fact sheets

The main reason for testing and evaluating students must be to improve student learning. Each year, however, public school students in the U.S. must take millions of standardized tests which are more harmful than helpful and which do nothing to improve the equality of instruction or learning for students.

Among the tests which are especially damaging to young children are readiness tests. Schools frequently use the scores from readiness tests to judge whether children are 'ready' for kindergarten or are 'ready' for promotion to first grade.

America's public schools administer more than 100 million standardized exams each year, including IQ, achievement, screening, and readiness tests.

Much of the time and money devoted to testing is misspent. Too many tests are poorly constructed, unreliable, and unevenly administered. Multiple-choice questions cannot measure thinking skills, creativity, the ability to solve real problems, or the social skills we want our children to have. Moreover, many exams are biased racially, culturally, linguistically, and by class and gender.

Brenda S. Engel, Lesley College

This position paper outlines reasons to oppose standardized testing of second
graders and then suggests a viable alternative.

A. Primary school children and standardized testing

“Accountability” has become the fundamental tool for instituting changes in public schools. In most states and districts and through the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, accountability means using standardized test results to trigger labels, sanctions, rewards or interventions for districts, schools, educators or students.This approach has been both insufficient and has had undesirable side effects.

Proponents of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law have charged critics with creating "myths" about the law and have issued their own "facts." It's time to look at the evidence for a reality check on NCLB's claims of success.[1]

THE CLAIM: Proponents say higher test scores prove NCLB is working.

A multiple-choice test usually has dozens of questions or "items." For each question, the test- taker is supposed to select the "best" choice among a set of four or five options. (They are sometime called "selected-response tests.") For example:

What causes night and day?

A. The earth spins on its axis.
B. The earth moves around the sun.
C. Clouds block out the sun's light.
D. The earth moves into and out of the sun's shadow.
E. The sun goes around the earth.

Criterion-referenced tests (CRTs) are intended to measure how well a person has learned a specific body of knowledge and skills. Multiple-choice tests most people take to get a driver's license and on-the-road driving tests are both examples of criterion-referenced tests. As on most other CRTs, it is possible for everyone to earn a passing score if they know about driving rules and if they drive reasonably well.

Human beings make tests. They decide what topics to include on the test, what kinds of questions to ask, and what the correct answers are, as well as how to use test scores. Tests can be made to compare students to each other (norm-referenced tests) or to see whether students have mastered a body of knowledge (criterion or standards-referenced tests). This fact sheet explains what NRTs are, their limitations and flaws, and how they affect schools.