A Stake Through the Heart of High-Stakes Tests - educational accountability and high risk testing - Brief Article

School Administrator, Dec, 2000 by Paul D. Houston

Confusion reigns among educators over the issue of high-stakes testing. Part of the problem is a lack of clarity over what is meant when one talks about it.

Let's be clear: Developing and implementing higher standards for students and the adults who serve them is central to the future of education. This should be done thoughtfully and with a breadth that ensures we are educating our children, not merely training them. Students should be assessed regularly and broadly so that we know how they are doing and how we as educators are doing in serving their needs. Assessment should be keyed to improvement.

All of this should be tied together in a reasonable and realistic system of accountability so that when things aren't working they get changed. Anything less constitutes a failure in all of us.

However, all of this is far removed from the high-stakes testing movement that is now running rampant across the educational landscape. In short, high-stakes testing involves the use of a single measure, given at a single time that sets the future direction of a child's life. This is not just bad education, it is a major departure from the values of this country.

Clueless Measures

To enumerate the many reasons why the use of a single instrument to determine a child's future is a bad idea would take more space than I have in this brief column. Put at its simplest, it is a reductionist approach to learning that assumes that whatever is worth learning can be measured and, indeed, can be measured in one sitting. That is clearly a laughable assumption that, sadly, more than 20 states now are making.

Being an educated person constitutes many qualities for which we have no clues how to measure-creativity, honesty and perseverance, among them. Even if everything worth knowing could be measured, it is clear we are not sophisticated enough at this point to have the instruments that would fairly and completely assess this.

We also know that the variability issue is huge. Not only are there issues of test bias and test phobia, but we know that any one child's performance can vary dramatically day to day based on a host of circumstances.

The most telling educational argument against high-stakes testing comes from the cognitive scientists who point out that fear inhibits learning. High-stakes testing is perhaps the clearest example of an attempt to use blunt force to make children learn.

The logic is as follows: "If you don't pass this test, then you will have to stay in school all summer, be held back, not graduate, etc." I often refer to this approach as an attempt to bludgeon people to greatness. It never works. And cognitive scientists tell us why.

When we go into a fear mode much of our cerebral capacity is reduced. We enter that twilight zone of "fight or flight" and neither of these is particularly useful to the learning process. Certainly we must make sure children take the learning process seriously. We ought to be able to do that without making them sick to their stomachs and school phobic.

The other reason why high-stakes testing is a bad idea, whose time has come and needs to go, is that it is essentially un-American. One of the priceless values of our country is our bone-deep belief that where you come from should not keep you from going someplace better. We have been a country that believes in second chances. We always have been a country that understood the seeds of success are sown in failure. As my father, who was a Methodist minister, might have put it: We forgive people their trespasses.

Second Chances

When I speak to business groups on this, I love to ask how many of them would be doing what they are doing now if they had been held accountable for their actions at the age of 13. Hands never go up. We know that children develop at different rates and that each of us faces unique obstacles.

For us to be a fair nation, we needed to develop an educational system that took that into account. With all our faults and failings in our current model, it has been a system of second opportunities, a reflection of that very real American value of being able to pursue one's possibilities despite early failure.

Other major developed countries followed a different model where students were tracked into different vocations at much earlier ages. That might be appropriate for places where social stratification is part of the culture, but it does not fit our American brand of egalitarian belief in the possibilities of the individual.

Richard Farson, author of Management of the Absurd, pointed out that training makes people alike and education allows them to be different. We, as a nation, must decide which path to travel. Making kids perform like trained seals at the demand of politicians might be entertaining, but it is not good education.

Using a single test to determine a child's future is a lousy way to create educational improvement. It is even a worse way to educate an American.

Paul Houston is AASA executive director.