Center X

It begins its deadly journey earlier and earlier each year—this juggernaut of testing. Beginning the first day of school, staffs are welcomed with the horrors of how many students are not achieving as proven by an array of graphs and reports. Skills, such as “phonetic and structural principles,” “critical analysis” or even “conceptual underpinnings of calculus” are supposedly a measurement of a student’s achievement.

Many victims are left in the wake. Parents, students, and teachers are consumed by the driving force of the media message that permeates newspapers, magazines, radio talk shows, television news reports, and conversations in schools, at home, and at work. Headlines and sound bites announce that students are failing, schools are failing, so we must raise standards and test scores to ensure future citizens who are literate, successful members of our society. The myth, though, is that scores on a norm-referenced test represent true literacy.

No one argues about the need to assess students as evidence of what they know, what is being taught, and also as a means to plan appropriate instruction. No one argues with high expectations or high standards. However, the specter of accountability and the question of who will be punished or not punished for low student performance on standardized tests is creating a crisis in the attitude toward learning in this country.

As a nation, what are the values we want to instill in students, parents, teachers, and community members? Do we really believe that student achievement is best measured by a multiple-choice test often not even aligned with the standards? Do we really believe that achievement can be measured by performance on five days of testing each year?

The principal at a high school with some of the highest standardized test scores in the nation refutes the belief that gifted students perform well because they “just have it.” Even for these students, a standardized test score does not reflect the hours of extra studying and the diligence and tenacity with which they approach learning. Certainly for some students, learning comes easier, but the lesson here is that there are other values and attitudes that also predict student success. A standardized test with normed results never allows for these traits to be celebrated as factors in meeting high standards of academic achievement.

Consider, too, the hours of instruction and amount of money now being devoted to norm-referenced tests. Billions of dollars are poured into developing, scoring and reporting data on these tests. Test readiness programs that focus on how to take a test are taking over what needs to be taught. Preparing for spring tests starts earlier and earlier each year and by the end of May, it’s not uncommon to hear the familiar refrain uttered by teachers at all grade levels, "At last! Now I can finally begin teaching!"

Most dangerous, though, is the culture being created by high stakes testing. The juggernaut careening through school communities is wiping out values of hard work, determination, resilience, pride, and learning for the joy of learning, and replacing these with a test prep mentality of just learning what’s on the test to get the right scores. If we are to be a society that reflects lifelong learning, literacy opportunities for all types of learners and people who think deeply, wisely, and critically about the many issues experienced in life, then we must support alternative measurements of academic achievement. To remain passive in the face of an onslaught of standardized testing will leave us in the path of a juggernaut that is more real than metaphor.