Schools Matter: The Astonishing Increase in Testing

Schools Matter: The Astonishing Increase in Testing:

The Astonishing Increase in Testing

by skrashen

Sent to the New York Times, July 6, 2012

There is little reason to celebrate waivers from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (“No Child’ Law Whittled Down by White House,” July 6).
NCLB’s “obsessive focus on test results” will be much worse under new regulations: The new Common Core Standards calls for an astonishing increase in testing. 
NCLB requires standardized tests in math and reading at the end of the school year in grades 3-8 and once in high school. This will be expanded to testing in more subjects (social studies, science and maybe more), and in more grade levels. There will also be interim tests given during the year and there may be pretests in the fall to measure growth through the school year. 
This means about a 20-fold increase over NCLB, more testing than has ever been seen on this planet. 
There is no evidence that all this testing will improve things. In fact, the evidence we have now strongly suggests