Execessive Testing Is a Dangerous Obsession - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Execessive Testing Is a Dangerous Obsession - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Testing Students to Grade Teachers

What do we know about using student achievement tests to judge teacher performance?

A Dangerous Obsession

Updated May 30, 2011, 07:00 PM

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she is co-director of the Stanford Center on Opportunity Policy in Education. She was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and she led President Obama’s education policy transition team.

There is a saying that U.S. students are the most tested, and the least examined, of any in the world. American policymakers are quick to turn to testing to cure whatever problems they think exist in schools. Because teachers’ judgment is mistrusted, we test students in the United States more than any other nation, in the mistaken belief that testing produces greater learning.

Top-scoring countries in student achievement, like Finland and Korea, have eliminated crowded testing schedules and improved their scores by doing so.

However, nations like Finland and Korea -- top scorers on the Programme for International Student Assessment -- formally test students only in the 12th grade, to inform college admissions, having eliminated the crowded testing schedules used decades ago when these nations were much lower-achieving. Other high-achievers typically test students but once in elementary and/or middle school to