Finally: Some Good News on Standardized Testing

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YOU WON’T HEAR THIS OFTEN HERE:  but aftera decade of school reform, all in response to No Child Left Behind, we have goodnews to report about standardized tests! 

Yes! And it only took a few billion dollars. 

Okay. No. Average scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college boundseniors haven’t gone up. They’ve beenin steady decline ever since that landmark legislation passed. Those scores:
                                                Math                  Reading                Writing
2003                507                         519                                               2004                508                         5182005                508                         5202006                503                         518                       4972007                501                         513                       4932008                500                         514                       4932009                499                         514                       4922010                500                         515                       4912011                497                         514                       4892012                496                         514                       488
(The writing test was added in 2006; but, clearly, the trend has not been positive.)

Well, then, what about all that the money spent annually on standardizedtesting? Is it well spent? According to the Brookings Institute the annualcost to the fifty states is $1.7 billion dollars. So, with billions paidout to designers of test, implementers of tests, to administer and gradestandardized tests, maybe scores on the National Assessment of EducationalProgress are up. 

Then again, maybe not.  

No progress to report according to the National Assessment of EducationalProgress. Reading scores have remained as flat as a fifth grade teacher runover by a stampeding herd of test company executives. Math scores haveincreased slightly, but at a pace no faster than before all the testing began. 

If you want to know how bad it’s been, consider the Lone Star state or “TheLand Where Testing Began.” You may recall that a reforming governor named GeorgeW. Bush came charging out of the south in 2000, touting his success in revolutionizingeducation in his state.  

According to KXAN TV in Austin, between 2000 and 2015, the bill to Texastaxpayers for all the extra testing is going to total$1.2 billion, and almost all of that cash is flowing into the pockets of acompany called Pearson, “which develops the test questions, prints anddistributes test booklets and scores the exams before sending them back to8,000 schools.”

Well, with all that expensive testing, and now closing in on a billiondollars spent, you figure the Lone Star State is kicking knowledge butt. 

Or not. 

Looking at results for 2011, the last year for which results are available,it turns out Texasstudents are scoring fourteen points lower in reading on the SAT’s in thelast ten years and scores in writing plummeted seven points from 2006 to 2011.So what did taxpayers get for almost a billion dollars of testing? 

A three point rise in math scores over the last decade. 

How about one of the strongest possible arguments in favor of No Child Left Behind?This was the promise that school reform would magically close racial gaps.Total SAT scores (reading, math and writing) were as follows: 

White Students: 1566  (522   540   504)

Black Students:  1273  (423   438  412)

Asian American:  1626  (522   583  521)  

Okay, that doesn’t look good. 

Worst of all, it is now estimated that Texas students in grades 3-8, spendan average of 19 to 27 days of class every year taking state-mandatedpractice test and then real standardized tests. Even Robert Scott, the stateeducation commissioner, and a Republican, has lost faith. In a story for theWashington Post last February, Valerie Strauss noted that Scott calledthe growing emphasis on testing a “perversion” of what a qualityeducation should be. 

Scott went so far as to compare the growing testing industry to the “military-industrialcomplex.” (That’s still not the good news.)

“What we’ve done in the past decade, is we’ve doubled down on the testevery couple of years, and used it for more and more things, to make it theend-all, be-all,” Scott said. “... You’ve reached a point now of having thisone thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of thevampire, so to speak.”

 
SO WHAT GOOD NEWS IS THERE? Let’s hear three cheers for teachersat Garfield High School in Seattle, who are standing up and refusing togive the latest round of district-required standardized tests known as Measuresof Academic Progress, or MAP. 

Does this mean rebels are loose in Seattle classrooms? Are anti-testingLuddites watching over our children? No. No revolutionary thinking is involved.Simply put, like growing numbers of teachers across the nation, the faculty atGarfield High are convinced that testing doesn’t work, that it’s a huge drainof time that might be devoted to better purpose, and that it narrows the focusof learning.

In fact, if you want to assess the value of standardized testing, talk tothe people who actuallyteach for a living. They’ll tell you that school reformers (and their very enthusiasticsupporters in the test making business) who have pushed for more testing havehanded the American people an expensive sack of education excrement.  

The backlash is starting to build; but it’s time for more teachers likethose at Garfield High to stand up against standardized tests.
 

AUTHOR’S NOTE:
 I have already explained the dilemma I faced in bringing fourteen combatveterans from five different wars to talk to 700 students where I worked. Whatcould Joe Whitt, who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, say that would everappear as a question on a standardized test? How could what Seth Judy talkedabout be turned into a test question, if all he ever did was get blasted by asuicide bomber in Iraq? 

Was this whole assembly a wasted day of learning?

I would be honored if you would go to this earlier post:

http://ateacheronteaching.blogspot.com/2011/05/sham-standards-governor-kasich-and.html

Tom Bravard speaks to students at Loveland Middle School.
Is this standardized learning?