End High-Stakes Testing
Nothing has hurt the education of our students more than the emphasis and high-stakes NCLB has put on testing. This HAS transformed education, and not for the better. We are preparing students to be test-takers, not thinkers. These two outcomes do not go hand-in-hand, they are fist against fist. The fear of not making AYP drives everything. We don’t evaluate the true learning of the students. Can they solve problems? Can they apply learning? Can they communicate well? Do they have goals and aspirations and is what we are doing in the schools helping them to achieve this? We don’t evaluate the factors that really make a difference in how well a child does in school. Are they healthy? Is the community healthy? Do they have a safe and clean environment in which to learn? Do they have access to affordable preschool? Do their parents have support in how to help their children? When we make testing the focus of how we rate the schools, we simplify a complex problem. In the process, we blur and obscure real solutions.
This post was submitted by Diane Aoki.
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Ms Aoki has it exactly right. To reduce education to test scores — to reduce education to a one-size-fits-all procedure — is to damage everything from the individual classroom to the entire public education system. Worse, it makes trivial the very notion of what an educated person is. Much more critical thought needs to be brought to the issue of the tests themselves: how effective a measurement are they and what does that measurement actually mean? To the question of why test at all, however, the answer is depressingly obvious: tests are convenient.