How Standardized Testing Damages Education

HOW STANDARDIZED
TESTING DAMAGES EDUCATION

How do schools use standardized tests?
Despite their biases, inaccuracies, limited ability to measure
achievement or ability, and other flaws, schools use standardized
tests to determine if children are ready for school, track them
into instructional groups; diagnose for learning disability, retardation
and other handicaps; and decide whether to promote, retain in
grade, or graduate many students. Schools also use tests to guide
and control curriculum content and teaching methods.

Aren't these valid uses of test scores?
No test is good enough to serve as the sole or primary basis for
important educational decisions. Readiness tests, used
to determine if a child is ready for school, are very inaccurate
and encourage the use of overly academic, developmentally inappropriate
primary schooling (that is, schooling not appropriate to the child's
emotional, social or intellectual development and to the variation
in children's development). Screening tests for disabilities
are often not adequately validated; that is, it is not proven
that they are accurately measuring for disabilities. They also
promote a view of children as having deficits to be corrected,
rather than having individual differences and strengths on which
to build. While screening tests are supposed to be used to refer
children for further diagnosis, they often are used to place children
in special programs. Tracking hurts slower students and
mostly does not help more advanced students. Retention in grade,
or flunking or leaving a student back, is almost always academically
and emotionally harmful, not helpful. Test content is a very poor
basis for determining curriculum content, and teaching methods
based on the test are themselves harmful.

Who is most hurt by these practices?
Students from low-income and minority-group backgrounds are more
likely to be retained in grade, placed in a lower track, or put
in special or remedial education programs when it is not necessary.
They are more likely to be given a watered-down or "dummied-down"
curriculum, based heavily on rote drill and test practice. This
only ensures they will fall further and further behind their peers.
On the other hand, children from white, middle and upper income
backgrounds are more likely to be placed in "gifted and talented"
or college preparatory programs where they are challenged to read,
explore, investigate, think and progress rapidly.

How do tests control curriculum and instruction?
In many districts, raising test scores has become the single most
important indicator of school improvement. As a result, teachers
and administrators feel enormous pressure to ensure that test
scores go up. Schools narrow and change the curriculum to match
the test. Teachers teach only what is covered on the test. Methods
of teaching conform to the multiple-choice format of the tests.
Teaching more and more resembles testing.

Does "teaching to the test" increase student capabilities
and knowledge?
This depends on whether the test is good. For multiple-choice
tests, "teaching to the test" means focusing on the
content that will be on the test, sometimes even drilling on test
items, and using the format of the test as a basis for teaching.
Since this kind of teaching to the test leads primarily to improved
test-taking skills, increases in test scores do not necessarily
mean improvement in real academic performance. Teaching to the
test also narrows the curriculum, forcing teachers and students
to concentrate on memorization of isolated facts, instead of developing
fundamental and higher order abilities. For example, multiple-choice
writing tests are really copy-editing tests, which do not measure
the ability to organize or communicate ideas. Practicing on tests
or test-like exercises is not how to learn even the mechanics
of English, much less how to write like a writer.

Don't standardized tests provide accountability?
No. Tests that measure as little and as poorly as multiple-choice
tests cannot provide genuine accountability. Pressure to teach
to the test distorts and narrows education. Instead of being accountable
to parents, community, teachers and students, schools become "accountable"
to a completely unregulated testing industry.

If we don't use standardized tests, how will we know how
students and programs are doing?
Better methods of evaluating student needs and progress already
exist. Good observational checklists used by trained teachers
are more helpful than any screening test. Assessment based on
student performance on real learning tasks is more useful and
accurate for measuring achievement - and provides more information
- than multiple-choice achievement tests.

Are other methods of assessment as reliable as standardized
multiple-choice tests?
Trained teams of judges can be used to rate performance in most
any academic or non-academic area. In the Olympic Games, for example,
gymnasts and divers are rated by panels of judges, and the high
and low scores are thrown out. Studies have shown that, with training,
the level of agreement among judges (the "inter-rater reliability")
is high. As with multiple-choice tests, it is necessary to enact
safeguards to ensure that race, class, gender, linguistic or other
cultural biases do not affect evaluation.

How do other nations evaluate their students?
The U.S. is the only economically advanced nation to rely heavily
on multiple-choice tests. Other nations use performance-based
assessment where students are evaluated on the basis of real work
such as essays, projects and activities. Ironically, because these
nations do not focus on teaching to multiple-choice tests, they
even score higher than U.S. students on those kinds of tests.