English Debate Value of Testing

Abstract

The past 18 months have seen a lot of action in the most fiercely debated policy field in English education: our exam-based accountability system. And it's at least partly due to a well-known American testing company, Educational Testing Service. A test-marking crisis involving ETS occurred in summer 2008, which resulted in a string of changes to school-by-school monitoring. The ramifications of those changes are still playing out as we begin the 2009-2010 school year. What's happening in the U.K. has implications not only for students and schools in this country, but possibly for the global debate about using test scores to evaluate what students are learning and whether schools are successful. First, some background for readers who aren't from the U.K. Since the early 1990s, all English pupils have faced national tests in English, maths, and science at the end of primary school (age 11) and in the middle of secondary school (age 14). At ages 16, 17, and 18, students take school-leaving exams designed to help employers, universities, and colleges select candidates for jobs and further study. This system has always operated under tension, for two reasons. First, the system often seems on the verge of collapse, as millions of exam papers are sent around the country to be marked by part-time examiners in their own homes, usually to frighteningly tight deadlines. Get the logistics even slightly wrong, and a national outcry and high-profile resignations are never far away. Second, as in the United States, many educators and observers, including me, question whether it's healthy to define the success of the education system almost entirely by exam grades. Convergence of Problems In summer 2008, the two problems came together. The organization of the marking system collapsed, which only added to the ire of foes who contend that the test-driven system was educationally flawed. With that came major changes in national testing. When the marking system collapsed, ETS also left the scene, departing after only one year of its five-year contract. ETS had been the first non-British company to win the contract to organize the marking of the Standard Attainment Tasks (Sats) tests taken by 1.2 million 11- and 14-year-olds. ETS was generally thought of as bringing admirable testing expertise to the English scene. But, even in the run-up to the tests in May 2008, it became clear that all was not well. Examiners complained that they were receiving contracts to mark the wrong subject or not being informed about training events that were essential to prepare them for the test marking. Once marking the tests began, the picture became even more chaotic, with thousands of complaints registered on online discussion forums. Scripts were sent to the wrong addresses, software systems designed to check the accuracy of markers' work kept failing, and examiners complained that staffers at telephone help lines set up to deal with their problems knew nothing about the system. National results, which are used not just to rank individual schools but also to report on progress toward meeting the country's education standards, were due in early July 2008. But this deadline proved impossible to meet. There was embarrassment for national politicians who were unable to announce England's results on time, and many schools waited until fall for their scores. Official school-by-school test data, usually published in January, was delayed until April. The effect on individual schools can't be overstated. In a system that has many parallels to No Child Left Behind, schools' futures hang on the test scores. Schools spend months preparing students for the assessments and telling them they need to do their best. The fact that thousands of primary schools, in particular, were left without the test results to give to children before they departed in the summer created outrage in schools, with head teachers questioning who was accountable. …