The Ethics of Testing Children Solely To Evaluate Adults
The recent New York Times article, “Tests for Pupils, but the Grades Go to Teachers,” alerts us of an emerging paradox in education – the development and use of standardized student testing solely as a means to evaluate teachers, not students. “We are not focusing on teaching and learning anymore; we are focusing on collecting data,” says one mother quoted in the article. Now, let’s see: collecting data on minors that is not explicitly for their benefit – does this ring a bell?
In the world of social/behavioral science research, such an enterprise – collecting data on people, especially on minors – would inevitably require approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). For those not familiar, IRB is a committee that oversees research that involves people and is responsible for ensuring that studies are designed in an ethical manner. Even in conducting a seemingly harmless interview on political attitudes or observing a group studying in a public library, the researcher would almost certainly be required to go through a series of steps to safeguard participants and ensure that the norms governing ethical research will be observed.
Very succinctly, IRBs’ mission is to see that (1) the risk-benefit ratio of conducting the research is favorable; (2) any suffering or distress that participants may experience during or after the study is understood, minimized, and