“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein.
With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the United States embarked on a period of high stakes testing not found, to this extent, elsewhere in the world. There is growing scientific evidence that all this testing is not making our students smarter. There are also studies which prove the opposite. These latter studies are funded by people with a stake in continuing the high-stakes testing. None the less, colleges, universities, and businesses are still complaining about getting young people in who are unable to function at the required level of thinking or independent action. The U.S. has had some sort of high-stakes or standardized test for years. For instance, intelligence tests were given to soldiers and Marines heading over to Europe in World War I to determine their fitness for various duties. This was supposed to be a test for the masses, but the majority of the soldiers and Marines given the test were white males from the middle and upper classes of society. In other instances, standardized tests were given to children in schools to determine if they should move on to the next grade, be placed in “ability” level classes or sections, or to graduate from school. In the mid to late 1800s, business and community leaders complained “(we have) children graduating from school unable to read and write simple letters.” Children who had passed their schoolmaster's testing in front of school board members, which we could consider to be congruent with today's high stakes testing. (Anonymous, Experiment in Quincy, 1935). Einstein's quote seems very appropriate in today's society when we have children who know how to pass the test they are being given in school, but are having a difficult time in the business world or in institutes of higher learning. At the same time, history has shown that high-stakes testing has not worked. Besides having to take a test, what effect does our teaching to the test have on the morale of the students? How about their desire to learn? Are the current round of fixes making things better or worse? Should a form of testing be kept? If a form of standardized testing existed in the 1800s and people found they didn't work, what is making the people of the 21st-century believe the results will be the same? The only place the use of discreet facts is useful is when a person is on a game show and all these tests do is to see if students have picked up facts. Even so, many students haven't picked up the facts, they have been taught how to weed out the distractors on the test.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein
What effects do the standardized, high-stakes test have on students? People like Alfie Kohn (2005) believe the plethora of tests are having an adverse effect on today's students. Teachers are having a hard time engaging students in their classrooms and we are finding few students who want to read or learn outside of the classroom in today's society. Additionally Amrein and Berliner (2003) stated: “yet researchers have found that when rewards and sanctions are attached to performance on tests, students become less intrinsically motivated to learn and less likely to engage in critical thinking.” One of the other purported advantages to high-stakes tests is that they motivate students to do better in school. While there are a good number of people who may be motivated by these tests, disadvantaged youth tend not to be. Additionally, in many schools teachers notice that after the high-stakes test has been given, the children tend to not pay attention to any instruction, even though many of the teachers can, in many cases, provide students more meaning full instruction and activities which help to promote the development of the skills businesses are clamoring for.
In addition to mainstream students, what about special needs students? Teachers and parents keep advocating for special consideration to their state legislators only to have their pleas fall on deaf ears, even though the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been around in its current form since 1997 and in other forms since 1975 (formerly known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act). While all children have the capacity and capability to learn, they do not all do it in the prescribed manner as set forth in federal and state law. The push to have these children take the same test in the same manner as their peers in unjustifiable as pointed out by Moore (2010) :
“One of the most profound and disturbing discussions was with a young mother I'll call Debra…. "I don't understand, she said nearly in tears, "why they insist on giving him work and a test that they know he's not ready for yet? He thinks he is stupid, and he's ready to give up on school, at 9 years old.
As is indicated by the Moore quote, children with special needs are especially hard hit by the testing frenzy which has been introduced with NCLB. It is unconscionable to force these children to do something they are ill equipped to accomplish.
We can extrapolate from this that if special needs children are feeling discouraged, then are many mainstream children having similar feelings? In an effort to boost test scores, schools “hide” their drop out numbers in a variety of ways, e.g. if it takes someone five years to get their diploma, are they a drop out? Even taking that into consideration, what is causing the drop out rate to remain as high as it is or increase in some areas? If drop-outs are asked, there is a distinct possibility that they will point to the “test and grind cycle” as a contributing factor to their loss of interest in schools. Schools need to ensure that their students are in fact graduating and graduating with the requisite skills for them to either enter the work force or head on to higher education. High-stakes tests do not do an adequate job of measuring how well someone absorbs knowledge or is able to contribute in the workforce. Ravitch (2010) summed high-stakes testing up nicely: “Scores matter, but they are an indicator, not the definition of good education.” An interesting and challenging curriculum should keep our students motivated and interested in learning whereas the test and grind which is currently being used is driving students away from their education nor preparing them for their futures. Tests need to be driven by the curriculum, not the other way around. Teachers know this and have been having an extremely hard time convincing policy makers of this fact.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
There are two major complaints from educators about high-stakes tests. The first is deals with the practice of teaching to the test. Some schools spend the majority of their time teaching children how to take tests vice teaching them useful material for the test. The American School Board Journal (2008) reported: “(Texas) …schools are focusing more on preparations and rankings than learning.” This type of “instruction” is not useful to our children. While some children may not mind this, many children have gotten bored with it and could care less about what goes on in a classroom or worse. Keyes (2007) wrote in an editorial:
“Administrators require teachers to strictly adhere to a months-long test-prep program. My students recoil at the sight of their test-prep books. Last year, some of my students cried, wracked with anxiety over the tests. My students are 7 and 8 years old.”
For whatever reason, researchers seem to overlook reports like these from teachers and when not overlooked, they appear to be marginalized. Hoffman and Nottis (2009) looked at some studies by a group where that group reported that forty percent of the students saw themselves as willing to comply with the demands of the test, or had positive perceptions of the test and their ability to do well on the test. The other sixty percent reported negative feelings, including lack of motivation, “as a result of their participation in the high-stakes testing” (ibid). Teacher motivation is also affected by not being able to provide input into the decision making process on what is to be taught. Quoting the American School Board Journal again: “The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, convened by President Bush in 2006, said schools must find ways to improve instruction and make better textbooks.” Many schools and teachers know how to do this, but are stymied by the political pressure to improve test scores. For instance, Singapore wanted to improve its' math curriculum. The educators there looked at all the math programs being used in other countries and decided the Soviet way of teaching math was the best available. The Singaporeans made a few changes and now the Singapore math system is usually touted as the best in the world and is used by other countries to teach math. U.S. educators have known this for a while and can not use this math program due to the fact it doesn't teach everything required by the standards in many states. Yet countries using this program traditionally score higher on the international tests such as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) (Gonzales, 2009).
The second complaint deals with the curriculum being cut down. Certain subjects are cut from the curriculum because many state high-stakes tests do not test those subjects. Subjects such as music, art, physical education, science, and social studies all appeal to different people in different fashions and help to teach or reinforce the “core” subjects. The paring down of these subjects is a fact and many schools are very open about the how they are a “back to basics” school. There is some research being done into these subjects being removed from the curriculum. Most have pointed to their removal bringing down morale. There was at least one study done in Florida (Winters, Trivitt, Greene, 2010) that found “our results indicate that the threat of sanctions actually led to a substantial increase in student science proficiency.” They believe the gains, found in low social economic status groups, are due to the ability of those students to better understand what they are reading in science. Their finding was surprising. However, as they point out they were able to only test students in elementary science and not higher grades such as middle and high school. Additionally, they point out that Florida does not test in low-stakes subjects.
Both of these complaints are common practices in many school districts across the nation and both tend to lower the morale of students and teachers alike. Both tend to make classes boring to teach and to sit through. If learning is not interesting, people are going to find something that is. Teachers will have to deal with increased classroom management issues and students will leave school as quickly as they can. A slight change in how things are looked at could bring motivation back up. If teachers are allowed to teach subjects children are interested in and in and interesting way instead of focusing so much time and attention on testing procedures, there shouldn't be a drop in the test scores and we should lose the students which we lose. If high-stakes tests stay, teachers need to be allowed “to teach for the test” versus “to teach to the test.”
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
Einstein's quote above refers to the lawmakers who insist that these children take high-stakes tests with nothing to support the idea that testing does in fact bring about the changes colleges are asking for and business leaders are demanding. Lawmakers should also work with the people who know education best, teachers. Coming from business backgrounds, many lawmakers are loath to do so and insist that teachers are the major problem with schools. Those lawmakers believe they need to hold teachers accountable for the child's inability to pass the test. Ravitch (2010) reported on the effects of education reform in two cities in her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. In both cases, people were put in charge of school systems who had no background in education and who used test scores to prove how great their methods were (ibid). While this does not fly in the face of recommendations made in A Nation at Risk (1985), the fact that the educators involved were shut out of the decision making process on what goes on in schools does. Carl Cohn (San Diego school Superintendent) was quoted by Ravitch (2010) as saying: “Any genuine school reform is dependent upon empowering those at the bottom, not punishing them from the top.” A number of politicians campaign on improving schools and then use high-stakes tests as their primary means of showing the improvement. High-stakes tests should not be the sole measure of how well a school and it's students are performing. A measurement, which should be used, is to what degree the school is helping disadvantaged and minority students. According to Ravich (2010), one model in particular, in New York City, was a scaled down or localized version of NCLB and the results from it look far from promising nor have the reforms done anything to improve the education gap with minority students.
Race to the Top is another good sounding, catchy name much like No Child Left Behind. Many people started out liking NCLB and now are screaming to have it done away with. Will we be doing the same with Race to the Top? President Obama has introduced his “Race to the Top” and “A Blueprint for Reform.” Both of which continue to rely on high-stakes tests as a means to an end. This flies in the face of what those in the education field know, or as Gusky (2007) stated: “Educators at all levels today recognize that no single assessment can address all that is important for students to know and be able to do.” Currently, it appears money from Race to the Top is not going to schools who desperately need the money. Schools are being forced into a “business” model when they are not businesses. Educators are being told they need to have “scientific data” to back up what is being taught and how it is being taught, but there is no corresponding condition being used to support the requirements of the laws. There is justification for getting rid of ineffective teachers, but teachers are not the only issue with education in the U.S. President Obama's “Blueprint for Reform” wants more charter schools, but there needs to be more accountability for those schools. In addition, charter schools should be forced to accept more special needs students than they currently do.
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein
The 1983 report, A Nation at Risk (ANR), provided some excellent recommendations as to what needed and still needs to be done to reform education. While ANR does recommend standardized tests, it also recommended: “This system should include other diagnostic procedures that assist teachers and students to evaluate student progress.” The report did not recommend any sanctions for schools who have students unable to “meet a norm” of any kind. The purpose of the standardized test recommended in ANR was to help teachers and students identify areas where a student requires additional assistance or support, certify a student's abilities, or for advanced/accelerated work, such as ability level classes or sections. No-where did ANR state or recommend tests were to be used in a punitive fashion. The recommendation is benign and would be welcomed by teachers, especially if there is not a lot of stress placed on the passing of the test by the student. Unfortunately fixing things in education will not be simpler. High-stakes tests should have their role in education reduced so as to allow teachers to focus on curriculum vice “passing the test.” Other measures need to be put into place to allow for the assessment of the student. The recommendations made in 1983 are still valid even if a few may need to be updated. More emphasis needs to be placed on ensuring that minority, handicapped, and homeless students are taken care of so that they can enter the workforce or college vice dropping out of schools. Many of these students do not perform well on the current high-stakes test. As Gusky stated: “…concerns about potential errors in measurement provide strong technical justification for the use of multiple measures,…” Multiple types measurement will allow the differences between people to be negated and allow students, who might not in the current high-stakes test, to shine and realize their fullest potential.
The best solution for parents and teachers is to continue to let their elected representatives know the “education reforms” are not working and that those reforms need to be done away with to be replaced with models that have been shown to work.
Anonymous (1935) Colonel Parker's Experiment in the Common Schools of Quincy, Massachusetts. The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 35, No. 7 (Mar., 1935), pp. 495-504 (article consists of 10 pages) Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/996738
Anonymous. (2008). Notes from the testing front. American School Board Journal, 195(5), 10. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Amrein, A., & Berliner, D. (2003). The Effects of High-Stakes Testing on Student Motivation and Learning. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 32. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Gardner, D., et al. (1983) A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education by The National Commission on Excellence in Education. Retrieved from the world wide web http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html. Last accessed 21 June 2010.
Gonzales, P., et al. (2009). Highlights From TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from the world wide web: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009001. Last accessed 21 June 2010.
Guskey, T. (2007). Multiple Sources of Evidence: An Analysis of Stakeholders' Perceptions of Various Indicators of Student Learning. Educational Measurement: Issues & Practice, 26(1), 19-27. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3992.2007.00085.x.
Hoffman, L., & Nottis, K. (2008). Middle School Students' Perceptions of Effective Motivation and Preparation Factors for High-Stakes Tests. NASSP Bulletin, 92(3), 209-223. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database. 19 June 2010.
Keyes, D. (2007). Classroom Caste System. Washington Post. Op-Ed, April 9, 2007. Accessed via fairtest.org at http://www.fairtest.org/classroom-caste-system. Also available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800925.html Last accessed 23 June 2010.
Kohn, A. (2005). Unconditional Teaching. Educational Leadership, 63(1), 20-24. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Moore, R. (2010) Fixing NCLB: How Testing Hurts Disadvantaged Kids. Teacher Magazine, http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2010/06/02/tln_moore_blueprint.html?tkn=LPRCMuo275tfTCA9gzuy0EZR2y3TSqZfJUzL&cmp=clp-sb-ascd Last accessed 18 June 2010.
Ravitch, D. (2010) The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Basic Books. Philadelphia, PA
Winters, M., Trivitt, J., & Greene, J. (2010). The impact of high-stakes testing on student proficiency in low-stakes subjects: Evidence from Florida's elementary science exam. Economics of Education Review, 29(1), 138-146. doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2009.07.004.
The wiki and I were having "fun" trying to iron things out. Posted under "Current Practices" High-Stakes Testing, A Motivation Killer You will notice it looks different.