Poll: Americans Want Less Standardized Testing and More School Funding
Whether it’s used as a tool to measure student progress or evaluate teachers, standardized testing continues to fall out of favor with the majority of the American public. According to the 2015 PDK/Gallup Survey of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 64 percent of Americans (and 67 percent of public school parents) say there is “too much emphasis on testing.” Only 14 percent rated standardized testing as a “very important ” factor in measuring school effectiveness, and 55 percent (66 percent of parents) oppose test scores being used to evaluate teacher performance.
The results reflect the growing momentum in communities across the nation as parents and educators have joined forces to demand less testing and more time to learn. And lawmakers at every level of government are finally getting the message.
“The high stakes obsession of test and punish has only served to widen the gap between the schools in the wealthiest districts and those in the poorest,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. “We must reduce the emphasis on standardized tests that have corrupted the quality of the education children receive. The pressure placed on students and educators is enormous.”
“When you send your child to school, your expectation is that the school is going to teach the whole child,” Chiquikta Fountain, a public school parent in Cleveland, MS. told PDK International. “But there’s so much funding attached to testing. if we don’t do well on testing, then we’re going to lose funding, which means we’re going to lose teachers. So teachers are being pressured to teach the children to pass the test. Everything has just spiraled out of control.”
One of the biggest education stories of 2015 has been the burgeoning “Opt-Out” movement of parents who want the right to pull their children out of state mandated standardized testing. It was recently reported, for example, that 200,000 grade 3-8 students in New York state refused to take statewide tests in Reading and Math for the 2014-15 school year. According to the PDK/Gallup survey, however, the public is split on this issue. Forty-one percent said parents should be allowed to excuse their child from standardized testing, while 44 percent said they should not be allowed. (Fifty-nine percent of Americans said they would not excuse their own child.)
“NEA fully supports parents and supports our affiliates who take a stand against tests that serve no educational purpose,” says García. “But making it easier for parents to opt out is not the end game. The end game is designing a system where parents and educators don’t even consider opting out of assessments because they trust that assessments make sense, guide instruction, and help children advance in learning.”
The public named lack of financial support as the biggest problem facing local public schools and rated school funding as “somewhat” or “very” important Poll: Americans Want Less Standardized Testing and More School Funding - NEA Today:
