Test Mess 2: Are We Doing Better a Year Later?

Abstract

rage for (and increasingly against) testing and accountability shows no signs of abating. Mr. Goldberg updates his own assessment of developments on the testing front. IN JANUARY 2004 I published an article in the Kappan titled The Test Mess. In it, I examined how we were doing with state and federal accountability and tests. It was clear at that time that tests and accountability were not going to disappear -- or even diminish -- as the central mechanisms of the national effort to improve education. It was also clear then that many of the efforts being made were facing some doubt or encountering some difficulty. This year, it is clear that most of the issues in play have become even more complex. First, much more media attention has been paid to testing -- and in particular to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and its requirement for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on state tests. Second, the number of objections to various aspects of testing has increased dramatically, and these objections call into question everything from the tests themselves to the lack of funding to support federal mandates. Third, many cities and states, and even parents in some cases, have found interesting and creative ways to circumvent the tests or their results. Finally, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has compromised on some of NCLB's requirements and has faced considerable pressure to back down even more. In this article, I take up the same five questions I raised last year and examine the interesting developments that have taken place since. I say roughly because I have refocused some of the questions slightly in order to capture more accurately the events of the past year. 1. Are the tests and the testing movement as currently conceived worthwhile in the first place? Although some states have made an effort to improve their tests in the last year or two, the vast majority of test questions remain narrow and often trivial, largely for ease of scoring, which holds down the cost. Many of the test items are of questionable value, asking for information that successful adults forgot long ago. As Dave Posner points out, The kinds of problems that can appear on a standardized test are, of course, quite limited in form and complexity, as the student is allocated only a minute or two to complete each one.1 Teachers frequently complain that the amount of time devoted to test preparation for narrow-gauge tests eliminates time to train students in how to approach a problem or think through an issue. Creativity, perseverance, ability to work in a cooperative group, initiative, integrity, discipline, performance excellence, unusual focus on a significant problem, flexibility, and other laudable characteristics are rarely taught and scarcely counted toward the judgment of students' performance, yet these and similar characteristics are the primary criteria in the annual reviews of some our finest managers in politics, business, and all forms of culture and education. Since nearly all the states use some form of standardized tests, are they doing all they can in the way of reporting useful data? W. James Popham talks about the instructionally insensitive tests that most states use.2 These are tests that do not help anyone figure out how to bring about improvement. If the tests told you precisely what areas of, say, reading needed to be improved, that could be of some help. If they told you just where Jennifer or Juan needed more instruction, that would be even better. But as one third-grade teacher in Maryland complained, the only information she got back was the percentages in each group of students who failed reading. There was about whether the problem was vocabulary or comprehension, nothing at all about the particular skills areas in which an individual student had weaknesses.3 Because the data weren't broken down, the information was essentially useless to a classroom teacher. …