Op—ed
High Stakes Testing Is Educational Disaster
BY DAVID M. QUINTANA

I want to speak out against the current trend towards high stakes testing due to having to comply with some disastrous provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

The NCLB Act has a severely harsh agenda that holds our children responsible for our own failure as a society to invest in their future and in their sustained academic achievement.

One of the most fundamental rights provided in the New York state constitution is that all citizens shall be given an equal start through a sound basic education. Our refusal as a state and as a nation to guarantee that right for all children, including poor children, is a disgrace. We cannot allow politicians to get away with making our children pay for their and society's failure to provide our children with the high quality education which they need, deserve and is their right, as New Yorkers and American citizens.

I believe that, when used correctly, standardized tests are a vital tool to educators for diagnosing inequality and for identifying where improvement is needed. The tests assist educators in measuring academic achievement across a wide range of students so that the tests can help ensure that schools and districts are held accountable for improving the achievement of all students, regardless of race, income, gender, limited English proficiency and disability.

Using a single standardized test as the sole determining factor for graduation, promotion, tracking and ability grouping is blatantly unfair and has not been shown to achieve greater equality or more opportunity for students. I firmly believe that it is grossly unfair to not graduate, or to hold back a student based on a standardized test if that student has not had the opportunity to learn the material covered on the test. When we impose high stakes tests on students when there are vast financial inequalities and then do nothing to address the underlying causes of those inequalities, we set up our children to fail.

The gap between the richest and the poorest in our society has reached record levels of disparity under the Bush Administration, levels not seen since the robber barons of the Gilded Age. It is absurd to think that students who attend schools in the poorest districts have anywhere close to the same preparation and readiness as students who attend school in the wealthiest districts.

That our children are not getting these most basic needs condemns them to lives and futures of frustration, chronic under-achievement, poverty, crime and violence. Is this the future you envision for our children, the future of America?

Allowing the continued misuse of high stakes tests is a gross failure of our moral imagination, a failure of policymakers and a failure of both the New York state senate and federal legislators, who have persistently refused to provide the educational resources necessary to guarantee an equal opportunity to learn for all of our children.

Studies indicate that high stakes testing encourages teachers and administrators to focus instruction on test content, test format and test preparation. Teachers tend to overemphasize the basic skills, and underemphasize problem-solving and complex thinking skills that are not well assessed on standardized tests. Furthermore, they neglect content areas that are not covered, such as science, social studies and the arts, helping lead to the dumbing down of America. In many schools the school curriculum is so closely geared to these highly stressful tests that it is impossible to distinguish real subject matter mastery from mastery of skills and knowledge useful for passing these particular tests. Many teachers have said that they neglected subjects not covered by the tests, due to the push by administrators to achieve high tests scores to assure that they receive continued federal funding.

We must never stop demanding that our children do their best. And we must never stop holding schools accountable. Measures of student performance can include standardized tests, but only when coupled with other measures of achievement, more substantial education reforms and a much fuller, sustained investment in schools. This is the least we should provide for all of the children of New York and America.

Politicians use words like “accountability” and “responsibility” when they talk about high stakes tests, but what they are being is anything but accountable or responsible. They do not see beyond their words to the harsh reality that underlies them and the harsh agenda that they are imposing on teachers, parents and most of all students. Chancellor Klein has essentially defended the practice of “teaching to the test.” Klein has said that’s “exactly” what teachers should do. His bottom line: “While tests might not always be a perfect measurement of progress, in the end I’m convinced that they’re the best we have.”

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten refuted the Chancellor when she said: “This is the regrettable outcome of the overemphasis on high stakes testing. In the long term, kids lose out when every bit of focus is simply on how high you can make the English and math scores. That lesson is clear when you look at places where test scores shot up briefly and then dropped precipitously... the over-emphasis on math and English also results in a lessened emphasis on such important subjects as social studies and science, and can adversely affect a child’s social development.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this fight is not just a fight about tests, or just about ensuring that all our children are educated and educated well. It is time for us to renew the progressive vow of equal opportunity for every child in America. That's what this fight is all about. I urge others to speak out against high stakes testing of our children. Let’s give them the sound, well-rounded education many of us received in the New York City public education system and which is enshrined in our state constitution.

David M. Quintana is a resident of Ozone Park.