Setting The Standard

K-12 Standardized Testing Policy Deliberation!

7:00-9:00pm Friday February 27!

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Common Place 115 South Fraser St.

A Brief History !
Primary education in America has existed since colonial times, and is constantly
evolving. Many of the first schools were located in New England, serving as religious
instruction to Puritan students. As the popularity of schooling rose and states began
enacting mandatory education laws, the issue of determining the quality of education
across thousands of districts rose in importance. !
Academic testing is not a recent invention. Many historical civilizations used
tests to determine competency in various skill sets. The most well known of these was
the Chinese Civil Service Exam, used throughout several dynasties to determine who

should fill important bureaucratic positions. !

There has always been a strong belief in the United States that the federal
government should stay somewhat removed from mandating school curriculum. This
dates back to anti-Federalist pro-states rights movements that started with founding
fathers such as Thomas Jefferson. As a result of both this and the natural tendency for
communities to have different resources and values, the quality of education
drastically differs between states, cities, and counties. Even though the famous 1954
Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education ruled against intentional racial
segregation of schools, unintentional segregation based on a variety of geographic and
socioeconomic factors continues to result in problems. The Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965 was the first federal legislation to mandate standardized testing
for the purpose of evaluating school performance and funding them accordingly.!

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Introduction!

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At the turn of the millennium, there was growing concern about the ability of the
US education system to compete in a global economy and teach the next generation of
students valuable skills in a rapidly changing technological environment. In response,
President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law with
bipartisan support. A major part of this legislation attempted to use standardized tests
to hold schools accountable by further linking test scores to national funding.!
If a student fails a standardized test, they are sometimes required to take special
classes, but do not necessarily fail to advance to the next grade level. In some states, a
separate standardized exam is given to all high school students before they can
graduate; with graduation contingent on passing. In other countries, there are more
rigorous testing policies throughout a students primary education. In Europe, several
nations such as France and Germany tie test scores to which pre-college schools
students can attend. Japan is known for its many standardized exams that can
dramatically influence a students life, even before looking to higher education.
Finland, on the other hand, has very few standardized tests, none of which are
particularly critical to the life of a student. Many developed nations consistently rank
higher than the US in quality of education. !
Standardized tests provide a simple, efficient way of collecting intelligence data
for use in educational policy. Supporters of these tests point to the ability to
incentivize schools to improve, and believe that a test, in some form or another, can be
a good indicator of performance in school and life. Although some are better than
others and none are perfect, there is no better way to determine ability in basic skills. !
In recent years, there has been a backlash against standardized tests, and how
the test results are used. Critics say they actually diminish quality of education, are
unfair, and neglect the development of students. Our deliberation will discuss three
major sides taken in this discussion.!

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Continue reading to find out what they are and learn about the arguments
being presented! !

Option I: Data Analysis!

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This option encompasses two courses of action: investigating the factors that
lead to low test performance to find positive solutions, and removing potential
negative consequences for students, teachers, and districts from the testing policy.!
Any test-based data collection should be carried out through an unbiased,
objective basis with the intention of accurately depicting student performance. To
ensure the fact that students are learning valuable skills and not just the process to get
the right answer, it is important this technique allows schools to target areas of
improvement and progress without putting the teachers job or schools funding on
the line. The feedback that teachers and faculty receive can help them find out what
students know, do not know, should know, and
what they are struggling with.!
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However, there are commonly pointed out

drawbacks to this proposed option. What use will

the data be if it is not used for teacher evaluation?
Furthermore, how will the schools regulate data
analysiswill it be standardized just as the test is?
The bias arises not from the test or data collection
but from the interpretation. There is also no reason
to explicitly define as to how far a school, district, or
state is able to go in the way of interpreting the data.
Currently, standardized material is put up on a
pedestal, viewed as more important than other
enriching subjects the students are not as heavily
tested on, such as art or music. Creative thinking in
math and science falls by the wayside to

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memorization. Students have different strengths in different subjects; some may excel
in Math and Science, but do poorly in English and History, or vice versa. Testing all of
these subjects sufficiently to make life altering decisions for a student is impractical. A
consequence of not monitoring schools as strictly is the potential loss of accountability.
The proposal would make it more difficult to overcome one of the key weaknesses of
No Child Left Behind: its focus on proficiency rates in math and English. In a climate
of race and income disparities, standardized tests pose a civil rights issue. Should data
be organized by race and income without addressing opportunity disparities. !
Option number one provides a simple and straightforward solution to the
current issue at hand. On the one hand, this solution benefits the teachers and
students by opening up a greater freedom for them to explore in a more personalized,
understanding academic atmosphere in the classroom. More responsibility is placed
with the individual student, and a source of unhealthy stress is removed. We urge you
to consider our option as a foil to the options advocating too much emphasis on
standardized tests.!

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Option II: Funding!

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The second method to be considered is the usage of standardized testing as a
determination of school funding. Proponents of this method say that doing so will
help to motivate schools to enforce policies that will improve their educational
program. By incentivizing schools to perform well with the correlation of increased
federal funds, this will increase overall performance. Administration will enforce
better teaching policies, strive to hire competent faculty, and the teachers would care
for their students progress. Standardized testing is a method to quantify the
effectiveness of their teaching by the score of their students. !
! In some schools, a teachers pay is even directly tied to the scores at which the
school students can perform at. It is possible that this course of action can increase

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school performance as studies have shown that high-stakes testing can boost the
average performance of both students and teachers. According to one U.T. Texas
study, a sample of schools were observed over a period where test scores correlated
directly to an increase of teacher bonuses. The study ultimately found a direct
increase in the percentage of scores which proved satisfactorily from previous
years.The scores increase as a function of the bonus that was used to incentivize
teacher performances.Certainly, it can be considered high stakes for a teachers job to
be reviewed on the basis of student scores. By doing this though, it takes away a
teachers reliance on tenure so they are forced to perform well at their job if they want
to keep it.!
! While this method can be beneficial, there are several drawbacks. Some argue
that making teachers and schools responsible for something they have limited control
over is unfair, and can make the problem worse. Currently, federal funding is tied to
standardized tests administered by states. !
This method would then weed out any schools being poorly maintained and
raise the standard of what a quality education means. Tying school funding or a
teachers pay to standardized testing
would only motivate these
institutions and their faculty to help
these students perform at the level
required of standardized tests. It
would not only measure the
performance of the students, but also
how well schools are being run and
how well teachers are doing their job.
If they dont meet the standard,
change has to be made for the better
and that would only improve the
quality of education in The United States. !

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Option III: Tracking!

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The third option proposes the use of standardized tests to rigorously track
student performance in schools, as tests can demonstrate a students mastery of the
common core material. The goal of this option is to benefit the student by ultimately
placing them in a classroom with children of similar ability so that the teacher can
tailor the class to their needs; however, this option will not focus on using the tests for
funding or any other resource allocation, as the purpose of the tests should be used
solely to demonstrate the skill level of an individual child, and not to compare schools
against one another.!
Tracking can be an important educational tool. It benefits students on both ends
of the academic spectrum because students with a greater grasp of essential skills can
work at a faster pace, while children who are further behind can receive the proper
assistance to help them to reach a similar level. When standardized through use of
testing, tracking can be a powerful tool to ensure that schools are providing the best
education that they can. !
While it can be argued that the children in the lower tracks will likely still be
behind those in the higher tracks even after remediation, this cannot be blamed on the
tracking system. In reality, the various tracks allow the children to work at an ideal
pace for his or her needs based on their skills and goals. If a child is in need of
remediation, placing them in a class with students who have already mastered the
skills is less advantageous. Either that child will fall further behind, or the teacher will
have to adjust the course so that it moves at a significantly slower pace, which would
negatively impact the higher level students. For this reason, tracking is an asset to
educational practices because it allows each student to be in an environment that is
most appropriate for their needs.!
Additionally, many teachers have expressed their desire to teach tracked classes
because they are then able to address a group of students of similar abilities, which

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makes pacing the course simpler. Teachers find it easier to work with more
homogenous groups of students, meaning that tracking could enhance the
educational effectiveness and raise test scores of both low- and high-ability students.
In order for the tracking system to succeed, however, it is necessary that some sort of
standard be established in assessing test scores which will be discussed during the
deliberation. !
As referenced in the introduction, many Western European and Asian school use
extensive testing to place students in classes with those of similar abilities, and thus
routinely rank high in world education rankings. In many of these cases, tests act as
minimum standard needed to continue advancing ones education. Some US states
use tests to set a minimum graduation requirement, guaranteeing to colleges and
employers that a student with a diploma has at least a certain set of skills. Some
believe that going one step further and using testing for class placement and tracking
would be an even more efficient educational tool.!

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Enjoy the deliberation! We look forward to hearing what you have to say. For
more information, please consider the following articles that were used to help
construct our positions. !

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/01/15/cuttingthrough-the-stupid-on-annual-standardized-testing/!

http://standardizedtests.procon.org/ !

http://neatoday.org/2014/11/02/nea-survey-nearly-half-of-teachers-consider-leavingprofession-due-to-standardized-testing-2/!

http://www.nea.org/tools/16899.htm!

http://educationnext.org/tracking-improve-learning/!

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ericksen.356/section_3_-_lyc_e_vs._high_school!

http://www.educationbug.org/a/history-of-public-schools.html!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/standardized-testing-afo_n_2145623.html!

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Images in this packet are not the property of this deliberation group, they are intended for educational

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use only.!