Why Obama’s new plan to cap standardized testing won’t work
Let’s ignore the fact that in releasing its new “Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan,” the Obama administration included information from a two-year studythat was under embargo (forcing the organization that had commissioned the report to move up its own release).
And let’s ignore the fact that the open letter President Obama wrote on Huffington Post to teachers and parents, calling for fewer and better standardized exams, comes seven years into an administration that was in large part responsible for the country’s testing obsession.
A look at the Testing Action Plan itself reveals that the authors have fumbled the policy as much as the plan’s release, even as it concedes that the administration’s policies fueled a high-stakes testing obsession in U.S. public schools. It says:
In too many schools, there is unnecessary testing and not enough clarity of purpose applied to the task of assessing students, consuming too much instructional time and creating undue stress for educators and students. The Administration bears some of the responsibility for this, and we are committed to being part of the solution.
Admitting a problem late is better than never, but the solutions offered by the administration — apparently to calm an anti-testing rebellion around the country — don’t much move the needle. They won’t cut into testing time and test prep all that much, if at all, and they won’t eliminate what is arguably a bigger problem: the high stakes associated with the exams.
Let’s quickly review how the administration got here.
The focus on high-stakes standardized tests started in force with the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, which mandated testing in a number of grades to hold schools “accountable” for educating students. The law had a goal that virtually all students would be proficient in math and reading by 2014, and though this was literally impossible to achieve (something the authors knew), schools became obsessed with the scores on English and math tests, leading to a Why Obama’s new plan to cap standardized testing won’t work - The Washington Post:
