Carolyn J. Heinrich writes:
I was part of a National Academies of Science committee that was
asked to carefully review the nature and implications of America's
test-based accountability systems, including school improvement programs
under the No Child Left Behind Act, high school exit exams, test-based
teacher incentive-pay systems, pay-for-scores initiatives and other uses
of test scores to evaluate student and school performance and determine
policy based on them. We spent nearly a decade reviewing the evidence
as it accumulated, focusing on the most rigorous and credible studies of
incentives in educational testing and sifting through the results to
uncover the key lessons for education policymakers and the public.
Our
conclusion in our report to Congress and the public was sobering: There
are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student
learning and educational progress, and there is widespread teaching to
the test and gaming of the systems that reflects a wasteful use of
resources and leads to inaccurate or inflated measures of performance.
Read the complete article in:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/insight/standardized-tests-with-high-stakes-are-bad-for-2230088.html?viewAsSinglePage=true
Carolyn J. Heinrich is Sid Richardson Professor of Public Affairs and
affiliated professor of economics at the University of Texas LBJ School
of Public Affairs.
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