Standardized Tests

As I learn about education in the U.S. and around the world through my studies in the TEACH-NOW program, I am at times surprised by how different my experience teaching Middle School Math at a private school is from other schools. Allen Richardson, another student in the TEACH-NOW program wrote the following recently in his blog: “Currently, the District of Columbia Public Schools administers 9 different types of assessments to students in grades K-12, every year. While some are formative, and others are summative, students are continuously bombarded with assessments from the first day of school until the last. . . Of the typical 180-day school year, students spend 72 of those days taking exams; which equates to teachers spending roughly 40% of their instructional time on test preparation. “ That is a lot of testing. (By the way, be sure to read Allen's excellent blog!).

My school is a K-12 school with around 300 students. Grades 3-9 take the Stanford Achievement Test once a year. Testing takes three half days in April. Tenth-graders take the PSAT, and 11th and 12th-grade students take the SAT.

Teachers do not prepare the students for these tests with the exception of daily SAT math questions in high school math classes, and a voluntary high school elective, “SAT Math Prep”. My school is a college preparatory school so it wants the average SAT score to be high and competitive with other local private schools.


As a Middle School Math teacher, I receive copies of the sixth-grade Stanford Achievement Test scores, but not the scores of my seventh-grade or eighth-grade students. I use these scores along with other measurements to determine which sixth-graders will be placed in the advanced math class the following year.

Many schools use standardized tests to evaluate teachers; however, my school doesn’t. I can see that I could keep track of trends in the middle school scores and use them to target weaknesses in my instruction in order to make improvements.

In my state of Georgia, public high schools utilized a high stakes test, the Georgia High School Graduation Test, to determine whether or not a senior graduated.  However, in 2015, a law was passed that allowed students to graduate regardless of their score on this test.  Consequently, this test is no longer taken.

Why the difference between the lack of test stress in my private school versus the abundant test stress at public schools?  The National Center for Education Statistics annually compares the international results of standardized tests.  Nations and states can see who outperforms whom.  Obviously, the educational heavy lifting is done by public schools in America rather than private schools.  Therefore, the better public school students perform the better America will do on the NCES tests.  It is in our best interest as a nation to educate our students to the best of our ability.  And as long as other nations are outperforming us, we can see that we can do better.  Hence, the American way is to test, make adjustments, test, make adjustments, etc.

Perhaps even more importantly, due to the No Child Left Behind Act, standardized test grades were used to determine which U.S. schools were excellent and which were failures.  Money, prestige, and local control were often at stake.  Pressure on public schools to do well on tests was great under NCLB.

Private schools like the one where I teach are not focused on global competition but are more focused on helping students achieve scores on college entrance tests that will allow them to get into the college or university of their choice.

My experience at a private school in the U.S. seems similar to Yanan Hu's experience at an international school in China.  Yanan, another student in the TEACH-NOW program, wrote in a recent blog about the role of standardized testing at her school. Her school is focused on students doing well on Advanced Placement tests but such tests are only high stakes for the students.  Reading her blog will give you insight into international schools and schooling in general in China.

What conclusion(s) do I draw from all this?  Tests should matter and should affect more than simply the future of the test taker.  Well designed tests should be used as part of the criteria for measuring teachers, curriculum, and educational systems.  But with tests come stress so testing must not be continuous.  Neither the private school model nor the D.C. school model seem ideal but more like extremes at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Resources

GA Dept. of Ed. (n.d.).  Georgia High School Graduation Tests (GHSGT). Retrieved

December 12, 2017, from http://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-

Assessment/Assessment/Pages/GHSGT.aspx
Hu, Y. (2017, December 08). High Stakes Tests. [Blog post]. Retrieved from
https://yananlz.blogspot.com/2017/12/m6u1a3.html

Richardson, A. (2017, December 11). High Stakes Assessments. [Blog post]. Retrieved
      from https://arichardson2017.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/high-stakes-assessments-
      m6u1a3/