Are We Winning?
The Obama administration’s new rhetoric on testing shows the tide may be turning against corporate education reformers.
ast year, students in Washington DC sat for exactly 6,750 tests. The average American student takes approximately 112 tests between pre-K and twelfth grade (yes, pre-K, when one’s senses of space, self, and time are still developing).
Those figures are out this week from the DC-based Council of the Great City School (CGCS), which conducted a comprehensive two-year study documenting the types, uses, and frequency of the city’s standardized tests. Decades into a relentlessly ambitious program of testing and accountability for America’s school children, we finally have data on the data.
Produced by an organization whose corporate advisory group counts Apple and Pearson (hardly radical anti-testing voices) among its members, the report finds that state tests are redundant, with multiple tests being administered at the same time to evaluate the same things; that they “do not tell us everything that’s important about a child”; and that they are being used for purposes for which they were not designed.
In other words, the report confirms what parents and educators have been saying about standardized testing for decades.
The report’s authors recommend revising the US Department of Education’s policy of tying test scores to teacher evaluations and affirm the need to address racial, cultural, and linguistic bias in tests. For example, they suggest a one-year testing exemption for recently arrived English Language Learners, who are presently assessedduring the first round of exams after entering school.
In anticipation of the report’s release, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — a longtime cheerleader for standardized tests who made linking teacher evaluations to student performance a condition for receiving Race to the Top funds — asked Congress on Saturday to “reduce over-testing” and put a cap on test-taking time.
“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” Duncan said. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned with an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”
Duncan’s announcement should not be seen as a surrender, an about-face, or a dramatic policy shift from President Obama’s Department of Education, as some corporate reform opponents have hoped. Duncan has called for making tests more efficient and more effective before, all the while affirming the underlying values of choice, competition, and self-discipline that orient our public education system today.
Moreover, Duncan’s proposed cap — limiting testing time to 2 percent of instructional time — does not represent a significant decrease from the current level. The issue is not just the hours students spend physically taking exams, but the ethos that underpins it.
When high-stakes, hyper-competitive demonstrations of individual competence are the method of determining what and how teachers should teach — and assessing what students have learned — how likely is it that cooperative learning, problem-based teaching, and portfolio assessment will occur in the classroom?
On the first day of school this year, when I asked my classes of ten-year-olds what their aspirations were for the school year, many replied that they wanted to do well on state tests. Before giving the high-stakes exams, several colleagues warned me that kids might cry or vomit (as they did last year).
Even if the adults are not willing to be honest about the logic of testing, the children understand what’s at stake in a system where schools serve as an occupational sorting ground, separating the Are We Winning? | Jacobin:
