Columnist Aaron Long writes about the shortcomings of standardized tests.
At first glance, the implementation of standardized testing would appear to facilitate an increase in educational standards and to ensure that all students are learning the same material. After all, the initiatives tailored by 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act, and its replacement, 2015’s Every Student Succeeds Act, have the best of intentions: to provide our nation’s students with accurate, effectual, curriculums, regardless of their geographic placement or background. Unfortunately, the best of intentions often fail to catalyze the best of results. The deficiencies of standardized testing can be traced through a number of factors.
For one, standardized tests provide a poor indicator of academic strength. According to a 2001 study by the Brookings Institute, 50 to 80 percent of year-by-year improvements in individual test scores were temporary — the result of situational factors as opposed to prevailing changes in learning ability. That inaccuracy can be exacerbated by the tendency of federally mandated testing to place unfair burdens on students for whom English is a second language, or who possess special needs.
Another study completed by the Gesell Institute of Human Development in 2010 demonstrated that the emphasis on meeting national expectations makes "children feel like failures now as early as Pre-K." What was originally envisioned as a means of providing equity through regulation easily can be demonstrated to have harmful and divisive effects.
Those tests also affect teachers and their curriculums. In 2007, researchers at the University of Maryland found that the now-defunct No Child Left Behind Act placed pressure on educators to “teach to the test,” which led to a decline in time devoted to complex assignments and higher-order thinking.
Another 2007 study by the Center on Education Policy unearthed data suggesting that, in the time since 2001, 44 percent of school districts nationwide had reduced portions of the school day devoted to science, social studies and the arts in favor of highlighting reading and math. That deficit amounted to 145 minutes and was likely the result of attempts to match No Child Left Behind provisions, which had the additional impact of unbalancing the curriculum.
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Although recent legislation, like the aforementioned Every Student Succeeds Act, has endeavored to give states more discretion in setting academic standards — such as giving them the choice to adopt Common Core, which Ohio has — the central flaw remains untouched.
Without reform, standardized testing and its persuasiveness in the realm of teacher evaluations will continue to influence curriculums and inhibit educators. A teacher should be given the agency, resources and time to provide an environment that is both challenging and inspiring, both equitable and able to provide for students with vastly different needs and backgrounds.
A new culture is needed to guide school systems away from “teaching to the test” and to create a system that accurately measures the performance of students, fulfilling the original promise of federal testing legislation.
Aaron Long is a freshman studying communication studies and journalism and a member of Students For Education Reform. What do you think about standardized tests? Email him at al502514@ohio.edu.
