What is wrong with standardized tests? 

Standardized ‘high-stakes’ tests are not accurate or valid assessments

Teaching/Testing Mismatch

    Even on a standards-based assessment, such as the California Standards Test (CST) there is still teaching/testing mismatch.  The amount of information in the standards is vast.  Even if all you do is teach to the standards, you can’t possibly teach or learn it all. Each profession drew up its standards as if it were the only one. You could spend all year on geography alone.

Tendency to throw out questions covering important content

    In order to spread out the students’ test scores, questions that most students get right are removed from the test. This means that the questions which are based on the standards that are the most important, that most teachers spend the most time on will be the questions that most of the students will get right.  Consequently, those questions will be removed from future tests.  So, the most important topics that students will need to be proficient in will not be covered on the test.

There is no evidence that high stakes testing improves the quality of the school or your children’s education.

    In fact, there is considerable evidence that high stakes testing degrades the curriculum and depresses standards. The small upward shifts the media and test advocates sometimes tout are misleading and from an educational point of view almost meaningless. So what is the educational meaning of 3-5% or even a 10% shift (up or down) which often translates to a shift of a mere handful of multiple choice test items?

Academic achievement and the achievement test scores are NOT one and the same

There is no relationship between a test score and actual academic performance. A standardized reading test score says virtually nothing about a person’s actual ability to read.

Standardized tests have little or no ‘predictive validity’ except to social class ($10,000 =30 SAT points) and are of no diagnostic value for teachers and students. 

 Race gap in academic achievement and the gap in achievement test scores are NOT one and the same

Standardized testing technology rests on:

1. Racist 19th century “scientific” assumptions about human intelligence, capacities and achievements.

2. Archaic early 20th century information processing technology. Multiple choice, standardized test technology is dated and at a scientific and technological dead-end.  The microprocessor makes possible school- site managed assessments that are context, situation, and person sensitive which were unimaginable when multiple choice tests were invented.  Exploring these technologies is not in the interest of an industry heavily invested in standardized curriculum and multiple-choice test technology.

High stakes testing serves as a form of institutional racism

The racial and cultural bias is not primarily lodged in the content of test items.

What makes standardized tests racist is:

1.   Disproportionate  (ratio: approx. 30% to 70+%) test failure rates for persons of color and English language learners as compared to white native English speakers.

2.   The tests encourage retention which disproportionately effects African-Americans and Latinos.  Retention contributes to academic failure rather than to success in school.   A single grade retention increases the chances that a student will drop out by 50%.  A second retention increases the risk by 90%.

3.   Since there is no demonstrable connection between performance on a standardized test and a person’s actual academic achievement, to deny a person access to educational opportunities on the basis of test scores alone is to institutionalize racism.

4.   The technology of standardized tests creates and inflates differences that have little or no educational significance. The actual ‘race gap’ in scores is about 10% (range of 8 -15% regardless of the test.)  On a 50 item multiple choice test this represents a difference of 2–4 test items.

See pdf flier format of this information.

Sources

The Truth About Testing  by James Popham

Progressive Educators Network Creating International Liberation

Harold Berlak, Ph.D, Applied Research Center, Oakland, CA