With each passing year, politicians put more weight on standardized exams to evaluate students, teachers and schools. From No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top to the new Common Core assessments, test scores have become the primary tool to make high-stakes educational decisions.
As the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative series demonstrates, many of those exams are severely flawed. Poorly written questions, inaccurate answers, faulty scoring rules and other major problems undermine the validity of test results.
Reliance on test results, whether flawed or accurate, often leads to inappropriate decisions. Some students are denied promotion to the next grade because of test scores. Others lose out on high school diplomas because they “failed” a state exam. They are then blocked from access to further education and employment. Without the tools to contribute to society, they risk falling into the criminal justice system. This “school-to-prison pipeline” has an enormous cost for students, their families, communities and society.
Even relatively error-free exams are limited tools that measure a narrow slice of what students need to learn. To boost scores, some schools force-feed children a junk-food diet of narrow test prep. As a result, they are denied a rich and varied curriculum. The pressure to improve test scores also distorts and corrupts teaching. It has helped spawn the nationwide epidemic of cheating by educators also uncovered by the AJC.
The damage caused by high-stakes tests particularly affects children of color and those from low-income families, students with disabilities and English language learners. They often get one-size-fits-all schooling aimed at boosting scores instead of instruction that addresses their individual needs or builds on their strengths.
All these problems are well known by assessment experts. They are why testing professionals warn against over-reliance on standardized exams. Here is what the “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing,” endorsed by three major measurement associations, says: “In educational settings, a decision or characterization that will have major impact on a student should not be made on the basis of a single test score.”
Instead, the standards call for the use of “multiple measures” and data “collected from multiple sources.” It continues, “In addition to test scores, other relevant information (e.g. school record, classroom observation, parent report) is taken into account by the professionals making the decision.”
Why do policymakers rely on these often-flawed tests? Certainly, some have been influenced by the promises of testing proponents that “raising the bar” will improve overall educational performance and close gaps between racial groups. But that has not happened. The reason is that high-stakes testing is based on a false theory about how to improve teaching and learning. It’s akin to trying to make a typical gym student into a “world class” high jumper by raising the bar to six feet and yelling, “Jump higher!” If the goal is not met, we punish the student and her coach.
Shifting to Common Core assessments will not solve the quality problem. The same companies responsible for multiple errors in the past will make the new exams. Nor will changing questions end the damage caused by test overuse and abuse.
More fundamental changes are needed. First, test scores should never be more than one small part of a decision about any child or school. Second, the amount of standardized testing must be dramatically scaled back. Third, authentic, valid, comprehensive, unbiased alternatives — including systems that evaluate the full range of work students do — must be developed. Finally, “accountability” should apply to the tests and those who make them.
It is time to start examining the examiners and the products they create.
Robert Schaeffer is public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).
