Standardized Education Home
Opinion 1 - Peter Schrag
Opinion 2 - Kathryn Ricard
Opinion 3 - Harv Teitelbaum
Opinion
4 - Educate America
Opinion 5 - Donald B. Gratz
Opinion 1 - from “High Stakes are for Tomatoes” Atlantic Monthly,
Aug.
2000
by Peter Schrag
THE backlash, touching virtually every state that
has instituted high-stakes testing, arises from a
spectrum of complaints: that the focus on testing
and obsessive test preparation, sometimes
beginning in kindergarten, is killing innovative
teaching and curricula and driving out good
teachers; that (conversely) the standards on which
the tests are based are too vague, or that students
have not been taught the material on which the tests
are based; that the tests are unfair to poor and
minority students, or to others who lack test-taking
skills; that the tests overstress young children, or
that they are too long (in Massachusetts they can
take thirteen to seventeen hours) or too tough or
simply not good enough. In Massachusetts,
according to students protesting MCAS, some
students designated as needing improvement
outscored half their peers on national standardized
tests. "Testing season is upon us," says Mickey
VanDerwerker, a leader of Parents Across Virginia
United to Reform SOL, "and a lot of kids are so
nervous they're throwing up." In Oakland,
California, a protest organizer named Susan
Harman is selling T-shirts proclaiming High stakes
are for tomatoes.
Some of the backlash comes from conservatives
who a decade ago battled state-imposed programs
that they regarded as anti-family exercises in
political correctness. Although she has always
thought of herself as a "bleeding-heart liberal,"
Mary O'Brien, a parent in Ohio who calls herself
"an accidental activist" and is the leader of the
statewide petition drive against the Ohio
Proficiency Tests, complains that the state has no
business trying to control local school curricula. In
suburban Maryland this spring some parents kept
their children out of school on test days, because
they regard the Maryland School Performance and
Assessment Program as a waste of time. They
complain that it is used only to evaluate schools,
not students -- thereby objecting to almost precisely
what parents in some other states are demanding.
"It's more beneficial to have my child in his seat in
the fifth grade practicing long division," one
Maryland parent told a Washington Post reporter.
But many more of the protesters -- parents,
teachers, and school administrators -- are education
liberals: progressive followers of John Dewey, who
believe that children should be allowed to discover
things for themselves and not be constrained by
"drill-and-kill" rote learning. They worry that the
tests are stifling students and teachers...
THE movement is a long way from achieving
critical mass. The two most prominent lawsuits
brought to date -- one in Texas, challenging the test
as racially biased; the other in Louisiana, arguing
that students hadn't had a chance to learn the
material -- have failed. The boycotts are still small,
and polls, by Public Agenda and other
organizations, continue to show that 72 percent of
Americans -- and 79 percent of parents -- support
tougher academic standards and oppose social
promotion "even if [the outcome is] that
significantly more students would be held back."
Those numbers seem to reinforce the argument of
Diane Ravitch, an education historian, an education
official in the Bush Administration, and a strong
supporter of standards, who has described the
protesters as "crickets" -- few in number, but
making a disproportionate amount of noise...
And yet the line between the political drive to be
tough and indifference to standards in the name of
creativity and diversity sometimes seems hard to
draw. Diane Ravitch says that a person much
missed in this debate is the late Albert Shanker, a
longtime president of the American Federation of
Teachers, who was relentless in his push for high
standards for both students and teachers. But
Shanker also pointed out that if only one standard
for graduation exists, it will necessarily be low,
because the political system can't support a high
rate of failure. Shanker suggested two criteria:a
basic competency level required of everyone,
combined with honors diplomas, by whatever
name, for students who do better and achieve more.
The issue of the tradeoff between minimum
competency and what is sometimes called
"world-class standards" is rarely raised in any
explicit manner, but it has bedeviled this debate
since the beginning. As the standards requirements
begin to take effect, and as more parents face the
possibility that their children will not graduate,
pressure to lower the bar or eliminate it entirely will
almost certainly increase. Conversely, as more
people come to understand that the "Texas miracle"
and other celebrated successes are based on
embarrassingly low benchmarks, those, too, will
come under attack. The most logical outcome
would be the Shanker solution. But in education
politics, where ideology often reigns, logic is not
always easy to come by.
Opinion 2 - Kathryn
Ricard
Curriculum Resource Solutions Inc.
What I find quite interesting about this entire discussion
of teaching to a
test is that much of the topics are geared towards collaborative, project
driven,
constructivist educational practices. While I wholeheartedly agree
with the
inclusion of these techniques as meaningful on so many levels for teachers
and
students, I am also painfully aware of our shared reality based on
the structures
inherent in higher education and many hiring practices to boot; standardized
testing has traditionally been the norm for weeding out desirables
as opposed to
undesirables at all levels of our public and private educational institutions,
not to mention the tests that employers give to their prospective employees.
Where in the "new" theory of education discussion does it address this
issue?
Where does it allow for the reality of standardized testing?
The reality is that we are a society of test administrators
and test takers.
Out of what some might call necessity and others laziness, we have
created this
system. (While I would love to get into socio-economic issues, it could
become my
dissertation and I fear the consequences of such a lengthy discourse
online.) The
reality of standardized test taking is so inherent that education theorists
neglect to mention in their critques of these appalling tests the very
tests they
had to take to become teachers/professors, to get into college or university,
to
get into graduate school. The unspoken premise they seem to be working
on is that
standardized test taking is evil. What other methods of assessment
might they
suggest and then how would they propose to go about instituting it
in an already
established system that spans our entire nation?
In California, the CAP writing test was rewritten
a few years back to attempt
to address this issue and then promptly discarded. Now, they have come
out with
the STAR 9 (to replace the CTBS), but again this is just a new and
improved
version of standardized testing.....regurgitate the information that
the powers
on high believe is meaningful, important, noteworthy (... which leads
us right
into the debate over standards, both national and state.I wonder how
we can begin
to address standardized testing without also getting into standardizing
curriculum.).
While many entrance requirements are changing to
include portfolios and other
forms of student assessment, the reality is that SAT, GRE, MSAT, etc,
tests are
still required. In order to fully prepare our youth, we must teach
them test
taking strategies. We must include forms of testing so that they may
practice to
become better test takers. And at the same time work towards educational
reform.
I am by no means suggesting that good classroom practices should be
thrown out
or that "the banking system of education" should be reinstituted. However,
I am
suggesting that while we are busy calling our students to learn collaboratively,
to think critically, to construct projects that address their different
learning
styles and formulate meaning, to enhance social skills and challenge
them to
build thoughtful questions, to draw them into learning, into what it
means to be
part of a community of learners with a passion for the quest, while
we are
promoting great classroom practices to ensure success, we must build
into our
curriculum opportunities for students to be exposed to testing and
test taking
strategies.
Where does creativity happen? How is it encouraged or discouraged? And what do current trends portend for the future of human creativity?
There is a theory that creativity is more likely to occur on the margins, at the edges, both literally and figuratively. This appears true when applied to living systems. Evolutionary jumps seem more likely where and when species and individuals are pushed to their limits by changing conditions such as climate or competition.
Another aspect of this notion of creativity-and-the-edge is that it also relates to diversity. Diversity leads to more creativity, and creativity to a more diverse community. Imagine a planet with a fixed climate and an unchanging landscape and compare it to one with ever-changing climates and landscapes. A world that reduces or eliminates its physical and conceptual frontiers, its diversity of thought and behavior, may soon lose its creative edge.
The question is then: Are our society’s cultural and physical edges and margins, and therefore its creativity and diversity, slowly being reduced or eliminated?
The signs are not encouraging. One culture, consumerism, is forcing out other cultural ecosystems like an invasive, exotic weed. At the same time, one economic system, corporate globalization, is doing likewise. Politically, the capitalist political-economic model is slowly enveloping and consuming a diverse landscape mosaic of other models, including democracy, parliamentarianism, socialism, communism and monarchy.
Within Western society, a massive horizontal expansion in cyber activity is creating the illusion of vertical creativity, while marginalizing and then entrapping those people and aspects found outside the paradigm. The inner ecology of cyberspace is likewise being appropriated by e-commerce, which uses the irresistible strategy of commodification as the successional tool with which to assume all niches in the cyber-environment.
Culturally and socially, the creeping neo-fascism of the “zero tolerance” mentality seeks to inhibit establishment of diverse behavior and expression. For small measures and illusions of security, we skittishly and voluntarily demonize deviations increasingly less distant from the “norm”. For every odd act that discomforts society, blanket measures are demanded and enacted which spread out to restrict general behavior.
As we move toward monoculturalism, our physical open-spaces are being increasingly managed as monotone theme parks to satisfy what Edward Abbey might have called the “industrial recreation” needs of the middle class. These special lands, established in response to a desire to balance preservation and development, are continually being further compromised, “balanced”, and “wise-used” toward insignificance. Developed spaces follow a similar suburban model, designed and managed for the absence of disturbance and change, managed for the avoidance of creative processes.
Perhaps most distressing of all, the institution of public education is being corporatized and privatized away from diversity and creativity, toward the teaching and learning of standards and standardized test performance, i.e., standardized thinking. No matter how “high” these standards are set, prescribing uniform content and process can only result in a loss of creativity. Ironically, while given the Orwellian label of progressive education “reform”, this trend primarily serves religious and conservative agendas by gradually “dumbing down” the citizenry.
We can see some of these trends manifested in our young people. Evolution has a strategy for gradually increasing proportional brain size, called juvenilization. By stretching out the adolescent phase of primate development, creativity may be enhanced. But many functions of modern society conspire to squelch adolescence. From the “HMO”-ing of our schools, to the over-structuring of free time, to criminally prosecuting as adults younger and younger children for an increasing array of dubious transgressions, we are successfully stifling the creative age.
But there still is reason to remain hopeful. Dynamic systems are ultimately non-linear. That is, things don’t continue moving in one direction forever. For example, while e-commerce has largely replaced the more universally-accessible notion of the information superhighway, some individuals are reversing the trend by developing and giving away software, open operating systems, literature and information. And even corporations are beginning to realize the value truly creative learning environments may have for the future dynamism of their industries. Put another way, on some different level, Nature seems to retain and eventually restore creativity regardless of what we do.
But, for now, I believe the overall trend in society is to stifle creativity. Some might disagree with this assessment. Some may be comfortable with the direction we’re heading and the deceptive security that comes with less diversity, less creativity and more standardization. For others, though, the task might be to facilitate and positively affect the inevitable course corrections, the evolutionary jump for society, by envisioning where we might need to go and not simply by awaiting, or trying to stop, the flow. Perhaps it will be the activists, and those with strong spiritual dimensions, who still possess the level of creativity, that measure of free will, necessary to accomplish this task.
Opinion
4 - Educate America - Student Assessment and Testing
http://www.nwrel.org/cnorse/booklets/educate/11.html#1
In the current debate about nation wide educational
restructuring, perhaps no issue is more
central to the concerns of equity than that of student
assessment. We have a long history of
using questionably relevant tests to sort children
for differential educational opportunities.
Awareness of how standardized testing shapes curriculum
and teaching highlights the link
between assessment and educational quality. Yet,
there is no consensus about how
educational reform is to be achieved or what the
role of student assessment should be.
Politically powerful advocates of "outcome based"
education argue that high standards and a
national system of testing will accomplish needed
educational improvement. This view is
reflected in the National Council on Education Standards
and Testings proposed national
system of examinations in five core subjects English,
math, science, history and geography
to be administered in grades 4, 8, and 12, and used
to determine high school graduation,
college admission and job placement (National Coalition
of Advocates for Students [NCAS]
1993). However, advocates of equity in educational
excellence (NCAS 1993; Tate 1993)
insist that the role of student assessment can be
a constructive one only if it is defined within
the context of an education restructuring process
that includes standards for equity in
educational resources and processes that determine
students' "real life" opportunities to
learn.
We believe that neither excellence nor equity in
education can be achieved as long as
student assessment instruments, policies and practices
limit opportunities to learn and
narrow or dilute curricula and instruction. Both
excellence and equity goals can, on the
other hand, be served by assessments that help teachers
to identify students' strengths as
well as their needs and to determine the most appropriate
and effective means of helping
them to learn and grow.
Standardized Testing and At Risk Students
Standardized tests have a disproportionate impact
on students, teachers and curriculum in
schools that serve low income and minority students
(Mitchell 1992; Tate 1993). Some
widely found effects that are of particular consequence
for equity in education are reviewed
briefly below.
Testing and Ability Grouping
Both tracking and homogeneous "ability grouping"
decisions, especially common in urban
schools, are made primarily on the basis of standardized
test results. Homogeneous
grouping has often resulted in defeating school
desegregation efforts by substituting within
school segregation of minority groups and is, in
addition, itself an unsound pedagogical
practice. Even within the same classroom, "high"
ability students are taught and expected to
learn different content than are "low" ability or
"low interest" students (Brown 1993).
Tracking and ability grouping are widespread and
continue in spite of mounting evidence
that is exposing "as fraudulent (or, at least, myopic)
the claim that tracking is an appropriate
response to differences in children's capacities
and motivation" (Wheelock 1992). Even if
standardized, norm referenced tests measured ability
validly for all student groups (a claim
that is widely contested), their use in sorting
students for different educational opportunities
is condemned even by the College Board in unequivocal
terms:
A substantial share of U.S.
schools engage in ability grouping or tracking of
students beginning at the
elementary and middle grade levels according to
presumed ability levels.
As a number of studies have shown, tracking almost
always means that those
pupils who need the most support to raise their
performance levels get the
least, while those who need it the least have it
showered on them. The consequence
is a two tiered system of education
characterized by the following
conditions.
Poor and
minority students underrepresented in college preparatory classes
such as
algebra and geometry and overrepresented in dead end classes such
as consumer
math and general math;
Guidance
counselors who automatically presume that poor and minority
students
have neither the capability nor the inclination to attend college, and
who therefore
fail to provide adequate information to those students about
college
prerequisites and financial aid options:
Teachers
who fail to provide the necessary encouragement and enrichment
to minority
and poor students because their expectaions of those students'
success
are low. (Educational Testing Service 1991)
Testing and Retention
Despite its known ineffectiveness, retention in grade
is a common administrative response to
students' failure to demonstrate mastery of a year's
curriculum. Students rarely improve their
achievement on the second round·except when
they receive special instruction that does not
merely repeat the same curriculum. Ascher (1990)
writes: Since minority students are more
likely than whites to test at the lower end of achievement
test scores (as well as to be seen as
more troublesome by teachers), they have retention
rates three to four times higher than
those of their white peers. Among blacks, males
are particularly at risk for retention.
Reporting on a data analysis performed by Cincinnati
Public Schools, Ascher notes that
students retained once had a 40 50 percent chance
of becoming dropouts, those retained
twice had a 60 70 percent chance, and those retained
three times almost never graduated
(Ascher 1990).
Testing and Curriculum
The pressure on school administrators, teachers and
students to improve average school
scores on norm referenced, short answer multiple
choice tests has created a widespread
tendency to ignore higher order skills (since the
tests elicit facts) and to put classroom
emphasis on preparing students to take tests, especially
at the elementary level·and more
especially in low income schools where drill has
always been a more prevalent form of
instruction than investigation has been, The pressures
of standardized testing on curriculum
have decreased instruction in science, writing,
problem solving and analytical reasoning;
they are felt from kindergarten, where the pressure
is to teach quantifiable math and reading
skills and to prepare children for an educational
career of "bubble test" taking, to high
school, where minimum competencies for graduation
may also mark the upper limits of
instruction. Sixty percent of early childhood educators
recently surveyed reported that the
pressure of year end standardized tests caused them
to teach in ways that we harmful to
their children (Ascher 1990).
Arizona's recent experience in attempting to use
testing to reinforce high standards curricula
dramatically highlights the inadequacy of test driven
teaching. Arizona's researchers created
a matrix and charted the items tested by the Iowa
Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the
frameworks, then charted the curricular framework
items covered by the ITBS and TAP
tests. While the curricular framework covered 100
percent of the ITBS and TAP items, only
26 to 30 percent of the curricular framework was
assessed by the ITBS and the TAP. Using
those standardized tests, Arizona could learn nothing
about their students' mastery of 70
percent of their required school work (Mitchell
1992).
William Tate further suggests that low student assessments
may say as much about curricula
as they do about students, citing research that
reveals that while African American children
as a group consistently are outperformed by white
children on national assessments of
mathematics achievement, they are also less likely
to take college preparatory mathematics
courses than their white counterparts.
This relationship between
exposure to higher level courses and mathematics
achievement should not be
shocking. In fact, one of the most powerful predictors
of mathematics achievement
is course taking.... For example, the National
Assessment of Education
Progress reveals the substantial increase in
mathematical performance
that is associated with students completing higher
level mathematics courses.
bate 1993)
Testing and College
Standardized tests play an important role in determining
whether or not students completing
their secondary education will have an opportunity
to attend college, what colleges they will
attend, and the nature and extent of financial support
they will receive (American
Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission
Officers 1986). Culture and gender bias
in college admissions examinations stack the deck
in favor of white, middle class males
(Crouse and Trusheim 1988). This continues in spite
of the fact that the most widely used
college admissions tests are, themselves, poor predictors
of students' success in college
(Allina 1987; Clark and Grandy 1984). Phyllis Rosser
(1992), in collaboration with the
National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest),
report on the results of bias in college
admissions testing:
The test publishers claim
that their exams predict students' future academic
performance. Yet. while
females consistently earn higher grades in both high
school and college. they
receive lower grades on all these exams.
Reliance on such biased exams markedly diminishes chances for women to:
obtain
millions of dollars in college tuition aid awarded by the National
Merit
Scholarship Corporation, and over 150 private companies,
government
agencies and foundations;
gain admission to over 1,500 colleges and universities; and
enter many
special education programs reserved for "gifted and talented"
high school
students.
All these factors can contribute
to a real dollar loss for women in later life as they
get less prestigious jobs,
earn less money, and have fewer leadership
opportunities. Members of
minority groups and those from economically
disadvantaged backgrounds
are further penalized by the gender, race/ethnic and
class biases of these exams.
(Emphases added)
Given the obstacles that unfair testing, placement
and assessment raise for so many in
elementary and secondary schools, it seems particularly
unfair that if they overcome the
obstacles and graduate from high school they will
then face a selection process that denies
them equal access to higher education and its lifetime
social, cultural, and economic
benefits.
Testing and Systemic Reform
Those who support national content standards and
performance assessment as necessary
foundations for school reform hold that systemic
change cannot be accomplished without
first defining what we want to achieve (specific
content or subject standards) and have in
hand accurate performance based assessments that
will measure the extent to which the
content/performance standards have been met, By
creating universal standards, the belief
that all children can reach them is implicit, Such
standards, therefore, would by themselves
undermine the tracked programs that hold poor and
minority students to lower standards.
Authentic, performance based assessment would accomplish
curriculum and assessment
alignment and would do away with multiple choice
testing that fractures knowledge and
leaves students to deal with the bits and pieces
outside of context, Multiple choice tests
would no longer drive curriculum and instruction,
Students could be taught complex, high
order skills in real learning contexts and testing
would allow them to perform tasks that
mirror real life performance in authentic settings.
Simmons and Resnick (1993) point out that the examination
component of performance
standards will be useless without teachers, content
specialists and other educators who have
a firm understanding of how to construct and apply
the examination system to improve
curriculum and instruction and·most importantly·student
performance. Today, there is a
severe shortage of educators with this needed expertise.
Therefore, in addition to building
testing and assessment hardware, we must also create
a professional development system to
transform the way that educators view teaching,
learning and assessment.
Equity advocates insist on the unfairness of assessing/testing
students to a common standard
while exposing them to different learning experiences,
William Tate links curricular
inadequacy and curricular reform to the realities
of funding. Noting the new vision of
mathematics education called for by the National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Tate
(1993) writes:
This vision will require
urban schools to reallocate current i unding sources
and/or seek additional funding
to incorporate a new assessment policy; to
improve teachers' mathematics
qualifications; possibly to decrease class sizes; to
update instructional materials
(such as textbooks, science laboratories, and
computer capabilities);
and to enhance the quality of many other resource inputs.
Each of these inputs will
require a funding source. This implies that preparing
students for a new policy
(i.e., national assessment) has important connections to
issues of fiscal equity
for urban schools.
Fiscal equity for urban schools
is one of the United States' most critical
dilemmas.... The additional
resources required by a policy such as the national
mathematics assessment will
increase the burden on the already fiscally stressed
systems of urban education.
Thus, mathematics assessment, local properly
assessment (i.e., property
taxes), and state funding become linked in a struggle
to achieve social and educational
equity.
We see, therefore, curriculum based performance assessment
as an element of systemic
change·but it is only one element, Other
questions must be addressed simultaneously if
content and performance standards are to improve
education for all students. Other critical
questions include:
Will the curriculum that
is being assessed be high quality, multicultural and
interdiscilplinary?
Since higher standards and
authentic assessments will change both what is taught and
how it is taught, how will
teachers be taught the new contents?
Are the funding and mechanisms
for teacher training available and in place?
Content standards and performance assessment will
prove irrelevant to improved education
for an unacceptably large percentage of today's
students if:
Students do not have access
to quality programs because of inequitable school funding
or because their schools
continue current tracking and ability grouping practices;
Students enter school unprepared
because of poverty or deprivation, health or
nutritional deficits, or
unstable and violent home or community backgrounds,
Changing the way we assess or test students will
only get us what we already have unless
we first change the opportunities that we provide
poor and minority students to learn,
Currently, those students are rarely provided real
opportunities to meet the standards that
already exist·let alone new, high standards.
If reform stops at setting content and
performance standards, the same children who have
been left out of the reforms of the past
will be left out of today's. The National Coalition
of Advocates for Students (1993) outlines
some real consequences of national outcomes standards
unaccompanied by equitable
restructuring of our education system:
Low income and minority students
will face proposed examinations with no proof that
their teachers are qualified
to teach them the skills they will need;
All of our children will
be required to be "Number One" in science·including those
who attend low income schools
that have no science labs;
Our children will be required
to outperform German children who have universal
access to early childhood
education and health services that massive numbers of our
low income children do without;
Our children will be held
hostage to a single "world class" standard without regard for
the reality that they attend
schools characterized by "savage inequalities" of resources
and environment, and that
sort them by group identity for exposure to radically
different curricular content,
teaching methods and expectations, counseling practices
and personal treatment.
At a minimum, students must be taught a curriculum
that will prepare them for high
standards assessments. Their teachers must have
the expertise needed to teach the
curriculum, and there must be an equitable distribution
of the resources students and
teachers each need to succeed. In our tracked schooling
programs, which begin with
elementary reading, children in poor and minority
communities are held to lower standards
than the rest of the population (Simmons and Resnick
1993). New standards without
concern for equity will simply perpetuate old results.
Conclusion
The nation's history of using tests to sort children
for differential educational opportunities is
a long one. It is time for schools, local education
agencies, and state and federal
governments to ensure that no system of testing
or student assessment be used except in the
context of educational approaches that are based
on standards for equity in educational
resources and processes. Biased assessment instruments,
policies and practices must not be
allowed to limit opportunities to learn and narrow
or dilute curricula and instruction. Unless
preceded by an equitable restructuring of educational
resources and processes, testing to
meet National Student Outcomes Standards will leave
students vulnerable to the
discriminatory educational practices that deny 40
percent of students a meaningful
opportunity to learn.
More than 100 national civil rights, education and
advocacy organizations have endorsed the
Criteria for Evaluation of Student Assessment Systems
presented above. By adopting these
criteria as their basis for student assessment standards,
states could ensure that student
assessments create tools for·rather than
barriers to·educational opportunity for all students.
Opinion 5 - excerpted from "Fixing the Race" by Donald B. Gratz, Education Week, June 7, 2000
Imagine the season's final high school cross-country meet,
run by the state Office of Racing. Officials pledge to
demonstrate how each runner is doing, and which runners,
teams, and coaches are the best. Judges crowd the finish
line with cameras, computers, stethoscopes, and various
diagnostic tools. As runners cross the line, not only their
times, but also their pulses, breathing rates, perspiration
levels, muscle oxidation, and a host of variables are
checked and computed. This is the new world of racing,
officials say. We will know how everyone is doing, who is the best,
and why.
Now suppose, despite all this measuring, that the race has no official
starting
line. Some runners run 10 miles, others five, still others two. When
runners cross the finish line is what matters, not where they started.
Sure,
runners who start farther back have farther to go, but hey, that's
life. Yes, it will
determine future access to athletics for many runners. And yes, average
team
results may eventually influence the coaches' jobs. And, of course,
teams may
be reconstituted if this year's team performs worse than last year's.
But despite
these important-sounding consequences, this race is just one indicator
of athletic
performance. Now, everyone stop whining and try harder.
The idea of a race with no starting line is absurd, of course. In racing,
we
understand that the distance traveled is critically important in determining
the
outcome. In fact, the key factor is each runner's speed, or rate of
progress. To
know this, we need to know when and where each runner started. Only
then, we
understand, can we compare them fairly.
It is also true, in racing, that while we track team scores, we know
that they are
an aggregate of individual performance. If we compare last year's team
to this
year's, we recognize that the different outcomes—whether better or
worse—are
significantly affected by having different members on the team. We
understand
that different runners naturally get different results, even with the
same coach.
Do we think that effort, practice, and coaching quality make a difference?
Of
course. Do we think these factors make up for having different runners
and
different starting lines? Of course not. The race described above may
provide
information on runners' physical conditions, but it does not tell which
runner is
fastest or has the greatest endurance because it doesn't measure how
far they
have run. For the same reason, it doesn't show which team is best or
which
coach is most effective.
Those who follow education will recognize this analogy as representing
many of
the new high-stakes tests being introduced into public schools. The
analogy is
not perfect, I admit, but it illustrates how many tests work.
Because [many states'] standardized tests don't tell us how far students
have come
or how fast they have progressed, we can't make any judgment on the
quality of
a school or the capacity of a student. We can't tell whether students
at one school
started behind their peers at other schools or are being taught less.
A student who
has made enormous strides may still score poorly if he started behind
his peers.
Similarly, a teacher who consistently teaches two years of material
in a year may
be judged less competent than one who teaches only a half-year of material,
simply
because the second teacher's students started at a higher academic
level (closer
to the finish line).
Because [the test] describes a student's status, it may be useful
to teachers. But
because it does not measure the student's progress, it is a
poor indicator of
school or teacher effectiveness, or of student capacity. To assess
these, we need
to calculate students' rates of progress based on their starting and
ending points.
It doesn't matter where a runner places in a race if we don't know
how far he has
run. Also, because schools are not teams, we should be more concerned
with the
progress of individual students than with the class average.
[Many tests] are used to rate school and class absolute performance
against a
standard, without knowing where the children started the year. The
state may
decide to impose sanctions on schools and teachers based on these results.
Even
more perniciously, it may deny graduation to individual kids based
on their test
scores, still without understanding their individual progress or effort.
Isn't tying graduation or promotion to a state test like saying that
only students
who arrive at the finish line within a certain time period will be
considered
winners? Some strong runners will not arrive in time, just as some
promising
and hardworking students may be flunked or denied a diploma based on
largely
arbitrary and inequitable criteria.
There should be greater accountability in education, and it can be structured
fairly. But accountability measures ought to assess the improvement
of
individual students based on their individual progress. If we continue
to conduct
tests as though they were races with different starting lines, people
will be
justified in thinking not only that the race needs fixing, but also
that it has been
"fixed." Right now, we appear to be using education not as the great
equalizer,
but as the great divider—the institution that prevents those who start
farthest
behind from ever catching up.