Mandatory Testing

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires annual “assessments” of all students in grades three through eight in reading and math. Periodic science assessments will be added in the 2007-08 school year. These assessments are used to measure each school’s adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward the goal of making every public school student “proficient” in these subjects within 12 years. Schools that fail to make the required progress are declared “low performing” and are subject to sanctions.

Standardized tests reward the ability to quickly answer questions that do not require critical thinking or genuine analysis. They cannot measure writing, mathematical, scientific or reasoning skills, or gauge a student’s grasp of social science concepts. They cannot adequately assess thinking skills or predict what students can do when presented with real-world tasks.

Schools in low-income areas are under the most pressure to increase test scores. To raise scores, schools may drop entire subjects, like art, foreign languages, music and drama. They may abandon instruction of skills that tests don’t measure, such as research or laboratory experiments. Instead of aiming for actual reading comprehension and literacy, lessons begin to consist of short passages followed by multiple-choice questions. Writing becomes a series of lessons to master the “five-paragraph essay,” a form useless outside of standardized tests. Incessant drills and practice tests waste time that should be devoted to increasing students’ real knowledge and skills. Library budgets are spent on test prep materials. The major consequence of teaching to the test is that students are, in fact, left behind—they are not taught the knowledge and skills required to be successful in life.

Good teachers are often discouraged, even disgusted, by an overemphasis on testing. Teachers are converted to test-taking coaches, giving tips like “what to do with only one minute left.” Professional development is reduced to training teachers to be better test coaches. It is absurd to believe that the “best and brightest” will want to become teachers when teaching is reduced to test prep.

Even at the very best schools, standardized test scores do not consistently rise every year. They fluctuate from year to year based on any number of factors, including student turnover, new teachers or even a bad flu season. An in-depth study of test scores in North Carolina elementary schools found, for example, that 70 percent of the year-to-year change in average test scores was caused by external factors rather than actual changes in student performance.1 At the same time, a growing number of research studies have shown that the scores used to judge schools are often inaccurate because of statistical margins of error. This means that some satisfactory schools are punished for inaccurate bad scores while some unsatisfactory schools are rewarded for inaccurate good scores.

The No Child Left Behind Act does not specifically mandate annual statewide standardized tests. It requires “yearly student academic assessments.”2 The model Comprehensive School Assessment Act is similar to Nebraska’s School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System (STARS), which complies with No Child Left Behind without overrelying on standardized tests. The model act holds the state Board of Education responsible for defining the core body of knowledge and skills that students should acquire. It directs local school boards to create assessment systems that meet the needs of their student populations and provide fair and comprehensive measurements of student learning. Each assessment system must be approved by the state education authorities and be consistent with uniform statewide standards.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act is based on the assumption that student achievement is primarily the result of the instruction children receive in their current school. This premise focuses the blame for low-performing schools on teachers and school administrators, and distracts attention from the major causes of low student achievement: the special challenges faced by low-income students and a lack of resources available to meet those challenges. The School Testing Right to Know Act requires that whenever a government entity releases standardized test scores, it must simultaneously release school-specific data on the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, per-pupil expenditures, and average class size. With this information, policymakers and the public will have a more accurate idea of the real problems that must be addressed to ensure that our schoolchildren can succeed.