Students Stuck in Maze of Testing
Exams in just a sampling of districts were given more than 6,570 times last school year, a new study finds.
A landmark study of the country’s largest urban school districts shows students are caught in a dizzying web of federal, state and local tests, and nearly everybody in the education community is to blame.
“Everybody has had a hand in what our current testing system looks like,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 66 urban school districts and spent the last two years analyzing the number of tests those districts gave in the 2014-2015 school year.
“Lots of people I know have pointed fingers at each other, and we have concluded that they were all correct,” he said.
On average, students in the school districts were required to take 112 tests from the time they entered pre-K through grade 12, though that number does not include optional tests or those required specifically by a school alone.
Overall, students sat for tests more than 6,570 times. Students in eighth grade spent the most time taking tests – approximately four days, or 2.3 percent of their school year.
The testing burden, the report found, was particularly high at the high school level, although much of that testing was optional and included, for example, college entry exams like the SAT or ACT.
“This report really represents an opportunity to recalibrate our assessments structure,” said Richard Carranza, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District. “It’s time to weed the garden.”
The report comes on the heels of guidance from the Department of Education that recommends states and school districts evaluate their current testing regimens and eliminate any exams deemed ineffective or duplicative – a move that was cheered by the two national teachers unions and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The federal government requires states to test students 17 times before graduation: annually in math and reading in grades 3 through 8, once in those subjects during high school, and then once in science during elementary, middle and high school.
But the No Child Left Behind Act, the current version of the federal K-12 law, is largely blamed for ushering in an era of high-stakes testing to the public education system. The accountability at the heart of the law required states to ensure a specific percentage of students was proficient in reading and math each year, and each year that percentage had to increase.
If states didn’t reach annual proficiency goals, they could be subject to a series of sanctions. And that type of accountability system resulted in states and school districts piling on their own tests to ensure Study: Students Burdened By Local, State and Federal Tests - US News:
