Just the facts: high stakes testing

High-stakes testing

America has been conducting a massive experiment on the impact of high-stakes testing ever since the so-called “No Child Left Behind” law (NCLB) was signed nine years ago. And the results are in: This enormous, expensive, painful venture has had little or no effect on achievement.

How do we know? Because the U.S. Department of Education tests samples of students in every state in a program called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), nicknamed the Nation’s Report Card. And if you look at NAEP trends over the last two decades, you can’t see when NCLB kicked in.

Where's the impact? If you don't know when "No Child Left Behind" was signed, you'll never guess from looking at this graph of reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Programs (The answer is January 8, 2002.)

The great high-stakes testing experiment has failed.

But scores on many state tests have gone up! say testing proponents. That’s because of teaching to the test. Under pressure from NCLB, many educators have focused on the particular types of questions and the areas of the curriculum their state tests usually cover. Ask questions in a different way, or on a different part of the same subject matter, as often happens on the NAEP, and students don’t look so good.

Don’t you hate it when your kids ask, “Will this be on the test?”

These days, aren’t you asking that question yourself?

In human terms.

High-stakes testing was supposed to have a positive impact on how schools serve kids whose low achievement used to be taken for granted, especially low-income and minority students. Unfortunately, that extra attention too often takes the form of shallow test prep rather than learning that will last. And there’s less time for music, art, social studies, languages, and anything else that’s not tested.

For Gayle Hoffman, an elementary school teacher in Utah, high-stakes testing brought an end to projects that fascinated her second graders, like the unit in which they read about Helen Keller and learned the manual alphabet. After her school failed to make “adequate yearly progress” under NCLB, Hoffman says, “We were told to cut out all the fluff and only teach to the test. How sad.”

http://www.nea.org/home/42390.htm