Critical Project #4

Critical Project #4
Standardized Testing
Karen Y. Carter


It seems the nation is test crazy. Everywhere you turn, there’s a test for something. If you want to qualify for or get promoted on some civil service positions, there’s a test. To get into some graduate schools and college, there’s a test. In some states, such as North Carolina, in order to graduate from high school, there’s an exit exam. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) signed by George W. Bush in 2001, you and your children can look forward to the anxiety causing, nerve racking test taking rituals which begin as early as first grade and reach all the way through the twelfth grade.

You would think with all the tests students are being given, they are being better educated. However, according to some experts and educators, this is not the case. Are we as a nation forsaking the thirst and accumulation of knowledge and information in favor of high stakes testing? As a parent of several children and one who has sat on various curriculum meetings such as the School Leadership Team, I have to agree with the critics who say that high stakes testing is not and should not be the only determining factor that shows what a student has learned.

Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), standardized testing is being used as THE way to measure student achievement and school accountability. “The legislation requires schools to produce proof that each school’s students and each sub group of students within each school are making annual achievement test gains – measured as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) – toward full proficiency in math and reading”. (Johnson, p. 40) Subgroups of students include but are not limited to students with disabilities (special education), African-American, Latino or Hispanic and English Language learners. If schools fail to demonstrate that any of these sub groups of students can achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), they are subjected to penalties and punishment such as loss of funds and/or school closure.

This, most critics say, is part of the problem with the emphasis on standardized testing. In addition, standardized testing does not take into consideration other factors that influence how well a student does. Factors such as poverty, cultural attitude towards testing, language barriers particularly for non-native English speakers, lack of resources within a school, etc. can have an effect on a student’s performance. Standardized testing is also used to determine whether or not a child is promoted to the next grade, graduates from high school or enters college. All of this puts undue stress and pressure on schools and students to pass them, sometimes to the point where teachers are teaching to the test and parents are spending a small fortune on test prep classes and materials. Students can suffer negative consequences such as test anxiety where sometimes students will stay home to avoid taking a test, students in middle and high school may drop out because their scores were not high enough to move on to the next level or get them into the school of their choice or allowed to graduate even though they may have done well during the course of the year. Tracking and labeling students based upon test scores have resulted in students, especially minorities, being placed in slower or special education classes.

In her article, “Standardized Test Aren’t Like T-shirts: One Size Doesn’t Fit All”, Michele Phillips asserts that:
“High stakes testing may give us a slight measure of a child’s intellect, but they also measure a child’s culture and language. Standardized test are biased. Bias takes place when the test scores are influenced by irrelevant characteristics of the test taker such as race, sex, family, wealth, religion and so forth (Strenio, 1981). For the most part, standardized multiple choice tests are culturally biased in favor of the culture toward which the test is directed – the mainstream White culture (Elford, 2002). Current methods of making standardized tests must be abandoned (Bormuth, 1970)”.

Many parents and some educators are asking that when Congress revisits the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), legislators consider revising the testing mandates within the bill to include other items which can be used to measure student achievement such as portfolio assessments. Colleges and universities such as Drew University, Franklin and Marshall College, Hamilton and Bart College are among a growing number who are making the SAT optional instead of mandatory. Non-profit organizations such as Fair Test and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing are working to help insure that standardized tests are less bias. All of these efforts together will help ensure that students are given the tools to succeed and that no child is truly left behind.


References
(2006). Standardized Tests Aren’t Life T-Shirts: One Size Doesn’t Fit All. Multicultural Education, 14(1), 52-55. http://search.ebscohost.com.aveoserv.library.fordham.edu.

Copenhaver-Johnson, J. (2007). Part III: CREATING MULTICULTURAL CLASSROOMS, Rolling Back Advances in Multicultural Education: No Child Left Behind and “Highly Qualified Teachers”. Multicultural Perspectives, 9(4), 40-47. http://search.ebscohost.com.aveoserv.library.fordham.edu.