A better way to evaluate students and schools
My guest is Monty Neill, interim executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, known as FairTest, a non-profit organization that works to end the flaws and misuse of standardized testing.
By Monty Neill
Polls show that most Americans agree we need a better way to assess students and evaluate schools. The question is, what should we do? Any new system must provide reasonable accountability and use assessments that improve student learning and school quality. It must also get us out of the downward spiral of producing schools that do little more than teach children how to fill in bubbles on multiple-choice tests.
By Monty Neill
Polls show that most Americans agree we need a better way to assess students and evaluate schools. The question is, what should we do? Any new system must provide reasonable accountability and use assessments that improve student learning and school quality. It must also get us out of the downward spiral of producing schools that do little more than teach children how to fill in bubbles on multiple-choice tests.
FairTest and our allies propose a robust and effective assessment and evaluation system that would include three key components: limited large-scale standardized testing, extensive school-based evidence of learning, and a school quality review process.
Large-scale tests. Many nations with better and more equal education outcomes test only one to three times before high school graduation and largely avoid multiple-choice questions. The emphasis is on quality, not quantity. Better tests would help U.S. schools, but based on criteria set by the Department of Education, the next batch of tests aren’t likely to be much better than current ones. And we’d still waste time and
