High-Stakes Testing

            In a post-No-Child-Left-Behind country, high-stakes testing has become the “report card” of schools, districts, and states. It is a highly-debated approach to standardizing educational benchmarks, encouraging schools to improve their teaching methods, and sometimes forcing low-scoring schools to take drastic measures to improve quickly or else face cutbacks or school closure.

            When I think of high-stakes testing, I recall a story that my school’s secretary told last year of overhearing a conversation in a local coffee shop. She heard two men talking; one was new to town and was considering where to send his daughter to school – either the public school or to ours, the private Christian school. His companion commented, “Oh, don’t send your child to the Christian school – their test scores are awful.” This struck my co-worker as odd since—being a private school—we do not participate in the standardized tests mandated by the state of Michigan. She couldn’t help herself, so she politely interrupted the conversation and clarified, and of course invited the man to tour our school himself. As a result, his daughter is now a student in my class.

            The irony of that anecdote is that a person was almost turned off to our school simply by the indication of poor test scores – there wasn’t even actual data for him to compare. This goes to show how much sway high-stakes testing can have in the public opinion of a school. On one hand, having a standardized, data-based method to measure academic rigor is appealing. It seems like the silver bullet to academic equity and school reform. On the other hand, critics of high-stakes testing say it actually can have the opposite effect. Schools that are already struggling due to lack of funding, teacher support, socioeconomic difficulties, etc. may then be further penalized for not scoring high enough on these tests, which then pushes them further away from succeeding. “Because of strong pressure on schools and teachers to improve test results and avoid score-based penalties, students of color and students from lower-income households and communities may be more likely to receive narrowly focused, test-preparation-heavy instruction instead of an engaging, challenging, well-rounded academic program”(Edglossary.org).

            As I mentioned, my school in Fremont, Michigan, is private and therefore exempt from mandatory state testing. While I teach in kindergarten (when high-stakes testing does not occur even in public schools), the general attitude among staff at my school is that the lack of standardized testing frees us up to broaden our curriculum. We are able to focus less on teaching to tests and more on diving into standards-aligned content. Our already precious instructional time is not cut short so we can proctor exams. We have time to develop school-wide thematic units in which our students study continents, biology, and participate in project-based learning. We focus our instruction on meeting state standards for our subjects, and are free to teach those standards how we see fit. I imagine this is a great benefit to our students.

            While I can’t personally speak to high-stakes testing, a friend of mine teaches in a public elementary school in Calvert County, Maryland, where they use PARCC assessments each Spring to measure academic success. She said that overall these tests have a detrimental impact on her students and on the teachers’ ability to teach to personalized learning plans (she teaches special education). First, they are computerized, which means the testing cycle takes up to six weeks as classes rotate through the shared computer labs to sit for the exam. As well, the county requires that students take a practice test once a quarter so they can get accustomed to the format and question style of the tests. This adds another two weeks each time.

            My friend said that the teachers do try to teach to the test when they can so that students have the best chance possible to succeed on the exam. This comes at the expense of focusing on students’ individualized learning goals, and often the test is still too difficult for even high-achieving students to pass. This can take an emotional toll on students, some of whom are used to scoring very high, but on the PARCC exam receive a 70%, solely because the language of the test and breadth of the content being assessed is too vague or complicated for students to fully grasp in order to demonstrate their knowledge.

            The Calvert County Public School System, according to my friend, does not use the test results to evaluate, promote or demote teachers, although they are meant to create learning objectives based on the results that their administrators hold them accountable to. Students also do not receive a grade for taking these exams. Overall, although there are not major implications for teachers or students (in terms of affecting jobs or grades), my friend wonders if the loss of instructional time and the added stress put on students makes these tests worth it in the long run.

References:

High-Stakes Test. (2014, August 18). In The Glossary of Education Reform. Retrieved November 21, 2016, from http://edglossary.org/high-stakes-testing/