High-Stakes Testing, a Podcast From Humankind
By Bond Collard.
High-stakes standardized tests are a fact of life in the American education system. The tests were widely adopted through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, passed under President George W. Bush.
Standardized testing in schools was supposed to provide a metric for how well children were learning. Today, there is a rapidly growing movement of families and educators opting out of standardized tests, saying they want the testing to stop and are working to develop new ways to track educational progress.
“High-Stakes Testing” is the latest episode from public radio program Humankind and is now available as a free podcast for a limited time.
In this episode, award-winning producer David Freudberg focuses on the protests against standardized testing and explores students’ experiences with alternative teaching methods through a series of interviews with educators, parents and students.
Ann Cook, the executive director of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, echoes many educators who feel that extensive testing has marginalized important academic content in the process, saying there is “a drop off in kids understanding government and society, and history.” She then adds, “there are lots of subject areas that students aren’t exposed to, lots of activities that students aren’t exposed to, and lots of approaches that don’t lend themselves to testing.”
Teachers are not alone in their disapproving stance on test-based evaluations. At Urban Academy in New York City, which does not administer tests, numerous students also speak unfavorably about their own experiences with standardized testing.
Elliot Garcia, a former Urban Academy student now studying computer science at Bard College, says that High-Stakes Testing, a Podcast From Humankind - Living in Dialogue: