Bob Herbert Gets High-Stakes Testing Right

The secret is out that No Child Left Behind's brand of measuring success and failure for students and schools does not work. For five years, principals and teachers across the country have been subjected to immense pressure to bump up students' test scores, by any means necessary. While NCLB certainly did not introduce high-stakes standardized testing, it has escalated it to an unprecedented level.

Unfortunately for NCLB-touters, raising test scores and raising student learning are not the same thing, as Bob Herbert discusses in his New York Times column, "High Stakes Flimflam."

Herbert zeroes in on the law's centrally flawed logic of allowing each state to determine student "proficiency" and make its own tests:

"A study released last week by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association found that 'improvements in passing rates on state tests can largely be explained by declines in the difficulty of those tests.'

"The people in charge of most school districts would rather jump from the roof of a tall building than allow an unfettered study of their test practices. But that kind of analysis is exactly what's needed if we're to get any real sense of how well students are doing."

The current culture of living and dying with the all-important test has thus led to widespread bar-lowering (by test-makers to claim success), and obsessing (by administrators and teachers under intense pressure). Under this NCLB-abetted system, the children are the patently left behind. Addressing students' individual needs and learning styles becomes low-priority when all that matters is shoveling one-size-fits-all "test-taking strategies" down their throats.

The report Herbert cites, "The Proficiency Illusion," provides a stark counterpoint to the NCLB victory rhetoric disseminated by the Bush administration. In summary, the researchers revealed "that the tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, especially in reading and especially in the early grades."

States dole out lucrative contracts to publishing corporations to make their tests. Our public school testing system is currently entrenched with a multi-million dollar corporate interest in keeping the ludicrous state-testing system going. It just isn't working for anyone but the corporations and those who want to claim victory at any cost -- even when the children they claim to help remain as struggling as ever.

Dan Brown is a New York City teacher and the author of the memoir, "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle."

Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher

Comments

[dadw5boys]

$100'S OF BILLIONS of Taxpayers Dollars spend when all they had to do was HIRE some class room ASSISTANTS TO TEACH STUDY SKILLS.

[skrashen]

Yes, it is true that improvements in high-stakes test scores don’t always mean more learning: You can pump up test scores in a number of ways (e.g. teaching test-taking strategies, making sure weaker students don’t take the test).

Herbert assumes, however, that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing policy has resulted in increased test scores. It hasn’t.

Despite huge increases in the amount of reading instruction many children are now experiencing, and despite artificial ways of pumping up test scores, NCLB has not produced improvements on either national or state reading tests.

In the most recent report, Bruce Fuller and colleagues concluded that “earlier test score growth in reading has largely faded since the enactment of NCLB” and “progress seen in the 1990’s in narrowing achievement gaps has largely disappeared in the post-NCLB era.”

PS: In today's NY Times, Secretary Spellings claimed that national test scores are at an all-time high: But the significant gains all took place before NCLB went into effect.

Studies of the impact of NCLB:

1. “Gauging growth: How to judge No Child Left Behind?”, by Bruce Fuller, Joseph Wright, Kathryn Gesicki, and Erin Kang, Educational Researcher 2007 36: 268-278.
2. “Selling NCLB: Would You Buy a Used Law From This Woman?,” by James Crawford, available at www.elladvocates.org/nclb/spellings2.html.
3. “Did Reading First Work?,” by Stephen Krashen, http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=17349
4. “Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-Depth Look Into National and State Reading and Math Outcome Trends,” by Jaekyung Lee, published in 2006 by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
5. “NCLB: No Impact on State Fourth Grade Reading Test Scores,” By Stephen Krashen http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/commentpost.aspx?news=no&postid=19497

[NavyMom]

You would probably be amazed at how many homeschooling parents say testing drove them away from public school.

[locanicole]

It's not only teachers and administrators who are under pressure, but students also. I have a child with reading/writing disability and the amount of pressure she felt leading up to the test was immense. The test is all anyone in the school lived for for at least the month leading up to it and the rest of the year had at least some time, almost every day, devoted to test "prep". (as if the kids dont know how to take a test!)

I dont know about the tests getting easier, my child seemed to score in the same area every year, but it wouldnt surprise me with the direction this country is taking towards corporations. It's all about the mighty dollar! I dont know if thats the lesson I want my child learning..­.maybe I should home school...