Standardized testing reaches crossroads: Test more or test better?

Alan Borsuk:

The test results aren't good. Get different tests.

That may sound like a kill-the-messenger response to why American kids keep getting unsatisfying results on standardized tests. Tests don't give wrong answers -- kids do.

But that's one way of looking at the huge changes afoot for testing, including in Wisconsin. At the same time, criticism of testing is gaining momentum and may have an effect I would not have expected even recently. There is a chance we could see, in Wisconsin and nationwide, a much better, more insightful world of standardized tests soon. And there is a chance we're heading toward a colossal testing mess.

"I think the country is at a moment of truth on testing, a really important one," Marc Tucker, CEO and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy and a major figure in national efforts to raise education standards, said last week. Tucker spoke in response to release of a high-profile round of international tests that showed no progress for American kids in reading and math and a growing number of nations doing better than the United States.

The building heat around testing has several big themes.

For one, it is the partner issue with the controversies over the Common Core standards that are being implemented in 90% of states, including Wisconsin, and which are drawing increasing criticism. Standards are goals for what children should learn. Broad-scale tests are the way to find out how they're doing and compare kids in, say, your school or state with kids in another school or state. But that is valid only if the tests are worthy of the task -- which is where a lot of debate lies.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 9, 2013 12:11 AM
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