The Authentic Standards Movement and its Evil Twin

Abstract

We could realize significant progress in public education if the proponents of standards-based joined hands with the critics of high-stakes testing and effectively outlawed the use of high-stakes tests as sole indicators of student success, Mr. Thompson points out. ONE THING the standards movement will never be accused of is a lack of critical opposition. But for all the fiery rhetoric that critics direct against this powerful, nationwide movement, there is perhaps no greater threat to standards-based than much of what is being perpetrated in the name of standards-based The so-called movement - so- called, because it is not truly a single movement but twin movements bearing the same name - has become its own worst enemy. If giving twins the same name is a recipe for confusion, consider the havoc that gets unleashed when one of them proves to be an twin.1 In the case of the standards movement, the evil twin is the more visible and powerful of the siblings, and so its authentic namesake is in an increasingly perilous situation. In fact, the problem is even worse: the two are essentially joined at the hip. So what are these twin movements? First, let's distinguish them by name. I would rename the evil twin reform or more specifically high-stakes, standardized, test-based reform. The sibling, then, is standards-based reform. The defining distinction between them is their respective influence on the instructional core of schooling and on equity issues. academic progress is judged by a single indicator and when high stakes - such as whether a student is promoted from one grade to the next or is eligible for a diploma - are attached to that single indicator, the common effect is to narrow curriculum and reduce instruction to test prepping. What gets lost when teachers and students are pressured to make students better test-takers is precisely the rich, high-level teaching and learning that authentic, standards- based aims to promote in all classrooms and for all students. Authentic, standards-based is fundamentally concerned with equity. It departs radically from the tracking and sorting carried out by the factory-style school of yore. Instead, it aims to hold high expectations and provide high levels of support for all students, teachers, and educational leaders. Under the evil twin's (per)version of standards and accountability, we see students retained in grade because of a single test score, and we typically see a corresponding increase in dropout rates where such worst practice is in place.2 Equity then becomes the casualty rather than the fruit of And as Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, recently observed, When tests are allowed to become the be-all and end-all, they deform, not reform, education.3 In its influence on both the instructional core of schooling and on equity, the evil twin constitutes an inversion of the real thing. It is a politically warped variation on what is arguably among this nation's most powerful and promising education reforms. Although the evil twin purports to be standards-based, it actually flies in the face of research-based standards on the appropriate use of testing. Consider, for example, the conclusions of the National Research Council's Committee on Appropriate Test Use, which are being systematically, if not willfully, ignored by many education policy makers, especially at the state level: An educational decision that will have a major impact on a test taker should not be made solely or automatically on the basis of a single test score.4 There are many reasons not to use any single assessment as the basis for assigning high-stakes consequences. Not only does such a practice tend to diminish curriculum and instruction, but most psy-chometricians will tell you that the assessment has yet to be created with a high enough level of validity and reliability to justify its use as the sole basis for making consequential decisions about the test-taker. …