If you’ve been listening, reading, or viewing the news over the past few weeks you have most likely noticed much debate about the long overdue federal reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This is a legislative act that has existed for many years but has not been ‘reauthorized’ in any official manner in the recent past. With both chambers in Congress now controlled by the Republicans, and the White House by the Democrats, this sets up an interesting scenario for any legislation. Given President Obama’s emphasis on education as well as having a Secretary of Education strongly in favor of accountability, and an educational act that was based upon the Texas model of accountability and put into place by a Republican president, one might be forgiven for thinking that a reauthorization should be easy, but that’s not the case.
It appears that one of the biggest sticking points is the testing of students and then using those results to judge children, their teachers, administrators, and schools based essentially on a ‘high stakes’ annual test of a limited number of subjects with students from third to eighth grade and once in high school. You may have read about the problems with having a once a year, fill in the blank (with an occasional short answer or short essay) test being the largest factor in determining a student or school’s success. We’re told this is to ensure our students are ‘college’ and ‘career’ ready but multiple studies have shown that 21st Century Skills such as collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking skills, in conjunction with determination, curiosity, and the ability to create are at least as important in being successful in college or a career – yet we don’t test those items.
The growing outcry against such ineffectual testing from students, parents, teachers, administrators, school committees, employers and now many politicians has brought the impact of testing to the forefront of the ESEA reauthorization. Coupled with the historic separation of the federal government from the control of local educational policy and practice, we’re now set for an epic battle. In my mind this is an interesting conundrum for many of our politicians and an apparent 180-degree turn on educational policy for many in their respective parties. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on this debate, and whether a change at the federal level will eventually change the thinking in Massachusetts, as our state is slated to vote on whether to completely move to the PARCC test this coming fall after ‘testing’ it in roughly half of the schools in the state.
As if this basic policy debate on testing and federal intervention in local education policy isn’t enough, the National Superintendent’s Roundtable, in conjunction with the Horace Mann League, has released a study (“American School Performance in Context”) on research that indicates results from these types of standardized tests are only part of the answer when comparing American student success with other countries (the so called Iceberg Effect in their report). The full report is very interesting and links to this information may be found on the Gateway Superintendent’s Blog.
While I believe it is important to measure student growth and success, I would venture to say, given all of the information available, that a standardized test is not an effective way to measure the success of such a complicated venture as educating children to ensure their success in a rapidly changing world with characteristics that can hardly be called ‘standard’. I look forward to seeing how all of this plays out, both in Washington D.C. and in Boston.
