Guest Post by Morbo
Standardized testing has become an obsession in public education, thanks in part to President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law.
That law requires states that accept federal money for education — and they all do — to impose various types of standardized tests on the students. The idea is that the test results will tell us which schools are failing to keep up with federal proficiency targets in math and reading.
Some states are rebelling. According to a recent Washington Post article, Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg has become a type of folk hero by resisting additional standardized testing from NCLB — a requirement, I should note, that the law imposes but does not pay for.
“We’ve got better things to spend our money on,” Sternberg said. “We won’t learn anything new about our schools by giving these extra tests.”
If the rebellion were limited to Connecticut, it would be easy to dismiss it as more Blue State kvetching under the Bush regime. But consider this: Officials in redder-than-red Utah are so angry over NCLB they are flirting with open defiance. They claim state laws take precedence over portions of NCLB.
I can’t endorse Utah’s kooky state’s rights theory, but I understand the frustration in that state and others. Let’s hope it spreads.
The problem with NCLB and the Bush approach generally is that it treats performance on standardized tests as the epitome of the educational experience. As an assessment tool, standardized tests certainly have value. But the results they offer should not be looked at in a vacuum.
Standardized tests are only one piece of the puzzle. Good teachers know that other factors — classroom work, long-term projects, homework and regular classroom tests — are important as well. When we look at all of this together and then apply the data to each child individually, we get a much clearer picture of what needs to be done to ensure success.
Sternberg understands this, especially how it relates to struggling minority students. Noted The Post:
The answer, says Sternberg, is not more standardized testing but better integration of existing tests with the curriculum of predominantly minority schools. To illustrate her point, she takes a reporter to visit Dwight Elementary School in Hartford, which has succeeded in dramatically closing the achievement gap through a system of regular monitoring of students by teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
Wow, there’s a novel idea — kids have different strengths and weaknesses. That’s another problem with standardized testing: It subjects every student to the same blunt instrument without appreciating their differences.
These differences often emerge early but stay with us all of our lives. In college, I knew a chemistry major whom everyone agreed was quite bright. Whenever he tried to explain his experiments to me, I was at sea in about two minutes. This man had one problem: He couldn’t write a lick. We took an American History course together, and the professor used essay tests exclusively. I aced them all; my friend sank faster than the Titanic. Does that make me smarter? Not at all. It means he had different gifts, mainly in science, and, more importantly, a different way of expressing his knowledge.
Some kids don’t test well. Some kids get nervous. Some kids can put together an amazing project for Science Day yet panic when they see all of those little ovals to fill in. When we rely too much on standardized testing for assessments, we fail those kids with different gifts and different approaches to testing.
I’ve also grown wary of standardized testing because it tears through the academic year like Godzilla going after Tokyo. Never make the mistake of thinking that a standardized test only takes a day or two out of the year. With so much riding on these tests, teachers increasingly spend more and more time preparing students for them — that is, engaging in drilling and by-rote test prep. Every day that mind-numbing drill drags on is one less day that could be used for creative learning or an exciting project.
To this day, I can remember the teachers who made a difference in my life and pulled me out of the early academic difficulties I experienced as a child. Even after I turned the corner, good teachers are still making a difference. In the 10th grade, Mrs. Synder handed me a copy of The Great Gatsby and introduced me to real literature. The reverberations from that are still felt today.
If performance on a standardized test becomes all that matters, will teachers still do that in the future? Will they go the extra mile? Will they keep an eye out for the different gifts young people have and look for ways to nurture them? Will they even have the time?
I’m just cynical enough to believe that Bush and co. don’t want that. They have a larger goal in mind: Demand standardized testing. Set the goal impossibly high. When the inevitable failures come, argue for vouchers and privatization.
More and more states are fighting the cult of standardized testing. Bush and his right-wing gang say they are for state’s rights. Some states don’t want all of these tests. You do the math.