The Online Testing of Childhood

When the focus of teaching centers around the performance on a test, it does not inspire learning.

In schools across the country, students in most grades are taking online computerized adaptive tests (CAT’s) at least 3 times a year in the name of “progress monitoring” for both math and reading. This is in addition to state wide testing that typically occurs in the spring for grades 3 through 8. So roughly 12 of a student's 180 school days are used for what feels like high stakes testing sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time. The data for US students' reading and math skills have been declining since 2013, so who is benefiting from all this testing and at what cost is it to children and their mental health?

Dr. Peter Gray writes about the effect of constant monitoring on his substack Letter #41. How the Leash Chokes the Spirit. In it, he challenges the adult reader to imagine if they were constantly monitored for their own good by others.  His letter refers to social monitoring of children but I couldn’t help but think about children in school, where their performance is constantly being evaluated in the name of “progress monitoring” and what this does to their spirit.

The push for increased testing of students in the name of “progress monitoring” stems from organizations such as the Northwest Evaluation Association or NWEA, as it is now called. It was originally formed in 1977, clearly before computers dominated the education scene and originally pushed to monitor the progress of students with disabilities. In 2004, with the introduction of Response to Intervention (RTI), there became a need to develop screening tools to evaluate all students and determine which ones were struggling.

Surely, the idea of progress monitoring plays a positive role in education.  Teachers should monitor the progress of their students to ensure that they are learning the skills necessary to succeed and move forward in school. If done right, it can provide valuable information for both the student and the teacher. Lately though it seems as if it is too much of a good thing.

Using computers as a way to screen for reading and math has been around for decades. Around 2010, Star Reading and Star Math, a program through Accelerated Reader (now under the name Renaissance) was often used by educators to” progress monitor” students.  At that time, the tests often took less than 20 minutes and were done on a classroom computer.

According to Assessment Systems, “Computerized adaptive testing is an AI-based approach to assessment where the test is personalized based on your performance as you take the test, making the test shorter, more accurate, more secure, more engaging, and fairer.  If you do well, the items get more difficult, and if you do poorly, the items get easier”

Essentially, Algorithms are used to “personalize” a test while the student is engaged in the testing.  Just like algorithms that are also used to determine what “personalized” videos to show in your instagram or TikToK feed.   Unfortunately, since the testing is done online, teachers are unable to see students' responses to understand how and why a child might have made an error, something that is critical for teaching and learning. Instead a score is provided that measures a student's growth in a particular area.  

Interestingly, in a 2017 study of  more than 30,000 elementary, middle, and high school students researchers found “that elementary and middle school students scored lower on a computer-based test that did not allow them to return to previous items than on two comparable tests—paper- or computer-based—that allowed them to skip, review, and change previous responses.”

Over the past 10 years, the amount of time students spend taking these diagnostic or progress monitoring CAT’s has increased with little research demonstrating their worth. These sessions are done in the fall, winter and spring for both reading and math and take upwards of 2 hours for each assessment. The pressure placed on young learners to perform and continuously evaluate themselves can create an environment of constant surveillance and kids do not seem to be better off for it. 

What is driving all this Computer Adaptive Testing? 

In 2018, Khan Academy, a popular online math program, partnered with NWEA to develop the MAP Accelerator, a progress monitoring system. The MAP accelerator is described according to the NWEA website as “Available for grades 3–8, MAP Accelerator, part of the Personalized Math Solution from NWEA, reduces the manual work of differentiating math instruction by automatically integrating Clever class rosters, MAP® Growth™ scores, and Common Core-aligned Khan Academy content to generate learning pathways—complete with lessons, instructional videos, and practice problems.” This progress monitoring program is used by thousands of school districts across the county.

NWEA doesn’t just have its sights on testing, it also is connected to the curriculum.  Check out this visual from their website which clearly shows the connections:

In a 2019 press release, NWEA stated “the not-for-profit provider of assessment solutions, has been awarded two grants totaling $4.5 million to support the creation of innovative assessment solutions designed to provide educators with deeper, more useful information to enhance teaching and learning.  The grants were received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.” 

Not only has funding from Bill Gates influenced the development of the Common Core Standards created in 2010 and in 2015, the organization EdReports, which identifies which curriculum is considered high quality (a label that is used to determine which curriculum school districts can use), he is also funding the tools that are pushed for progress monitoring. In a nutshell, Gates funding has influenced the following:

1. The Federally mandated Common Core Standards in education (2010)

2. Organizations that evaluate and identify high quality curriculum materials(HQCM) that follows those Common Core Standards (2015, EdReports) 

3. Developed the MAP accelerator, a process used to measure student progress which then recommends which products(HQCM’s) to use based on their performance (2018, NWEA)

It really is a genius move.

Does all this testing cause more harm than good?  Setting aside the concerns that an algorithm is behind the evaluation of children, what does all this testing do to their mental health? Children in middle school and younger are all going through various important stages of development and growth. After witnessing elementary and middle school age children sit through hours worth of high stakes testing, I am convinced it is harmful and not developmentally appropriate nor do I think the test result yields valid data about a child's skill. 

The American Test Anxieties Association reports that upwards of 20% of all children experience test anxiety.  They describe this anxiety as “One of the most crippling aspects of test anxiety is the spiral of negative self-talk. Thoughts such as “I’m bound to fail” or “I’m just not cut out for this” can dominate the mind.”  I have heard these statements from my own children and many of the students I support. One can imagine that when a child experiences these feelings and thoughts frequently throughout the school year that it will have a negative impact on their well being.

Students are also encourage to constantly evaluate their performance and create goals using fancy charts like this one:

Sadly, many students internalize their self worth based on their performance on these evaluations.  Since they have their own school issued device, they also have access to their scores anytime they log in to these programs, for a constant reminder of what they often view as failure or not making enough progress.

When the focus of teaching centers around the performance on a test, it does not inspire learning.  A casual comparison of  the 2 charts below, on top showing the rise of self harm in teens versus on the bottom showing the rise in profits for edtech companies, one can’t help but wonder if the 2 are more related than we realize.

If we only truly looked at the data from the last ten years…

As an educator, I find it interesting that when it is revealed that learning or testing through an online format yields worse results, the answer that we hear is that kids must need more tech. This was the case in 2015 when Rhode Island gave the state assessment that year in both a digital and printed version.  The result, those that took the paper version of the test scored on average 17 points higher than those who took the online version. Yet the response from the then education commission, Ken Wagner, in the Providence Journal was "Increasing technology is the right way to go," he said. "People have assumed that if there is a difference in scores, that the online ones are too low. But one could argue that the paper scores are too high. It's not clear which is the right score."

Looking back at the decline in education since then, an argument can be made that the paper scores are not too high, rather it reflects the best way to measure a students skills. This meta-analysis from research spanning 20 years again reveals what most educators already know, reading print on paper improves comprehension.  If reading on paper is superior, then why are we teaching kids using computer screens?

There is a lot of attention surrounding the negative impact that social media and iPhones are having on childhood mental health. I am excited by the conversation and changes being made as a result of Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation. Check out his site, Free the Anxious Generation, for a variety of resources to help make changes in your school district. Entire states such as CA and large school districts across the country are vowing to make schools “phone free" as they recognize the negative impact these devices have on children and learning.  I hope that this movement will soon cause leaders and educators to look more critically at edtech. Once they do, they will also realize the negative impact that it has on children’s mental health and their ability to learn. Maybe then a “Device Free” school movement will occur!