Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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NY Times agrees with DDN
Michael Winerip says in Wednesday’s New York Times what Mark Fisher and I have been writing since 2004 — the testing industry is buckling under NCLB.
The cracks already are beginning to show as a host of scoring problems over the last week demonstrated.
In our 2004 national award winning series, Fisher and I looked at the emerging crisis of capacity in the testing industry. Interestingly, Winerip focuses on how capacity problems and high costs have even the U.S. Department of Education encouraging states to take short cuts that might actually lead to less meaningful tests and results that tell us less about how kids are doing.
We’ve seen these trends lead to questionable short cuts in scoring, but the Times suggests costs and capacity may also lead states to uses dumbed down tests to begin with.
As a nation, we put a lot of faith in standardized tests, and we tend to take for granted that the information they give us is accurate and tells us something valuable about the students who take them. But with all the problems facing the test industry, is it time to ask tougher questions about testing?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Testing
Comments
By Rick
March 25, 2006 11:11 AM | Link to this
These are called growing pains. The NCLB may have moved too far too fast. Please remember the academic fraud committed by the education blobacracy in years past.By Mary
March 23, 2006 8:04 AM | Link to this
It is past time to ask tough questons about everything. The education and testing industries are parts of infrastructural collapse throughout our culture. Call me Henny Penny, if you wish. Levies, bridges, and roads are failing, deficits are astronomical and we are worried about whether Susie or Johnnie can get athletic scholarships to college. The testing industry would not be so taxed if a well designed national test was developed. I think the Cleveland Plain Dealer or some other Ohio paper had an article about that last week.