₦airaland Forum

High-stakes standardized testing is educational malpractice and must be stopped now.

When typing my essay I understood that high-stakes testing (HST) is based on the wrong set of goals for education, faulty assumptions about development and learning, and already-falsified assumptions about the meanings of test scores.

In turn, so-called "value-added" schemes are also failing to examine the educational value that really matters, lack of responsible controls for variables that cause the lions' share of variance in test scores (60-100%), and are founded upon an outdated and inferior approach to promoting human motivation.

HST has failed on its own terms (test scores) as NAEP long-term trend scores for reading and mathematics were flat for both genders and all racial groups between 2008 and 2012, during the most intensive period of test-driven schooling in American history.

HST has been an unmitigated disaster for those who value a well-rounded education. Creativity started declining at the beginning of the standards movement, and traditional, test-driven schooling undermines creativity, initiative, critical thinking, respect for diverse views, and undermines intrinsic motivation to learn (talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!). High-stakes testing inherently corrupts the true purposes of education and steers students and teachers into the alienating "game of school" that Robert Fried described so well.

High-stakes testing has done to education what junk food did to our bodies: Isn't a decade on damage enough to impose upon students and teachers?

Test-based accountability is promoted by CEOs, economists, and politicians who simply do not understand children or child development, and who have an unhealthy desire for America's children and teachers to be micromanaged by far-off bureaucrats. Test-based accountability is also heavily promoted by ed corporations who are rapidly taking over public education.

We have a moral obligation to end this assault on children and democracy.