Debate over standardized testing is focusing on the wrong questions
The education debate should not be over whether students spend too must time testing, but on which tests are actually useful to teachers and improving instruction. Then we need to make district, state, and federal policy decisions based on this information.
In February, a Massachusetts kindergarten teacher publicly resigned from her position citing the school system’s emphasis on standardized testing.
As a parent, former teacher, and head of Teach Plus, an organization that puts teachers at the center of school and system-level reform, I was glad to see her story generate overwhelming interest.
Americans should be looking closely at educational testing and asking tough questions. But this means that we need to ask more than simply, “Are our kids being tested too much or too little?”
The debate over standardized testing in America’s public schools is too often framed around problematic black and white stances. Tests are neither the destroyers of the art of teaching and meaningful student learning nor are they the panacea for measuring and raising teacher performance and student achievement.
If we’re really asking the tough questions about testing, we need to know which tests are the good ones – those that can give teachers the information they need to help students succeed. And we need to make district, state, and federal policy decisions based on this information.
SURPRISING FINDINGS
This February, Teach Plus released a key report on testing, “The Student and the Stopwatch: How Much Time do American Students Spend on Testing?” – the first of its kind. Our findings surprised us and will probably surprise most people attuned to the current testing debate.
Across 12 urban districts, from Boston to Los Angeles, the average amount of time students spend taking state and district tests is just 1.7 percent of the school year. This means that, on average, third-grade and