A Vision for Prioritizing Learning, Not Testing
By Lorrie A. Shepard
Claims that testing will serve equity very often aren’t true. That’s my conclusion from 50 years of studying the impact of high-stakes standardized assessments. Yes, I should have retired years ago. But I feel compelled to call attention to how seemingly well-intentioned efforts to increase student achievement actually diminish student learning—and, more importantly, to offer an alternative vision of assessment so integrated with instruction that it actually furthers learning.
Here’s the arc of the last 50 years, at warp speed: minimum competency tests in the ’70s; basic-skills tests in the ’80s; “tests worth teaching to” in the ’90s; high-frequency, high-stakes tests in the ’00s; and added layers of commercial interim tests in the ’10s.* After testing ourselves into a maniacal focus on reading and math, there’s now a growing effort to tack on other variables, like social-emotional development, as if that could solve the horrific imbalance of accountability testing over all else.
What has all this testing accomplished? Very little. We’ve known since the 1980s that standardized testing in basic skills, when there are any consequences attached, results in test score inflation and curriculum distortion.1 And we’ve known since 2011 that the high-stakes testing required by No Child Left Behind increased achievement only minimally. One methodologically strong study found an increase of 0.10 of a standard deviation in fourth-grade math,2 while a research synthesis found an average increase of 0.08, with gains mainly in elementary math.3 These findings translate to roughly 3–4 percentile points.
What has all this testing cost? Far too much. Each year, testing consumes weeks of instructional time, pulls millions of dollars away from student services and enrichment, and demoralizes budding learners across our country.
It’s long past time to reckon with how the accountability testing strategy has failed, accepting that we cannot incentivize our way to equity and excellence, and to redirect our efforts to assessments that support learning. It’s time to value teachers, strengthen local curricula, build on the knowledge students bring to class, foster caring classroom environments, and focus on assessments that enable next steps for instruction.
Because of the pandemic, this school year will be different from the past, even in places where in-person schooling was maintained throughout. Many educators and members of the public now more fully understand that relationships matter for learning. Debilitating inequities in educational resources and learning opportunities, known yet effectively ignored by policymakers for decades, are now undeniably exposed. And for the first time, federal monies are available on a scale sufficient to enact meaningful changes.
Read the rest of the piece from the American Educator, here.