Part 1 : High Stakes Testing and Opting Out: A Short History
High Stakes Testing: A Short History
“…I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.We have come far from that time in the ’60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, “We are learning how to do good on the tests.” They did not say they were learning to read.It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test.”-An excerpt from An Open Letter to Arne Duncan by Herb Kohl.
As this quote by Herb Kohl denotes, the emphasis on testing has created a culture of test takers and test givers in our public schools. This focus on testing leads to unnecessary pressure on students to perform well on a standardized test. It causes a teacher to emphasize a narrow scope of material. It leaves little