FairTest, The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial. Wikpedia says, “It educates the public on the negative consequences of high-stakes testing and advocates for better ways of assessing students and providing accountability. It also works to remove state and local policies that require students to pass a standardized test (one where all students take the test under reasonably similar conditions) to graduate or be promoted to the next grade. It also has many materials on authentic, performance assessments and their uses for teaching and school improvement.”
FairTest can be found here, but a recent article deserves special attention. “How Standardized Testing Damages Education” examines the misuses of standardized testing but also presents alternatives. It is well worth your time and can be found here.
Testing has become as much about monitoring the performance of teachers as well as that of students. One could conclude poor teachers are a major issue for schools and by weeding them out education will be on the way to vast improvements.
This view is contrary to my experience in 33 years of teaching.
Political and business agendas must be set aside from the educational process or educators will continue struggling with false or misleading issues distracting from meeting the real needs of students.
Here at KnowledgePoints we see students testing lower than their abilities quite often.
Using standardized tests, even good ones, does not give us an accurate picture of a child’s reading or math level.
Honestly, it’s better than nothing; but working with children one-on-one is the only way to get a true impression of their academic needs.