PEDAGODA: 2012

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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