Battle Over High-Stakes Testing Continues--And Goes National
The battle over high-stakes testing took a back seat this legislative session to education reform bills that promised to dramatically up school funding. But the issue is bubbling up again. State schools Superintendent Randy Dorn, elected last year on his promise to dump the WASL, sent out a press release this morning announcing that his office is getting close to completing a new assessment system. The new tests will be shorter, use multiple choice questions and, eventually, be given to students online. But he says that it's "unrealistic" at the moment to expect high school students to pass the math and science portions of what will be called the High School Proficiency Exam--no surprise given the abysmal performance of students on the math WASL. And so, while he stresses that he supports using the test as a graduation requirement, he says he will ask the Legislature to delay the math and science portions of that requirement by at least one year. Otherwise, the class of 2013 would have to pass all portions of the test.
Later in the day, the Washington Education Association responded with a press release that praised Dorn for scrapping the WASL but criticized him for sticking to the concept of a high-stakes test.
"Superintendent Dorn plans to use this new test in the same way as the old WASL," WEA spokesperson David Phelps writes. "This is not progress."
At the same time, some are wondering what the state's participation in a new movement for national standards will mean. Forty-six states, including Washington, have recently signed on to an agreement to develop such standards; the offices of Dorn and Governor Chris Gregoire are both involved. David Marshak, an education lecturer at Western Washington University and a longtime critic of high-stakes testing, says he believes national standards will intensify the already considerable pressure on schools to teach to the test.
"Anytime you have tests you have the pressure to teach the test," concedes Alan Burke, the state's deputy superintendent for K-12 education, who is involved in the national effort. But he contends that national standards will produce better textbooks and be more "efficient," helping states save money by pooling their resources.
What about the standards we've already spent money on? He says he thinks they'll hold up pretty well to whatever national standards are developed. "I don't think we'll have to do much more than tweaking," he says.
2 comment(s)
Bob Valiant says:
Who would you rather have looking out for the education of your child, her 5th grade teacher or some unaccountable Wall Street CEO? For the last 25 years school "reform" has been driven by members of the Business Roundtable. The Roundtable and the politicians they bankrolled pushed for the outrageously expensive and failed testing programs that have resulted in no net gain of achievement, the highest levels of dropouts in decades, and the loss of valuable music, art, and vocational programs.
Now the same CEOs who destroyed the American economy want to roll out "national standards." This new assault by the Federal government and their big business partners is being sold as way to save money. It would be cheaper, they say, to develop one test that could be administered across the country in order to stamp a number on your child’s forehead.
What a crock! Anyone with experience with more than one child knows each has strengths and weaknesses that will never show up on a test. Residents of Richland, Washington have vastly different expectations for their local public schools than the residents of Richland, Oregon. Why then would we believe that an education designed and administered from D.C. would be better for our kids than one developed by our local teachers and our local school boards? Beats me, but if we don’t speak out that is exactly what we are going to get.
Posted On: Friday, Jun. 12 2009 @ 3:13PM
Louis Kruger says:
The most recent research on high stakes testing supports much of the criticism of these tests. I have summarized some of this research as it pertains to the Massachusetts high stakes testing program on my website: http://www.childrenleftbehind.com/5.html and in my recent documentary.
Lou Kruger
kruger@neu.edu
Posted On: Monday, Aug. 17 2009 @ 3:20PM