Interview with Terry Davidson, Director of the Annual Michigan School Testing Conference
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Terry Davidson. Terry has been the Director of the Michigan School Testing Conference for the past eight years, and he is here, today, to talk to us about the 2008 Conference which was held this past February in Ann Arbor. Welcome Terry, it's great to have you on the show.
Terry Davidson: Thanks Rob, it's good to be here. Thanks for asking me.
Rob Huisingh: Terry, I understand that you retired about five years ago; why don't you tell us a little bit about your educational background and experience.
Terry Davidson: Sure. Well first, before I got involved in the field of education as a professional, I was born and raised in a small town on the Upper Peninsula, and came and did my undergraduate work in the mid 50's at the University of Michigan. That led to a high school teaching of mathematics position in Los Angeles and I spent a couple of years out there doing that. Then had an opportunity to come back at the government's expense and do my Doctorate. I was never a finance major but that sounded like a good deal to me. So I came back to the University of Michigan and did my doctoral work in the mid to later 60's at the University of Michigan.
My field is Research Design & Statistics in Education. So I am, as some people refer it to, a "quantoid". That makes me, I think, familiar with and to some extent comfortable dealing with numbers; but anybody that has spent time in the classroom understands that it's not all numbers either. So assessment to me came to mean things that included testing but went beyond the typical, traditional notion of large-scale testing. When we get to talk about the conference, in a minute, I'll tell you a little bit how that definition has brought about some changes in the conference recently.
In any event, when I finished my doctoral work, I did my doctoral dissertation as a part of a nationwide Study of Adolescent Boys, a seven-year longitudinal design, launched out of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan. Once I completed my doctoral work, I was hired as a member of the staff at the Survey Research Center in the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and spent at least part of the next 20 years of my life doing research at ISR. But along the way I began to do teaching as well, in the Departments of Psychology and Sociology and the School of Literature Science and the Arts, and then eventually in the School of Education where I taught the doctoral student classes in Research Design, Philosophy of Social Science, Statistical Quantitative Analysis, those kinds of things.
So, basically, I had a foot both in the academic teaching portion of the University's work, as well as one in the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and therefore the research portion of the University's work.
One of the projects that I got involved with was a study of teaching and the role of teachers in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States where there are cultural differences that came to our attention as being worthy of study and that eventually led to a visiting professorship in Germany and I mention that because when I got back from the visiting professorship there was a note on my desk that one of my graduate students had called and while I was in Germany he had become Superintendent of Schools in Livonia. He was always telling me I was a person that needed to get out of the Ivory Tower and enter the real world. And after a period of time that led to my joining him in Livonia. So I actually left the University, after about 20 years, and went to work in public schools in Livonia. The last 20 years of my career, with the exception of four years, which I'll mention briefly in a moment, was with the Livonia's schools; two hitches roughly about eight years each.
So I worked with, Jim Carley was his name, as the Superintendent in Livonia on some very interesting work, and developed some techniques for doing some statistical forecasting of the size of the student population downstream which is helpful in doing educational planning. In fact, I am still doing that work as a consultant for the Livonia schools. And along the way, left for about five years to come up to Michigan State and worked with the woman who was then Dean of the School of Education on a project called the Michigan Partnership for New Education. That organization was folded while I was up there but immediately the same day it ceased to exist as an organization, and another one existed to take its place.
So I stayed working on those kinds of issues in educational reform, basically, until someone in Livonia became Superintendent and asked me to come back to a Cabinet position as the Director of Research and Evaluation for the district. So I went back to Livonia and five years ago almost to the day, retired from the Livonia Schools. So basically that's my career, about half of it with higher education and the other half with public school work.
Rob Huisingh: Terry, for a moment, I would like you to take a step back from the conference itself and let's talk about the big picture. What's going on today with testing and assessment in Michigan Schools?
Terry Davidson: Certainly, if you look at our own state assessment tool, we know affectionately called MEAP and how it got started, it got started by the way under the direction of the State Deputy Superintendent in those days who is Phil Kearney and under the direction, from a psychometric perspective of a then young fellow by the name of Ed Raiber who is also on our Planning Committee.
But in any event, it got started not because of any political desire or pressure or anything of that sort. But because policy makers, universities and to some extent in the state government realized that they didn't have a very good picture of what the achievement levels were of children in the state. And there were some promises made when MEAP first came in to being that are now ancient history and no longer honored about how no school would be identified if schools agreed to participate in all this and so on and so forth. It's come a long ways and where it's come is in part an answer to your question - there are demands for accountability from many, many different sources and of many different kinds that increase the attention being given to assessments of wide varieties and sort but particularly large scales assessments and quantitative assessment - state and federal.
There are challenges along the way that come from that because the assumptions that some of the legislation is based on about what teachers and practicing educators know about administering, analyzing, and interpreting assessment data may not be warranted. And so one of the things we try to do with the conference is to shore up some of the areas where we are pretty sure people out there need help. But one of the major things that's happened to large-scale assessment in the 40-year history basically at MEAP is that's it's become increasing politicized.
Now quite apart from the politics one could argue and many do, many scholars argue that there's a need for accountability anyway. But the fact that there's an increasing pressure for accountability and the fact that pressure at least in some cases manifests itself through political means, brings about some demands on public school educators to both gather and utilize assessment data that weren't there certainly to any degree when the Conference started and when MEAP started.
Certainly in the last eight years since the advent of No Child Left Behind the federal government has gotten in to that act as well and that brings about pressures sometimes on the states themselves and sometimes directly on the schools, but even though the pressures that are mounted from Washington and end up hitting Lansing, certainly get reflected in the public schools. So I think the whole business of the increased demand for accountability, the role that assessment can and should, and sometimes does, play in accountability models is one of the issues that has changed dramatically; I don't think it's going to go away, doesn't matter who's president or anything that pressure is going to be there.
So we have to recognize it or whether or not we think it's well intentioned, no matter what the legislation is and whether we think it's well formulated we have to recognize it produces demands on our practicing educators and those people in many cases, at least, need some help in meeting those demands, that's one thing. So essentially if you look at the themes for our 2009 conference, the whole reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which by February of next year, at least, should have taken shape to some degree. Exactly what kinds of changes, there will be, no question, there will be some changes in the legislation. What are those changes going to be and what implications do they have for our practicing educators here in Michigan? That's certainly something we are going to focus on.
I would say that's no different in Michigan than it is in other states, the way we are handling it may be a little different. And I would say that in Michigan as well as in most other states another theme that's ongoing and will continue to be ongoing for at least the foreseeable future that will impact us at the conference level, will be the High School Reform sets of laws and regulations and so on and so forth. Michigan, kind of, is looked on, nationally, as one of the leaders in this high school area; we're out of the blocks first, if not first we are out of the blocks early. And so other people are, kind of, looking to us to see where we are making it, where we are not, what kinds of changes are brought about and that's another thing that we will focus on in the 2009 conference and I suspect in the 2010, 2011, 2012 and so on, and that one is not going away either.
Behind both of those I think we have to, no matter what are feelings are about education and policy and things of that sort, we have to recognize the world is changing, we need to be objective about the fact that not everything that goes on in public schools is good and not everything is bad either. The real question is, how can we improve what we are doing and assessment certainly of different kinds can play an integral role in that. So I think those are, at least, a couple of things happening in Michigan that draw attention to assessment of the sort that we deal with at the conference.
Rob Huisingh: Terry, there seems to be a mixed view. Some people see testing and assessment as an essential tool for understanding the efficacy of schools. Other see it as focusing rather too much attention on only those areas that are testable - specifically thinking of arts, music, performing arts, creativity, these areas; what are your thoughts on it?
Terry Davidson: Well, I believe the primary distinction between subject matter areas, such as mathematics and English and those such as performing arts and physical education and so on, is not that some of those things can be assessed and others can't or measured or evaluated or whatever term you want to use. It's just that we have been doing the assessments longer in math and history and social studies and English and so on than we have in the others; but there is much to be learned by looking at how assessments do take place in the performing arts, because believe me they do. They take place in physical education, and sometimes there is much to learn by looking there and seeing whether we can borrow some of those ideas and expand what assessments mean above and beyond a standardized testing.
I am supporter of standardized testing; let me say that from the get-go. I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water, but I do believe in looking above and beyond that. There is more to what we might be assessing than standardized tests of the sort that we now have, pick up. So to me, I guess, down there anything can be assessed or measured if we put our minds to and if it's important enough to do, but maybe not the same way that we do standardized testing with paper and pencil instruments, so that's number one.
As far as the degree of emphasis placed on testing, I guess, I waffle a little on this myself. To some extent I am aware and I suspect many of us are of the potential danger of trying to put so much emphasis on assessment in so many different areas and so many different grades that there's precious little time left for a creative teacher to move beyond whatever is being assessed that year; and we certainly have moved in that direction in the last several years. So I think the danger comes in being oblivious to it. Once we become aware of that possibility, I think we have to find ways, and there are ways of dealing with the issue before it gets to the point where there isn't any room left for an effective creative teacher to really instill the love of learning in a child. Some people think we have already gotten there. Maybe we have, I don't necessarily think that, but I recognize the potential danger in arriving at that point.
So there are different kinds of assessments for different kinds of reasons. There are lots of different design approaches that could be used, such as not doing every subject matter every year, and using matrix designs and things of that sort, which would reduce the amount of testing time on any one child in a given year and still produce the policy data necessary if we have a mind to do that. So if we recognize that we are reaching that point where too much time is being put in to preparing students to take tests and taking tests, then I think we need to turn our attention to alternative ways to still gather the data that's useful.
Ultimately, any test data that are collected, as far as I am concerned, need to be justified, and the primary justification for it, if I am a School Superintendent, has to do with gathering assessment data that help local classroom teachers make intelligent decisions about the effectiveness of their instruction, that's number one. I understand the State wants data and all the rest of that and I think there are ways to get that, but we can't lose sight of the fact that if we take teachers away from their primary task and don't arm them with the kind of data necessary to make intelligent decisions about what's effective instruction for each and every student in their class, we have lost the battle.
So I don't necessarily espouse the notion that we have reached the tipping point, but I do recognize the possibility that we will reach that, and I think we have to be sensitive to that.
Rob Huisingh: Terry, who should attend the conference?
Terry Davidson: Well I have already kind of answered that, but let me see if I can be a little bit more specific. The simple answer to your question is practicing educators - that is classroom teachers, building principals, curriculum directors, to some extent Superintendents, Board members, and we draw some from all of those.
One of the unfortunate things in the last few years is the proportion of people attending our conference, our classroom teachers has dropped. They are still the largest number, and I understand the reasons that they've dropped. They are partly financial, but I suppose eventually everything is financial, but part of it has to do with the facts that the funds that used to be made available for classroom teachers to attend conferences during the school year, some of those funds are no longer there or if they are there, they're not there in the same order of magnitude anymore. So it's becoming increasingly difficult, but a somewhat hidden problem, financial in its origins as well, is the fact that it's increasingly difficult to find substitutes, and therefore, even if you have the financial means to release the teacher to come to a conference, you have to find somebody to do the job of instructing the children that, that teacher usually teaches, and that's not as easy as it might seem.
So those two factors, I think, both of which, I hope, are temporary and have produced a very interesting phenomenon in that our attendance, numerically, at the conference which typically runs somewhere in the mid 300s has really not dropped, but the mix of people coming has changed. So we are tending to draw proportionally more people from central office positions, especially in curriculum as we have moved some of the emphasis of the conference in to instructionally relevant assessments and expanded what we do in those arenas. I think that there's a challenge for us not to let that drop-off in classroom teacher attendance get a whole lot lower than it is, because if you go back to the history I just gave you of the conference, those were the primary people we focused on in the outset. So there is a potential issue there.
Now I also should say that one of the things we are beginning to try to do a better job of is to involve graduate students in our universities in this conference, and a few of the people who are on my Planning Committee from Michigan State, University of Michigan, and are starting to find ways to make that happen. We have long ways to go. I think graduate students, by the time they get out of their graduate programs, ought to have some experience about professional development and how it really happens. By that time, they will have attended conferences but most of them will have given precious little thought to how that conference was put together, and once they walk out of that University with a degree part of their responsibility is going to be to help make those things happen.
So there are lots of different ways to involve graduate students and so we used to have virtually none, we still have only a few dozen, but we are moving in the right direction, so graduate students who are interested in real issues of assessment in public schools would certainly find it profitable to attend.
Now in addition to that, No Child Left Behind and a lot of the reform legislation in Michigan certainly require building principals and Central Office Administrators to know perhaps more than they currently know about assessment issues. We will have sessions that will be particularly aimed at those audiences as well. We typically don't draw many Superintendents to the conference although we always have a few, but in any event I would say that anybody with practical assessment needs on their plate would find something of value there.
Then finally, we tend always to draw pretty heavily from specialists in our intermediate school districts. Many of them have assessment relevant tasks that they need to be working with their teachers on and their districts on if they're working at the district level. So they both contribute to our program as well as, I think, derive benefit from it. The focus, as I said from the get-go, is on the practicing issues of assessment. If you have any of those or if you think you are going to next year be assigned some tasks that have that kind of focus, our conference is for you.
Rob Huisingh: The last conference was held in Ann Arbor and it was in February. When and where is the next Conference or do we know yet?
Terry Davidson: Yes, as of two days ago we know. It will be held, again, this year for the 9th consecutive year at the Kensington Court Hotel in Ann Arbor just off State Street. We have been there for nine years, although the name of the hotel has changed three time; we have not. It is currently called the Kensington Court Hotel. It's a very nice site for the conference and we like it a lot. The particular dates are February 23, 24, and 25. 23rd is a Monday and then 24th, 25th, obviously, is Tuesday and Wednesday.
The conference, as people historically think of it, will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. One of the things that we added about five years ago was based on an examination of our own evaluation data. It was possible to determine some dissatisfaction having to do with topics that didn't lend themselves to 75 minute sessions, which is the length of our breakout session.
We realized that we didn't want to meet those needs concurrently with running the conference, because then you force people to make a decision about whether you're going to go over here or whether you're going to go with the conference which was already meeting needs as far as we could tell pretty well.
So we added a Monday, and Monday is a very different day for us. Monday consists of workshops, hands-on experiences in different areas of assessment where people actually get hands-on training.
For the last three years, I have brought in a woman from New Hampshire who has done an all-day workshop for us on what's called classroom assessment or common assessment. People sometimes refer to these as 'effect of assessments', that's a bit of it misnomer, but the fact is not large scale standardized tests but the kinds of things that teachers can and maybe should be doing to help them make intelligent instructional decisions, so the topics vary.
This past year we even put together a half-day workshop focused on what are the legislative mandates in Michigan that have assessment implications. So Monday basically we have workshops, some of them are half-day; some of them are full day, and people may register for those separately from the conference traditional Tuesday, Wednesday sessions.
So those are the dates, that's the site, the theme will be Assessment in the K-12 Learning Environment which is a fairly broad-scaled topic. As I indicated, some of the strands that will run thought it will have to do with the reauthorization of NCLB and the implications of that.
Rob Huisingh: Terry, I want to thank you for taking the time to be on our show; it's been a pleasure, and I hope you'll join us again.
Terry Davidson: Well thank you. I appreciate the invitation; I look forward to the next one.
Rob Huisingh: If you'd like to learn more about the 2009 Michigan School Testing Conference, PDF of the 2008 Event Details are available at the MIEM website. The MIEM website can be found at www.gomiem.org; again that URL is www.gomiem.org. If you have questions about the conference administration, you can contact Terry out at his home office at (734) 975-9354; again that telephone number is (734) 975-9354.
If you have a story about something of interest that concerns Michigan education, well if you do, we invite you to send us your thoughts. You can find us online at www.insidemieducation.com. Until next week this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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