Tests Fail South's Legacy of Inequity
harlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) Superintendent Heath Morrison along with Montgomery County Schools (MD) Superintendent Joshua Starr has challenged the costs of pursuing once again new standards and (more) state high-stakes tests:
"'I am very troubled by the amount of testing we are being asked to do,' Morrison told The Charlotte Observer editorial board. 'We can teach our way to the top, but we cannot test our way to the top. We’re getting ready in the state of North Carolina to put out 177 new exams.'"Begun in the early 1980s, an accountability era has entrenched standards and high-stakes testing in education so deeply that few are willing or capable of stepping back from these practices in order to consider the incredible costs in time and funding that standards- and test-based school reform incur despite a record of failure each time that paradigm is retooled.
While Starr has received national and warranted praise for his call to institute a moratorium on high-stakes testing, Morrison's challenges signal an important opportunity to examine how test-