No Child Left Behind?
I went to public school k-12 and my mother was a teacher in the public school system for 35 years, so education is a matter close to my heart. I fully believe that standardized tests are not an effective tool for measuring students learning because of their socioeconomic and racial bias, their long term effect on the teaching structure of the public schools, and the lack of accountability and consistency across the board when states put No Child Left Behind into action.
The racial and socio economic bias of standardized tests is almost universally—and therefore disturbingly—accepted. A report from the US department of education admitted that “many were wary of the testing provision…and more tests alone would only demonstrate the widely known fact that poor and minority students perform at lower levels.” This trend is clearly not an indicator of racial or class intelligence or potential. First of all, students for whom English is a second language take the exact same test as the rest of the school, which means they enter the test at a supreme disadvantage to their fellow classmates. Of course their test scores are going to be lower—they have to spend have their time translating before they can even get to the content of the exam. Secondly, the very questions themselves are biased towards the white, middle class. Inner city students are faced with questions that involve cultural aspects of white America, once again forcing the rest of the students to go through one more step of understanding—first they have to “de-foreign ize “ the subject “going to the store,” or “taking a beach vacation,” or “mowing the lawn,” etc, before they can start the process of analysis.
The second concern with standardized tests is the long term effect their dominance in the school system has on the teaching and education of students in public schools. There is such pressure to perform well on the tests that schools begin to filter out the other, non tested subjects, such as art, history, science, even P.E (can you say rising levels of childhood obesity?). The five core subjects in education (math, , reading/writing, history, science and art) have been widdled down to two in many schools—or even worse, the latter three are used as reward only for those students who have proved themselves to be proficient on the tests. In a 3rd grade classroom at the elementary school where I grew up, only three students are allowed to learn the “other” subjects, while the rest of their classmates sit in the same room, going over basic reading and math skills, simply because the school is on its last leg in terms of testing performance. Oh and did I mention that that other 32 kids in the class are first generation immigrants from Mexico, trying not only to learn English, but learn it with only one teacher for all 35 students?
It has been mentioned that if the teachers where doing their job correctly, that the tests would be passed anyway, and so teachers shouldn’t have to spend all this time of specific test preparation. But think of the time many high school students spend outside of class preparing for the ACT s and SATs—and then add the pressure the schools and teachers must feel when their salary, fiscal support, and the actual survival of the school itself depends on the results of the exams. The worse your school does the less money the state gives you. Does that make sense??? If anything, shouldn’t schools that are clearly suffering (at least according to the tests) demand more money for more resources to gain ground on the rest of the state? But no. Instead, many rural and ethnically diverse public schools in my home state of Colorado are on the brink of being turned into charter school or worse. I would start prepping my students 9 hours a day for the tests as well.
My final point is that for all their talk of “standardization” No Child Left Behind and the state tests that have followed are anything but consistent. First of all, each state is in charge of creating their own test. There is no federal standard for the requirements of the tests, so a student proficient according to Iowa’s issued exams might fail the tests given by Utah, or vice versa. And since the states are held accountable by the federal government, many states simply react to poor scores by making their tests easier—if all Washington DC wants is a passing grade, why not dumb down the test until the scores go up? The first year that CSAPs (Colorado State Aptitude Tests) were issued, only 14% of our 10th graders were proficient in reading and math. The next year, there was a huge statistical improvement as upwards of 25% of the same grade passed the “same” test. Sounds like good news until you talk to the teachers who just shake their head at the questions of the test, which had become uncomfortably easier.
The final inconsistency I will point out is that the tests track grade levels, not the kids themselves. Therefore, the tests don’t assess the learning curve or educational data of the students at all—it simply compares last year’s 4th graders to this year’s. Different class, different background, different kids.
How is that standardized and how does that measure anything of importance when it comes to the measurement of student learning?
whereIstand Tags
August 27th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
You make interesting points. I agree that standarized tests aren’t always the measure of learning. I am an example. I struggled with these tests, but ended up earning a master’s degree. I always hated taking those things too.
October 20th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
you make good points, but I think when you say that "I don’t think anyone intelligent would read the stats regarding lower-performance levels of these students and assume it has something to do with those students’ level of learning or intelligence" you are wrong, and that is the problem. What standardized tests do is just that: standardize–as in, look away from what makes each school different, excel, or struggle, and instead place them on an equal field before the assessment. And that is not fair. Then schools and the teachers are held accountable for the tests and worry about that instead of focusing on the initial problem.
I do agree though that technically, if the students are learning, then they should do well on the tests. And you are right, math is math, english english, etc. so why do they need to "teach the tests?" if they just teach correctly? Well, because once a school does poorly ONE time on the state test, often the adminstrators of that school step in to each classroom and require that the day be filled with test taking preparation. That is what happened at my school. Since history is not tested, they removed it from the curriculum and literally, teachers were forced to give students tests (like actual, here, fill in the bubble tests) for a large percentage of the day.
And taking tests in English doesn’t ensure learning OF English. I mean, if you don’t get time to go to ESL, then taking an english test 300 times doesn’t make the words any less understandable.
But I do see your point in a lot of ways, it sort of becomes a horrible cycle….because tests aren’t inherently bad I don’t think, its just become that way.