As
teachers gear up for a new school year, I want to offer two thoughts.
One is a message of celebration and thanks. The other is a response to a
concern that has come up often in many conversations with teachers and
families, and which deserves an answer.
First, the thanks. America’s students have posted some unprecedented
achievements in the last year — the highest high-school graduation rate
in the nation’s history, and sharp cuts in dropout rates and increases
in college enrollment, especially for groups that in the past have
lagged significantly. For these achievements, we should celebrate
America’s teachers, principals and students and their families. These
achievements are also indications of deeper, more successful
relationships with our students. All of us who’ve worked with young
people know how much they yearn for adults to care about them and know
them as individuals.
These achievements come at a time of nearly unprecedented change in
American education — which entails enormously hard work by educators.
Nearly every state has adopted new standards, new assessments, new
approaches to incorporating data on student learning, and new efforts to
support teachers.
This transition represents the biggest, fastest change in schools
nationwide in our lifetime. And these efforts are essential to prepare
kids to succeed in an age when the ability to think critically and
creatively, communicate skillfully, and manipulate ideas fluently is
vital. I have heard from many teachers that they have not received all
the support they’d want during this transition. Yet America’s teachers
are making this change work — and I want to recognize and thank them for
that and
encourage their leadership in this time of change.
That’s the easy part of this message. The harder part has to do with concerns that many teachers have brought to my door.
My team and I hold regular conversations with teachers, principals
and other educators, often led by Teacher and Principal Ambassador
Fellows, who take a year away from their schools to advise my agency.
Increasingly, in those conversations, I hear concerns about standardized
testing.
Assessment of student progress has a fundamental place in teaching
and learning — few question that teachers, schools and parents need to
know what progress students are making. And few question the particular
importance of knowing how our most vulnerable students are progressing.
Indeed, there’s wide recognition that annual assessments — those
required by federal law — have done much to shine a light on the places
and groups of students most in need of help. Yet in too many places,
it’s clear that the yardstick has become the focus.
There are three main issues I’ve heard about repeatedly from educators:
- It doesn’t make sense to hold them accountable during this
transition year for results on the new assessments — a test many of them
have not seen before — and as many are coming up to speed with new
standards.
- The standardized tests they have today focus too much on basic skills, not enough on critical thinking and deeper learning.
- Testing — and test preparation — takes up too much time.
I share these concerns. And I want our department to be part of the solution.
To those who are reading the last sentence with surprise, let me be
clear: assessment is a vital part of teaching and learning, but it
should be one part (and
only one part) of how adults hold
themselves responsible for students’ progress. Schools, teachers and
families need and deserve clear, useful information about how their
students are progressing. As a parent of two children in public school, I
know I want that. And in fact, most teachers and principals I talk with
want to be held responsible for students’
progress — through
a sensible, smart combination of factors that reflect their work with
students — not the level students came in at, or factors outside of
their control.
But assessment needs to be done wisely. No school or teacher should
look bad because they took on kids with greater challenges. Growth is
what matters. No teacher or school should be judged on any one test, or
tests alone — always on a mix of measures — which could range from
classroom observations to family engagement indicators. In Nevada,
educators include a teacher’s contribution to the school community in
their measures; in Hawaii, schools consider student feedback surveys and
professional growth, such as leading workshops or taking university
coursework). Educators in Delaware look at measures of planning and
preparation such as lesson plans and descriptions of instructional
strategies to be used for students with diverse needs. Federal policy
rightly stays out of picking those individual measures, but ensures that
in evaluating teachers, states and districts include student growth,
and consider multiple measures.
But the larger issue is, testing should never be the main focus of
our schools. Educators work all day to inspire, to intrigue, to know
their students — not just in a few subjects, and not just in “academic”
areas. There’s a whole world of skills that tests can never touch that
are vital to students’ success. No test will ever measure what a student
is, or can be. It’s simply one measure of one kind of progress. Yet in
too many places, testing itself has become a distraction from the work
it is meant to support.
I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room
in a lot of schools — oxygen that is needed for a healthy transition to
higher standards, improved systems for data, better aligned
assessments, teacher professional development, evaluation and support
and more. This is one of the biggest changes education in this country
has ever seen, and teachers who’ve worked through it have told me it’s
allowed them to become the best teachers they’ve ever been. That change
needs educators’ full attention.
That’s why we will be taking action in the coming weeks that give
states more flexibility in key areas that teachers have said are causing
worry.
States will have the opportunity to request a delay in when test
results matter for teacher evaluation during this transition. As we
always have, we’ll work with them in a spirit of flexibility to develop a
plan that works, but typically I’d expect this to mean that states that
request this delay will push back by one year (to 2015-16) the time
when student growth measures based on new state assessments become part
of their evaluation systems — and we will work with states seeking other
areas of flexibility as well.
We want to make sure that they are still sharing growth data with
their teachers, and still moving forward on the other critical pieces of
evaluation systems that provide useful feedback to educators. We will
be working in concert with other educators and leaders to get this
right. These changes are incredibly important, and educators should not
have to make them in an atmosphere of worry. Some states will choose to
take advantage of that flexibility; others, especially those that are
well along in this transition, will not need a delay.
The bottom line is that educators deserve strong support as our
schools make vital, and urgently needed, changes. As many educators have
pointed out, getting this right rests also on high-quality assessments.
Many educators, and parents, have made clear that they’re supportive of
assessment that measures what matters — but that a lot of tests today
don’t do that — they focus too much on basic skills rather than problem
solving and critical thinking. That’s why we’ve committed a third of a
billion dollars to two consortia of states working to create new
assessments that get beyond the bubble test, and do a better job of
measuring critical thinking and writing.
I’m concerned, too, when I see places where adults are gaming tests, rather than using them to help students.
And we also need to recognize that in many places, the sheer quantity
of testing — and test prep — has become an issue. In some schools and
districts, over time tests have simply been layered on top of one
another, without a clear sense of strategy or direction. Where tests are
redundant, or not sufficiently helpful for instruction, they cost
precious time that teachers and kids can’t afford. Too much testing can
rob school buildings of joy, and cause unnecessary stress. This issue is
a priority for us, and we’ll continue to work throughout the fall on
efforts to cut back on over-testing.
There’s plenty of responsibility to share on these challenges, and a
fair chunk of that sits with me and my department. We encouraged states
to move a whole lot of changes simultaneously, because of the enormous
urgency to raise standards and improve systems of teacher support — not
for another generation of students, but for today’s students.
But in how this change happens, we need to listen carefully to the
teachers, principals and other educators who are living it on a daily
basis — and we need to be true to our promise to be tight on outcomes,
but loose on how we get there.
From my first day on this job, the objective has been to work in a
spirit of flexibility to help states and communities improve outcomes
for kids. We need to make changes, but we are also making progress. I’m
determined that, working in partnership, we’ll continue to do both – be
flexible and make progress for our kids.
Change is hard, and changes of significance rarely work exactly as
planned. But in partnership, making course alterations as necessary, we
will get there.
Arne Duncan is U.S. Secretary of Education
