Standardized Testing

Generally speaking I'm against standardized tests.  It's not so much the idea of state wide assessments so much as the way they're carried out.
Here's a collection of links that help explain the different types of tests and why I'm opposed to them.

Mother Jones - Education: Standardized Tests, Explained

USA Today - Five Years After NCLB took effect, problems remain

New York Times - Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math

Fair Tests - What's Wrong with Standardized Tests?

High Stakes Testing are Standardized Tests that are used for grade promotion, scholarships, determining teachers’ salaries, and funding.  NCLB makes the States Standardized Tests tied to the schools' Title I funds and whether the schools might be taken over or sold to private companies.  Individual states tie their testing to other benefits and reprisals.  Massachusetts requires all students to pass the sophomore level state test to graduate and scholarships to state colleges and universities are partially based on a student's score.  Meanwhile, Florida bases teacher's salaries on the testing abilities of students.

On some level a lot of the basis of High Stakes Testing makes sense, as does the consequences.  Most problems arise from implementation.  Firstly, the tests are often partially biased, both culturally and in an individual day to day manner.  Students from the suburbs test better because of the wording.  When I did an assessment of a test for second graders one section had picture analogies.  These were meant to test students reasoning skills, and ideally they were using everyday objects.  However, if you like in a city and don't have a yard you're not going to get the relationship between a rake and trowel or sprinkler and watering can.  Or if you do it takes longer to come up with the comparison because these are not objects you'll be personally acquainted with.  These biases exist in all tests and are the reason that students from the mid-west score better on the ACT than they do on the SATs, while the reverse is true for students from the East Coast.

Meanwhile, simple things like amount of sleep, whether a person ate breakfast, has a head ache, or numerous other small differences effect how a student scores.  This also ties into larger biases when students live in poorer areas and 80-90% of students are on free or reduced meals.  Something that might affect several of students from one area, and make them perform more poorly on the tests, is part of the daily lives of the majority of students from other schools.  Add the fact that many of these Title I schools are in urban or extremely rural areas and suffer from the biases of the test construction and it becomes apparent that some schools and districts go into High Stakes Testing already behind the curve, and these schools are the ones reliant on government funds to meet the varied needs of their students.

Often these schools are forced to devote a good deal of their time preparing students for the Tests, so subjects like history, science, and foreign languages are over looked.  Students also learn how to answer multiple choice questions or word short answers to get more points, but they have no meaningful understanding of the material they're learning and often have difficulty applying it to other scenarios.  There are scenes from Season 4 of The Wire that are almost identical to what some teachers and students experience, and it's heart breaking.

Another mark against High Stakes Standardized Testing is that they don't properly account for students with special needs.  Under NCLB schools may exempt a certain percentage of their students from the tests for reasons are special needs.  However, this percentage is far less than the 20% of students with ADHD and the 10-15% with learning disabilities that require extra time or other accommodations to test at their actual achievement level.  Also students who speak English as a second language must take the State Tests after being in US schools for two years; however most of these students are not proficient enough to score well in this time frame.  One of my friends works as a bilingual school in New York City, and from kindergarten to 5th grade they transition the students from speaking primarily Spanish to having full English comprehension, and this time frame is rather necessary when students come from homes that don't speak English.

And all of these reasons are why I find the tests themselves biased and therefore damaging to students and American schools.  These articles and what I've written barely touch on the consequences of these tests.