The Problems with High Stakes Testing in our Public Schools

Of all the chasms that separate one world from another, none is greater than the gap between the people who make policy and the people who suffer the consequences. In education today it is the difference between important grown-ups who piously exhort us to hold our educational system “accountable” and a nine-year-old who has come to detest school because the days are now full of practice tests in place of projects and puzzles. It is the difference between the corporate-model education reformer and the teacher in the classroom dealing with students with learning problems, students living in poverty, students coming from dysfunctional homes, students struggling with the English language,  or minimal parental support and involvement. The reality is that school is only part of what affects a child’s education or ability to learn.

In education today this difference rears it head in the assumption from “on high” that better test scores mean better education. To most educators, however, standardized tests measure what matters least. The tests are unreliable indicators of quality. Higher test scores do not necessarily reflect higher quality teaching and learning. These exams, created by businesses far removed from real education, do not and cannot evaluate and reveal real learning. They give the wrong idea to our students that by filling in the correct bubbles one must be learning and achieving. Our students believe that preparing for “the big test” is what school and education are about. Education is so much more than mere testing. It is about relationships and students achieving their full potential.

Focusing on test scores narrows the curriculum, leads to teaching to the test, and distorts the whole education system for the sake of test scores. High stakes testing strips children of their individuality. Everyone has to be at the same level at the same time. Skills that are necessary for success in life such as critical thinking, problem solving and ethical decision-making are marginalized. 

I strongly believe that the emphasis on high stakes testing is destroying education in the public schools. Educators decry the use of high stakes testing to judge a child or a school or a teacher. Using test scores to rank children and schools does nothing but punish those children and their schools that do not pass the test. Instead of working collaboratively to improve the education of our children the use of test scores separates and ranks schools into those that supposedly “can do” and those that supposedly “cannot do.” 

Suppose that next year almost all the students in New Jersey met the standards and passed the tests. What do you suppose would be the reaction from the politicians, businesspeople, and newspaper editorialists? Would these folks shake their heads in frank admiration and say, ‘Damn, those teachers are good’? That possibility, of course, is improbable to the point of hilarity. Across-the-board student success would immediately be taken as evidence that the tests were too easy. Standarized tests are based on the assumption that some will fail and some will pass. The passing mark--or cut score--on tests is not determined by science. It is a judgment call. Those who are in charge decide where to place the passing mark.

Testing is destroying a love for learning, destroying a passion for the arts. Testing destroys that wide-eyed enthusiasm for discovery that young children bring with them to school. We need to instill in our children a lack of fear at not knowing something and a feeling of power in being able to learn.

Finally, I do believe schools, teachers, and students need to be evaluated; but not by standardized tests. We need to work diligently on an authentic and valid way of evaluating our schools and children and on the local level. We need to measure what we value not value what we measure.