Ditch the Test-and-Punish Model
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act started out with good intentions to help improve schools and student performance. But it took a wrong turn in both delivering the funding promised, and in creating, because it focused on the sanctions imposed if student test scores failed to show “adequate yearly progress,” a test-and-punish model of schooling. The law, combined with the greater evaluation and testing requirements of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, inspired today’s misuse and overuse of testing. This obsession with testing has all but eclipsed the rich and robust instruction, the engagement of students and the enjoyment of learning that should be going on in every classroom in America.
Public educators’ obligation is to help all children succeed. This is especially important and challenging given that half of all public school students live in poverty. A rich, robust, well-resourced public education is one of the best routes out of poverty and a pathway to prosperity. Yet the test-driven system is not working, and worse, it’s creating a lot of agita for students and gobbling up a lot of learning time.
For instance, an American Federation of Teachers study found that the time students spend taking tests ranges from 20 to 50 hours per year in heavily tested grades. Students can spend 60 to more than 110 hours per year in test prep in high-stakes testing grades.
Why do we see little evidence that school districts’ hyper-testing has paid off?
The rate of progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card, for grades four and eight was generally faster in the decade before No Child Left Behind took effect than since its launch. This has been consistent for overall results and for individual demographic groups, including black students, English language learners and students with disabilities.
The United States is one of the only countries that has annual high-stakes testing. Yet the results of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for International Student Assessment consistently show flat performance by U.S. students. Instead of asking why this performance is stagnant, some use it as a hammer to bludgeon public schools as well as their students and teachers.
Those assessments ask students to apply knowledge. While the top-ranked nations focus on that educational approach, the United States focuses instead on rote memorization of facts and figures. American school systems use multiple-choice exams and buy canned programs, sapping teachers of the authority and flexibility to use their judgment to meet the needs of their students.
The Common Core State Standards, and aligned curriculum and assessments, were supposed to usher in an era of change where we, like our OECD counterparts, help all students learn to apply their knowledge and to use problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. But implementation of the Common Core has been wildly flawed. Rather than provide the supports, resources and time teachers and students need to succeed with the new, higher standards, school districts have rushed to attach high-stakes consequences to the new tests – and now, they face a huge backlash and a growing parent opt-out movement.
Research has found that even when students improve their scores on standardized tests, they don’t always improve their cognitive abilities, such as memory, attention and speed. When student performance shows increases on test scores, that improvement is not associated with an increase in “fluid intelligence” – that is, using logical thinking and problem solving in novel situations, rather than recalling previously learned facts and skills.
Beyond these cognitive skills, students also need social and emotional skills – trust, teamwork, persistence, confidence – to succeed in life and career. The OECD recently found that these skills can lead to greater health and behavioral outcomes for students. They also found that this type of learning can be successfully measured, not by high-stakes tests but by teacher observations, student surveys and performance-based assessments. Indeed, student classwork and grades may be the best indicator of this.
It’s time to stop this hyper-testing, sanction-based accountability system. Even the OECD, which administers the Program for International Student Assessment tests, agrees, noting that while U.S. performance data “is often used for purely accountability purposes, other countries tend to give greater Ditch the Test-and-Punish Model - US News:
