Testing Our Patience

The great thing about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that it has finally brought attention to the vast numbers of children --our children, our nation's future-- for whom our education system is failing. But that may be the only good thing about it.

No Child Left Behind has accomplished the same thing as many of our public policies do: it is creating a massive industry with benefits for many, except those the policy was intended to help. American students took 45 million tests in 2006, a number that certainly has risen as NCLB requirements have kicked in. The Government Accounting Office estimated that, between 2002 and 2008, states would spend between $1.9 billion and $5.3 billion to implement tests mandated under No Child Left Behind. These are just the direct costs; if the time spent on prepping students and coordinating and administering the tests are included, the costs could be 10 to 15 times higher.




If this type of expenditure were producing real progress among students, I'd say, "Hallelujah!" Instead it's producing some really perverse incentives:

• A recent report in the New York Times stated, "As deadlines approached for schools to start making passage of the exams a requirement for graduation, and practice tests indicated that large numbers of students would fail, many states softened standards, delayed the requirement or added alternative paths to a diploma. "
• It gets worse: in a second story, we find that, "Cheating on tests used to be thought of as primarily the domain of students, but as standardized test results have taken on an increasing importance as a way to measure schools, the culprits have increasingly turned out to be educators." The schools are changing the students' test scores so the schools look better. Never mind how the students are faring.
• If you do not have a teenager in a Minnesota high school, you might not be aware that in 2009, 43% of 11th graders failed to pass a math test needed to graduate. The legislature, horrified at denying diplomas to so many children, came up with an Einsteinian idea: let's tell them that if they take the test three times and still don't pass, we'll give them a diploma anyway.
• Because tests are costly, states are turning to multiple choice "bubble" tests because they are cheaper to administer, yet they are notoriously inadequate as a measure of students' knowledge as skills. How would you feel if your annual performance review consisted solely of a standardized multiple choice test, and it alone determined whether you'd keep your job? Other economically advanced nations use performance-based assessment where students are evaluated on the basis of real work such as essays, projects and activities. And by the way, they do just fine (or better!) on standardized multiple choice tests.
• Remedies must be taken at schools that fail to show annual yearly progress (another odd measure), one of which is "turnaround." Those teachers in Rhode Island? They've been turned-around. Here in Minnesota, where we're "nice", turnaround is a fancy word for reshuffling the deck chairs. One teacher described to me that when a school is reconstituted, the poor performing teachers are let go-- to another school.

In fairness, NCLB is creating pressure to help students who struggle the most. I recently completed a number of interviews with teachers and principals, and was struck by the variety and intensity of efforts they were making to help students pass standardized tests. People will argue whether this is a good thing or not. But the biggest takeaway was this-- how does standardized testing help the student, teacher or school when a student enters 9th or 10th grade with a 5th grade math level and must pass an Algebra II (i.e. quadratic equations and trigonometry) test by the end of 11th grade? As one teacher put it, "“How do I help? I’ve hit every tool in the toolbox. I don’t know what to do. They (the students) don’t know what to do. It’s very sad. They work so hard.”

more to come on this subject...