Opinion: Testing in Schools Isn’t Working
Testing has become the end-all, be-all of the public education reform movement. The idea seems quite sensible, that holding students (and teachers) to certain objective standards incentivizes both of these stakeholders to work harder and achieve their goals. It also seems reasonable to use the results of those tests as measures of the quality of education at a school. Well, to all who believe that testing is the panacea for what ails public education in America today, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.
A recent report conducted by a who’s who of educators has been following the effectiveness of 15 testing-related programs in public schools. Contrary to the rather heated, ideological, and non-evidence-based rhetoric that typically leads attempts at reform, this blue-ribbon panel found the testing programs that are presently in vogue to be ineffective and potentially harmful to attempts to improve public education.
Here are some of their findings.
The panel concluded that “adequate yearly progress,” as measured by these tests, is minimal, below what is considered even statistically small improvement. And here’s something that most people don’t know; the testing, which is a proxy for No Child Left Behind accountability, is intended to assess school performance, not the performance of students. Which begs the question of who or what all of these efforts are for, the schools or the students. And the research indicates that testing has even less impact on student than school performance.
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