November 22, 2016

Inside the Misguided Logic of High Stakes Testing

High-stakes testing has become an entrenched part of the U.S. K-12 educational system. Some schools start this testing as early as kindergarten, while others begin in third grade. The basic idea of high stakes testing is that it enables schools and school districts to better evaluate teachers and administrators on an ongoing basis.

However, this logic of accountability has been applied in increasingly misguided ways by well-meaning teachers and educators to the point where all this testing has gotten out of control. No wonder there’s now a growing debate about the value of all this high stakes testing. There’s growing recognition that there needs to be different methods used to assess student learning, and that means less emphasis on high stakes testing.

First and most importantly, teachers are fundamentally changing the type of material that they teach in the classroom in response to all these tests. It’s called “teaching to the test,” and it’s a way for teachers to omit any material or lessons that will not be covered on the test. Instead of covering this material, teachers double down on preparing students for these high stakes tests. And you can’t really blame them for doing this – after all, it’s not just the kids getting tested, it’s also the teachers.

And that’s the real problem – the high stakes in high stakes testing have become too high. That’s leading to stress and anxiety on the part of students, as well as stress and anxiety on the part of teachers, parents and administrators. Everyone is getting judged, assessed and evaluated, and what could be at stake are promotions, advancement to the next grade level, and special budgetary grants from the federal government.

There’s also the matter of what the tests actually “test.” You can imagine the panels, committees and task forces that are used to create the perfect test and the material that should be covered by that test. Yet, complaints continue to come in that tests designed to measure, say, reading ability do not measure reading ability as much it might measure whether a student has read a certain book.

And say critics, there’s also the cultural angle here – books that white, Caucasian students might be expected to have read could be very different from the types of books that African-American or Hispanic-American students might be expected to read. These high stakes test, then, could come with a lot of cultural biases.

And that leads to important considerations that extend well out of the classroom. Is there a socio-economic bias to these tests? For example, if the tests really are “high stakes,” then the wealthiest and most affluent parents are going to make sure that their children have access to the best resources, tutors and mentors. But what about parents and families at the lower end of the financial spectrum?

That’s why high stakes testing is such a hot button issues these days. It’s not just about the children anymore. The stakes have been raised unreasonably high to the point where the incentives are no longer aligned as they should be. If all that needs to happen is for kids to “pass” a test, then that’s what the classroom experience will reflect. There will be less pure learning and engagement going on, and only more emphasis on jumping over the next hurdle on the way to graduation.