said they are very large state to do an experiment that would do away with state tests in favor of five questions a day. five questions a day over the course of the year, no anxiety this is a low stakes theme that is important and the nature could change from student to student any more adaptive model of student learning. really important topics and material to cover many different times in many ways to learn more about what they know. they are also looking at a max

level with a certain set of questions that a teacher would create an activity that would satisfy that question or that construct such that you would not do as these given questions that you could have a teacher created assessment to supply the information as well. so it takes a really -- the path of least resistance for software doesn't make for better teaching and learning but when you get these minds to a problem as long as you have the humanistic minds at the same time the teachers and learners who are close to have interesting potential. >> i just realized a lot of this is about how much know, but it's not how much are you teaching me to think how much -- do you see what i'm saying to see that and think about it this way in this way and find out how you do and bring that it. is there anything developing that part?

>> so with the unlimited resources test creators have been incredibly creative in coming up with the type of task you are talking about to decide what that means. what i mean by unlimited resources, the oss in world war ii as a return to figure out who would be a good spy comedy created several day long battery of tests that were unbelievably created. there is one where someone had to build a box and they had two helpers. one of the helpers was an incompetent stooge and the other was a. they had word and tools and it was incredibly stressful it is people you know, very few people complete the task in the time allotted and the testers could you not lose your cool and completely wail in either one of the other person. you have to come up with a cover story. they're all kinds of creative challenges of the test.

so again with the performance assessment you can't imagine that happening in the context of state mandated tests for a couple weeks a year unless you have some crazy society that was trying to produce a nation of spies. ..

because i think that i just, many things i learned and this might be helpful to any of you who have kids were educated people or. be your, if you and your partner, you have a partner and they both went to college a chance of the kids graduating college or small. private school doesn't make much of a difference. once you factor out the impact of family income. there's almost no difference in private school to a very large book was written by great researcher called the public school advantage which argued,

public schools are will do much better because the teachers are better trained. so what can negatively affect your child is anxiety around schooling and achievement and the fact that in our 21st century world the achievement latter gets narrower and narrower at the top. there's so much in equality between 1% and 001% that it freaks parents out in the terrible, competitive ways. that's what i strive to work on as a parent to say okay, where am i really not making space for my k part of that. but so is opting out of the madness that is attached to what