THE DILEMMA OF HIGH-STAKES TESTING: WHAT IS SCHOOL FOR
by JIM DONLEVY INTRODUCTION In recent years, higher academic standards, increased graduation requirements and high-stakes testing have appeared in force in school districts across the United States. While these developments have been lauded by many supporters within and outside the educational establishment, critics continue to wonder about the unanticipated consequences such changes may produce. From the start, one thing has been clear: Virtually no one is opposed to high standards and rich displays of first-rate student achievement. Parents, students, teachers, school board members, politicians, business leaders and community advocates all recognize quality work and have consistently applauded it publicly in a variety of ways. But something has changed. In an effort to improve schooling for all children, certain assumptions about the purpose of education have gained the ascendancy, silencing competing, perhaps more valuable understandings. The current pressurized climate has narrowed the educational enterprise and produced anxiety and impulsiveness among school stakeholders where trust and thoughtfulness should hold sway. In school after school, conversations taking center stage are about tests and scores, rankings and reputations--and real estate values increasingly darken discussion of children's progress. Sadly, school leadership now consists of a mad dash to raise passing score percentages rather than measured reflection on significant educational questions. In what follows, some assumptions about schooling will be examined; questions will be raised about the current high-stakes environment. In the presentation, three basic purposes of schooling will be discussed. The first is economic, the second is developmental and the third is social. SCHOOL AND THE ECONOMY One of the purposes of school is to prepare young people for future productive employment. Sound basic skills and broad general knowledge are instilled to help children advance toward higher education, post-secondary training and the job market. The language of school reform has been very sympathetic to these concerns over the past decade. Organizational documents describing new state and national standards frequently refer to the 21st century economy and what it will require. Document after document states that higher skills and more sophisticated workers will be needed to compete in the global marketplace. For example, the National Science Education Standards notes: | |
The business community needs entry-level workers with the ability to
learn, reason, think creatively, make decisions, and solve problems. In
addition, concerns regarding economic competitiveness stress the central
importance of science and mathematics education that will allow us to keep
pace with our global competitors. (1996, p. 12)
| | The push for higher academic standards, increased graduation requirements and more stringent testing reflects a preoccupation with these themes. But things appear to have gone too far. Schools now are dominated by three words: standardization, competition and accountability. Standardization In spite of its benefits, strictly defining what children must know and be able to do imposes on schools a routinized approach to learning with serious consequences. With standardization comes predictability and also control. Teachers and students actually experience the greatest loss of autonomy. Alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment now defines the modern school where everything is known in advance. This "banking" conception of education, criticized by Freire (1970), now holds the governing position; the "right" knowledge is deposited into children's heads under the watchful eye of the state. Competition Schools must compete with other schools in academic areas or be visibly shaken by newspaper reports of declining achievement. The competition is fostered by widespread publication of test scores and school report cards. These are viewed by the media and the public as absolute indicators of a school's academic quality even though more than thirty years ago James Coleman demonstrated the fundamental link between student achievement and social class. The competitive fever fuels real estate prices in the districts of high achievement. Unfortunately, low-performing districts with fewer resources are threatened with a downward spiral as financially able families move to "better" districts and teachers follow. Accountability If academic results don't measure up from year to year, heads roll. There is finger-pointing everywhere as parents, teachers and administrators rush to master testing rubrics and drill, drill, drill to prepare students for the day of reckoning. The New York State Education Department is even initiating a new system of school accountability--System to Account for Student Success (SASS)--that many administrators in the field consider to be an affront to modesty given the amount of data already available to the public. Standardization, competition and accountability are powerful descriptors of some of the economic forces shaping the modern world. Applied to schools, they have certain value but also produce negative consequences when they become the dominant themes driving educational work. But these factors don't capture the whole story about the purposes of education. SCHOOL AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT Schools do not simply prepare young people for participation in the economy. Schools must also show concern for individual development. Even in the current environment it would be difficult to find a teacher or parent unconcerned about this significant purpose of schooling. Parents and teachers share awareness and appreciation of individual differences and acknowledge a variety of student gifts. While there is commonality in development, there also is wide variation, as experienced parents and teachers know. Howard Gardner has come to the aid of all educators with his work on multiple intelligences. His theoretical work gives plain expression to what parents and teachers have always suspected; namely, that students have varying gifts and divergent approaches to learning. Unfortunately, the current frenzy over test scores distracts teachers from a more thoughtful consideration of their students and discourages appreciation of their individual gifts. When a teacher's primary focus must be on tests and test-taking strategies, reflective attention to individual potential is difficult to sustain. With parents feeling competitive pressures, the discussion quickly turns to examination protocols with little time for genuine thought about nurturing individual development. As educational mandates continue to proliferate, teachers have lost the time needed to pursue the right conditions for meaningful educational activity. As state requirements increase and workloads mount, classrooms no longer reflect the stimulating environments they were intended to be. A visit to a first-rate nursery school can be an eye-opener in this regard. High standards can be developed and maintained by teachers thoughtfully engaged in their work with curriculum materials aligned carefully with student needs. All of this can be accomplished without a flood of requirements and examinations from the state. Helping students to develop their individual potential means allowing them the flexibility they require to learn different things at different times in different ways without excess stress and anxiety clouding the effort. This is especially tree for children with special needs who are placed under substantial burdens with the new educational mandates. SPECIAL EDUCATION The most demanding and rewarding educational work may be found in special education classrooms. Teachers educating children with special needs are immersed in developmental difficulties, learning problems, emotional handicaps and behavioral challenges. Special education teachers work with some of the most needy children in schools today and understand the central importance of individual development. Remarkably, the current educational climate delivers the harshest message to children in special education. These young people are the children most affected by rising educational mandates and high-stakes testing. Children experiencing handicapping conditions already face special challenges in mastering educational requirements. Many of these young people are minority youths attending schools with inadequate funding, limited resources and uncertified staff. Imposing higher standards on them places these children at even greater risk of educational failure. This is especially true for children with emotional disabilities and those suffering from family abuse and neglect. These children often populate the foster care and juvenile justice systems where educational programs typically provide only the bare minimum of instruction. The new tests and mandates, however, presume a high level of resources and instruction; one that simply does not exist in many programs educating children with special needs. Numerous reports have documented the number of children placed at risk of school and work failure nationally. Instead of devoting substantial resources to create programs of excellence for the most needy children--many of whom are minorities--the response of the states to these reports has been to marshal higher academic standards into place and to impose more difficult graduation requirements. Alfie Kohn describes the unfolding calamity as follows (Education Week, September 27, 2000, p. 47): | |
If states persist in making a student's fate rest on a single test, the
likely result over the next few years will be nothing short of
catastrophic. Unless we act to stop this, we will be facing a scenario that
might be described without exaggeration as an educational ethnic cleansing.
| | Rather than inflicting blame and embarrassment on children, their parents and the schools serving them, state agencies should be devoting resources to helping them: fix leaky buildings, upgrade wiring, purchase technology, bring in certified teachers and other resources, assist with program development and so forth. Publishing low test score results and targeting schools as failing neighborhood entities do not improve instruction. THE SOCIAL PURPOSES OF SCHOOL Beyond setting a foundation for future careers and helping students to develop their individual potential, schools also have a social purpose. This purpose involves educating students to appreciate multiple traditions and cultural treasures that have been won at considerable cost by those who have gone before us. Through a variety of ways, schools should encourage civic understanding, historical awareness, democratic citizenship and the ethical obligations and relationships necessary for sustaining the broader social fabric. A concern for protecting and nurturing society, especially its most defenseless members, should be developed at school. The schools should also encourage morals, values and personal character and sensitize young people to the importance of social institutions, social issues and social problems. In addition to an appreciation of the social complexity of the world around us, students should learn to imagine different societal futures, to experiment with possibilities and to dream. With all this, schools should educate young people about social change and the benefits to be gained by realizing a more just world. In theory, as part of its communal obligation, the public schools strive to foster social justice and help to transform society by providing equal access to resources and common opportunities to all citizens. Without these public benefits, full and meaningful participation in modern life would not be a realizable goal for those outside the dominant mainstream. While social justice has many miles yet to travel, prevailing educational reforms will not advance the cause. In fact, current trends will bring about a decrease in access and a reduction in opportunities as options for upward mobility narrow. Unfortunately, it is in the area of social justice that current educational developments fail students so shamefully. As graduation requirements are increased and single-test scores determine graduation eligibility, many young people will be shut out from pathways to higher education and future opportunities. They will be unable to enter professional careers that demand high-stakes diplomas and college degrees. Rather than serving to lift all children to greater heights, the emergent public school will be an instrument of division-- sorting, tracking and discarding those young people who do not enjoy the benefits of membership in the privileged social classes. The new educational mandates being implemented in state after state presume an abundant availability of resources and a robust level of instruction chiefly available in the wealthy school districts and private schools. Living in low-resource neighborhoods with crumbling schools will mean defeat from the start for the poor. Students in these educational districts and those in marginal programs will be blamed for their failure and forced out of the public education system, as if they had no real interest in meeting high standards or making better lives for themselves. Perhaps the greatest injustice of the "high" standards movement is the inability or unwillingness of those in state leadership positions to understand that those at the bottom of the system--the poor, the handicapped and the vulnerable-need to be strengthened in their efforts to progress along the educational continuum. They should not be blamed for shortcomings they did not instigate or be consigned to inferior positions as a result of the schools and programs to which they were subjected. It is neither a disservice to the privileged nor a lowering of academic standards to direct financial resources where they are most needed in the educational system. Educational reform should begin with programs serving the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students and have as its goal bringing them successfully to current standards with reasonable expectations. Once that has been achieved, raising the bar holds fair currency and motivating value. On the contrary, raising academic requirements, in the absence of basic supports, is a harsh measure by any dispassionate standard. CONCLUSION Schools exist for a variety of reasons. They are designed to prepare young people for productive years as working members of society. They also exist to help children realize their gifts and potential, as well as to heal those with learning, emotional, behavioral and other disorders. Schools, too, have a social purpose that includes educating citizens for active participation in modern life; ideally, a special function of the public schools is to serve as avenues of access and opportunity for those outside the mainstream. While educational reforms involving standardization, competition and accountability bring certain changes to the public schools, their benefits are largely superficial. The schools, however, have a deeper role in helping to form young minds and hearts sensitive to the world around them and knowledgeable about how their gifts may unfold in social union. More than this, the special privilege of the public schools is to guide the most vulnerable members of society toward unimagined opportunities requiring their personal stewardship. This moral and social aim serves to lift children beyond their self-understandings and often narrow perceptions. It insists that they be carried, with dignity, toward possibilities for personal and public transformation in a social world that values them for more than their capacity to produce academic results. The current high-stakes environment is philosophically and morally inimical to the interests of children and cannot be sustained in its current form. It is a one-sided development governed by questionable assumptions and uninformed by the demands of practical experience. As large numbers of children confront impossible terms and conditions in their passage through the public schools, a chorus of voices will be raised in challenge to these trends. High standards are desired by everyone. But the path to achieving them should not be littered with the dashed hopes of disappointed children unaware of the high stakes manipulations being orchestrated beyond their grasp. School, after all, is for the public; and the public embraces high and low. In the end, the public will not be thwarted by an educational system obligated to serve it. REFERENCES Coleman, J., et al. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1966. Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970. The National Research Council, The National Science Education Standards. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996. | |
Direct Reprint Requests to:
Jim Donlevy, Ed.D.,Superintendent
Greenburgh-North Castle UFSD
71 S. Broadway
Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522
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