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Here here! .. EDUCATION LIFE .. The Trouble With Tests ..
April 9, 2000

# Forum Join a Discussion on Standardized Testing
By JOHN KATZMAN AND STEVEN HODAS

Put down your pencils and close your books. Time's up!'' This may be the most memorable instruction your child hears from a teacher this year.


Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times
A third grader takes a test in Pelham, N.Y.

For New York City fourth graders, who last heard that admonition in February in the final seconds of the state's reading and writing exam, failure could mean another year of fourth grade. While city officials brace for the throngs that are expected to be relegated to mandatory summer school, the stakes are high for school principals, too: under their new contract, test scores can translate into bonuses or unemployment.

Forty-nine states have established curriculum standards spelling out what educators in each state have determined students should know. An increasing number of states, cities and districts are tying these efforts to high-stakes tests that hold teachers, principals and superintendents accountable for raising student scores. Poor performance can lead to dismissals and school closings.

The more important the outcome, the stronger the incentive to do whatever is necessary to ensure that students perform adequately. One response has been a spate of cheating incidents: In December, 47 New York City principals, teachers and staff members were accused of giving students answers on tests that help determine how schools are ranked. In Austin, Tex., school officials have been charged with invalidating 1998 test results of low-scoring students to improve their district's overall results.

A less extreme response is to play it safe, to overemphasize skills that are tested and reorient the classroom along the lines of the test itself, to avoid teaching material not covered -- in effect, turning the classroom experience into test preparation.

''In the two months prior to the test, 50 percent of the school day was specifically devoted to preparation for the test,'' one teacher in Nassau County told us about preparing her fourth graders for this year's state reading test. ''When the math and science tests come this spring, the same thing will happen.''

This link between testing and teaching also lies behind last summer's battle in Kansas over the place of evolution in the science curriculum. The teaching of evolution could not legally be banned from the classroom, so creationists did the next best thing, successfully lobbying for evolution to be removed as a topic from the state's standardized tests. They too understand that what is not tested is much less likely to be taught.

The question, then, is: Do we want our assessment tools -- tests -- to lead the classroom or to follow it?

Designing testing programs is both a pedagogical and political process. Creating the test itself is relatively easy. The state education commissioner hires a testing company to deliver a statistically valid diagnostic instrument. Setting policy around the test is tougher: How do you determine which standards will be represented on the test? How do you train teachers to cover those subjects? Finally, how will you handle weak students, teachers or schools?

One of the thorniest jobs, for instance, is defining passing and failing. This decision is not about accountability. No specific passing score is required to know how schools or students fare relative to one another, which could be accomplished by simply ranking them in order. Rather, the determination of what constitutes ''acceptable'' performance is a complicated one that can be as much about politicians wanting to light a fire under students and administrators (or to demonstrate a commitment to education) as it is about anything else.

Like many governors, George V. Allen of Virginia had positioned himself as an educational reformer who would hold schools to higher standards. Against that backdrop, Virginia's third-grade Standards of Learning English exam was given for the second time last year. The passing grade was set at a fairly aggressive 71 percent, and nearly 50 percent of students failed. By contrast, had the state chosen 60 percent as a passing rate, most students would have passed.

Similarly, the state Board of Education considered a school to have passed only if at least 70 percent of its students did. For third-grade English, only 15 percent of schools achieved that mark. If the passing score for schools had been set at 60 percent, 93 percent would have made it. A subsequent study determined that even if 70 percent of students were to pass statewide, two-thirds of schools would still fail, because better students tend to be grouped in only a few schools.

Governor Allen was leaving office as political fallout over the mass failings was building. Under his successor, James S. Gilmore III, and a new president of the Board of Education, plans are under way to adjust passing levels to allow more schools to pass.

Such shifting winds are not unusual. What was failure last year can be success this year. As New York State phases in a requirement that all high school graduates pass Regents exams, the passing level has been lowered from 65 of 100 to 55 to reduce the failure rate, with the understanding it will be raised when students are better prepared.

In a perfect world, tests would be closely linked to standards. They would measure the facts and skills emphasized by standards in a manner that is consistent with the educational philosophy on which they are based.

However, a new study of state standards and tests by the Washington-based nonprofit group Education Trust has found that many tests do not give clear and consistent messages about the information students need to know. For one, many school districts around the country use so-called off-the-shelf tests, nationally distributed exams that by their nature cannot be responsive to any one state's standards, although sometimes efforts are made to make them so.

For example, California adds a few items to the national Stanford 9 to adapt it to its highly detailed curriculum frameworks, as does Tennessee with the TerraNova. New York City is customizing the TerraNova to better match its third- and fifth-grade standards.

With its powerful incentives, such testing has the potential to become a steamroller paving over both the good and bad in American schools. There is evidence that high-stakes programs raise the performance of the worst schools to a higher baseline of minimal competence. But there is also concern among top private schools as well as public schools in affluent suburbs like Scarsdale and Chappaqua, N.Y., that they will be dragged down toward the baseline, and away from excellence or any distinctive mission.

There are measures of success -- say, high rates of admission to selective colleges -- that may be more indicative of how schools and teachers affect students.

Teachers must balance the mastery of measurable skills and the harder-to-measure development of intellect and curiosity. The best academic moments are not those covered by a standardized test but the opportunity to delve deeply into a single topic. For a third grader, it might be a focus on dinosaurs; for an 11th grader, exploring, through original source material, Federalism's relevance today.

Such moments are endangered.

Last fall, the school attended by one of our daughters told parents that, because of its poor performance on fourth-grade tests, recess, art and peer play would be curtailed in favor of several hours of rote ''literacy work'' each week. Five-year-olds would in effect be drilling for a test that was years away.

As executives of the Princeton Review, we have considerable self-interest in the test-preparation industry. Even to us, however, this was just a bit too much test preparation.

John Katzman and Steven Hodas are co-authors of the 1995 book "Class Action: How to Create Accountability, Innovation and Excellence in American Schools." Mr. Katzman is founder and president of the Princeton Review. Mr. Hodas is its director of online strategy.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/040900edlife-test-edu.html

The article was linked in here .. http://www.nswtf.org.au/