Do We Need 95% of Students to Take Tests?
Is the 95 percent participation in yearly testing, of all students, in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) justified? We need to know.
Currently a conference committee is putting together a replacement for NCLB ( ESEA reauthorization) but, as it stands, it will continue to mandate yearly standardized testing of all students with the 95 percent participation rate unmistakably emphasized.
Clearly, I have an opinion aboutstandardized testing but I have been willing to explore other points of view while considering that I could be wrong. So in looking to find official information on the topic, I ran across an article titled “Why We Need 95% of Students to Take Tests.”As I read it, I became confused.
Were parents ever…
“begging for their kids to be tested”
…as Stephenie Johnson wrote?
After 13 years of data collection under NCLB, does the public know how the data was used and what value it had in school improvement? Maybe the public no longer realizes that the original ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) intended to help provide a level playing field for children from low-income families.
My schools are schools with a high concentration of such children. I know what I saw in my own district.
Have I…
“forgotten what happened before participation was required”?
I have not. Before participation in yearly externally developed standardized testing was required by federal law for all children, we were making progress in my schools by focusing on correcting the mistakes that were made with reading and math instruction…for the students, based on those students, and based on individual school differences.
We already knew we had problems and which schools were having the most problems.Do We Need 95% of Students to Take Tests? - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice: