Diane Ravitch makes the case for national testing. The 50 state, 50 test policy has created 50 crappy tests. Students score much better on their state tests than the national one.
The release last month of test results by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is part of the Department of Education, vividly demonstrated why varying state standards and tests are inadequate. Almost all states report that, based on their own tests, incredibly large proportions of their students meet high standards. Yet the scores on the federal test (which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders) were far lower. Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation.
She says the state tests have been diluted by politics.
Why the discrepancies? The states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress. The federal testing program, administered for the past 15 years by an independent, bipartisan governing board, has never been cowed by the demands of parents, school officials and taxpayers for good news.
As a result of this and other half measures in education, we’re far behind other nations.
America will not begin to meet the challenge of developing the potential of our students until we have accurate reporting about their educational progress. We will not have accurate reporting until that function is removed from the constraints of state and local politics. We will be stuck with piecemeal and ineffective reforms until we agree as a nation that education – not only in reading and mathematics, but also science, history, literature, foreign languages and the arts – must be our highest domestic priority.
Apt. 11d 
Melissa and I go back and forth on testing all the time. On the one hand, it’s clear that establishing a test that is, even in only the most indirect way, tied to the funding of schools will result in enormous pressures on teachers to teach directly towards the test, to the exclusion of anything creative. But on the other hand, such tests are the only way to gather the sort of information that can give administrators and politicians the justification to go into failing schools and force some changes. So some days, I think efforts to nationalize curricula and testing will kill off what little support still exists out there for public schools amongst middle-class parents; then other days, I think such national standards and tests are the only way to make it possible to actually make all districts everywhere feel somewhat accountable to their students and each other. It’s a tough issue.
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Standardized tests have their place. However, it bothers me that they are often the only tool used to measure success. I really think that there should be some system where we have monitors, real people, educators that visit schools every 2 or 3 years and spend a week. They visit classrooms, speak with students, parents, look at children’s work first hand, have one on one meetings with teachers and administration. They could rate schools as a whole and this would be a companion piece to testing.
Children with low IQ’s, developmental problems and other special needs often don’t do well on these tests, yet their scores get thrown in with the other students and averaged on to show how well a school is educating. This is incredible pressure on these students, their parents, and the teachers. Especially in schools with small populations, where just a handful of students can really bring down the averages.
Teaching to the test not only stifles creativity, it doesn’t give teachers a chance to teach critical thinking. This is a skill that students need to really embrace education in every field- math, science, literature, etc. These tests encourage our teachers to just “kill and drill” and not go for long term understanding and retention of knowledge. I was a seminar recently where a teacher said she used sample tests continually for 2 weeks before the real tests, and worked on the kids memorizing the questions. Most of her students score in the 90th percentile. When someone asked why she didn’t do this in small lessons throughout the semester rather than cramming it all in 2 weeks, she said “Because they wouldn’t remember.”
I feel very lucky to work at a school and have my children attend that same school that in no way “teaches to the test.” Our scores are good. We look at as one small piece of how we are doing, and how are kids are doing. But we don’t change how or what we teach according to the results.
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