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May 9, 2012
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Page 9
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Too Much Testing and Punishing
When the love
of learning takes
a back seat
by
J an R esseger
This spring, 400 school
boards in Texas, a third of
the school principals in
New York, and a large
national group of educa
tion, civil rights, parents’
and religious organiza
tions have organized petitions to
oppose the torrent of standardized
testing our federal government has
flooded into public schools. I am
encouraged by this protest. It’s
about time!
Although standardized tests ex
pose achievement gaps, they can
not close them. Instead, low scor
ing students need pre-school, en
riched classes, and enough teach
ers and counselors to be able to
connect personally with all stu
dents.
Standardized testing every year
for all children in third through
eighth grades and once in high
school was folded into the federal
education law in 2002 in a version
called No Child Left Behind. Recent
federal policy has only added new
uses for testing.
Race to the Top and new waivers
from some of the worst conse
quences of No Child Left Behind are
being granted by the
U.S. Department of Edu
cation, but only for
states that promise to
tie teacher evaluation
and pay to students’
sta n d a rd iz e d
test
scores. Such programs
too often impose pun
ishments like firing prin
dren hunker down on tested sub
jects of basic reading and math at
the expense o f art, music, literature,
and even social studies.
H igh-stakes graduation tests
only increase the dropout rate as
those likely to fail are counseled
into alternative programs or held
back indefinitely in ninth grade to
prevent their pulling down the
school’s average by taking the
tenth-grade test. Now cheating
scandals in Atlanta and Washing
ton, D.C. confirm that administra-
We may succeed in raising test
scores by relying on these methods,
but we will fail to teach them that
reading can be transformative and
that it belongs to them.
—Claire Needed H o lla n d e r . New York middle school teacher
cipals and teachers and closing or tors, desperate to protect their own
privatizing the low est scoring jobs, have required teachers to
schools, often the schools in the change students’ answers.
poorest neighborhoods of big cit
Millions of dollars flow to private
ies— all based on standardized test corporations for test development
scores.
and grading, and the Department of
Children are spending too much Education is spending millions on
time drilling basic skills and practic research to evaluate teachers by their
ing test-taking. Low-scoring chil students’ scores. Although such
value added metrics have proven
unreliable, newspapers in New York
and Los Angeles printed the scores
for thousands of teachers.
Standardized tests cannot mea
sure imagination, critical thinking,
respect for others, compassion and
a sense of justice. Metrics cannot
tell us whether teachers help chil
dren love learning.
In a recent New York Times com
mentary Claire Needell Hollander,
an English teacher in a New York
middle school, regrets that recently
she has been forced to cut discus
sions of literary classics for stu
dents whose test scores lag and
substitute short non-fiction pas
sages like those that appear in the
standardized test.
“We cannot enrich the minds of
our students by testing them on
texts that purposely ignore their
hearts,” she writes. “By doing so,
we are withholding from our needi
est students any reason to read at
all... We may succeed in raising test
scores by relying on these meth
ods, but we will fail to teach them
that reading can be transformative
and that it belongs to them.”
Jan Resseger is a minister fo r
Public Education and Witness M in
istries in the United Church o f
Christ.
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