Report slams heavy focus on school testing
Says methods handcuff teachers, don’t boost learning
As Congress and the Obama administration weigh a major reform of education policy, the government should overhaul testing methods that have handcuffed teacher creativity and done little to boost student achievement, according to a new report from the National Research Council.
“Incentive programs” in the decade-old No Child Left Behind law — with school districts being rewarded or punished based on standardized test scores — have improved student performance in key subject areas by less than 1 percentage point when using benchmarks set by the National Assessment of Education Progress, an arm of the Education Department.
Assessments designed to both measure student achievement and determine school funding levels simply don’t work, the report’s authors argued.
“The No. 1 message is, you can’t assess the system with the same test you use to pass out rewards,” said Michael Hout, a sociology professor