My Stakes Well Done - education

School Administrator, Dec, 2000 by Daniel A. Domenech

The issue isn't academic benchmarks, it's the misguided use of a single test

A colleague on the National Assessment Governing Board refers to testing as an illusion. By that he means that we ascribe much more power and exactness to tests than they actually possess. In part, that illusion of testing has created many of the problems currently encountered with the assessment portion of the high standards movement.

My home state of Virginia was recognized early on in the standards-setting process as having developed an excellent product in the Standards of Learning, known widely as SOL. Indeed, educators in Virginia embraced the SOLs as quality benchmarks for learning in the 21st century.

Today, the state's SOLs face serious challenges from educators and parents concerned with the eventual impact the tests might have on children and education. The standards themselves remain quality expectations for our children. The problem is with the high-stakes assessment program that is supposed to measure whether or not the standards are being met.

It was not enough to simply raise the bar and expect our children to perform at higher levels. Along with the higher standards came accountability. Our policymakers were determined to hold students and educators accountable for their performance or lack thereof. Enter high-stakes testing.

Most states contracted with reputable, experienced test-developing firms to create the tests the state would use to assess the extent to which their standards were being met. In other instances, existing standardized tests were selected. In most cases, the tests were traditional paper-and-pencil, multiplechoice exams--reliable to the extent that the same results would be obtained with repeated administration of the tests, valid to the extent that the tests measure what they are purported to measure.

Improper Use

It is the question of validity, or how these high-stakes tests are being used and interpreted, that threatens to undermine the whole standards movement. The President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans last summer issued a report that accused state leaders of compromising the educational future of Hispanic students by making highstakes decisions based on inaccurate and inadequate testing information. The committee does not place the blame on the tests themselves but rather on the educational context in which they are created and used.

In Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union challenged that state's scholarship program asserting that using the state's test as the sole basis for awarding the scholarships is discriminatory. The U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights recently published "The Use of Tests When Making HighStakes Decisions for Students: A Resource Guide for Educators and Policymakers." The report is meant to assist policymakers in ensuring that the highstakes tests they implement are educationally sound and comply with nondiscrimination laws.

The federal report relies heavily on the "Standards for Educational Psychological Testing" developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education. The joint standards specifically assert that decisions affecting individual students' life chances or educational opportunities should not be made on the basis of test scores alone.

All of this reinforces the illusory nature of tests: They are extremely useful, but hardly infallible measures of student performance. Even the leading test publishers agree that test scores are not perfect measures and should not be the sole basis for making high-stakes decisions. The teachers' associations, while remaining supportive of the standards movement, also are wading in on the high-stakes testing controversy. Bob Chase, the National Education Association president, said at his annual conference in Chicago this summer, "Testing mania is quite literally devouring whole school systems like some education-eating bacteria."

Sandra Feldman, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is concerned with the demands that high-stakes testing is placing on teachers. Everyone in the schoolhouse is feeling the stress. A principal of a well-to-do elementary school in Montgomery County, Md., resigned after allegations that students in her school were encouraged to change their wrong responses on the state test. In my own school system in Fairfax County, Va., two teachers resigned after testing irregularities were uncovered. In both cases, the teachers had prepared their students prior to the state tests with questions that closely paralleled those on the test itself.

Harmful Effects

The issue of teaching to these tests has become a major concern to parents and educators. A real danger exists in that the test will become the curriculum and that instruction will be narrow and focused on facts.

Much of the criticism against Virginia's Standards of Learning tests has to do with their emphasis on facts and recall. Teachers believe they spend an inordinate amount of time on drills leading to the memorization of facts rather than spending time on problem solving and the development of critical and analytical thinking skills. Teachers at the grade levels at which the test is given are particularly vulnerable to the pressure of teaching to the test.