High-Stakes Testing: Is It Fair to Students?

The Loss and the Damage

As the pressure increases for students and schools to perform well on standardized tests, teachers adjust their curricula to fit the content and the format of the tests. In Education Week's special report, "Quality Counts 2001," 66 percent of teachers surveyed said they must concentrate "too much" on what's tested at the expense of other subjects. There is also widespread concern that subjects such as fine arts and physical education will be dropped altogether because teachers don't have time to teach subjects that don't appear on the test.

Maggie Hagan, a teacher at Garfield Elementary School in Youngstown, OH, says, "teaching to the test" emphasizes rote memorization at the expense of more complex skills, such as problem solving. "These tests have eclipsed the opportunities for teachers to engage our students in meaningful activities and projects," explains Hagan. "The curriculum becomes narrowed to accommodate the content on the test."

Many critics contend that high-stakes tests are inherently unfair and often damaging to the most vulnerable students: children of color, those with special needs, and those from low-income homes. Monty Neill of FairTest -- an organization opposed to high-stakes testing -- believes that minority students and students from low-income homes typically have lower test scores because they rarely receive the same education as children from more affluent families. Neill maintains that tests can make assumptions about a child's background and social knowledge, often favoring the background and experiences of white, middle-class students.

In support of this view, Peter Sacks has found that the best indicator of how a student will perform on a standardized test is his or her parents' income and level of education. In light of the correlation between test scores and socioeconomic status, Sack writes, "schools in poor neighborhoods bear the greatest brunt of public and official pressure to raise test scores."

Mary Bostrom, a teacher at John Muir Elementary School in Madison, WI, was relieved when state lawmakers repealed an extensive high-stakes testing policy. "I have trouble with politicians who have never been in a classroom, making these policies for kids," says Bostrom. "Kids (who) have test anxiety, and kids who are on the low end academically, are the ones who would struggle. (They would) get discouraged, and we probably would see more of them dropping out."

Echoing Bostrom's concern, researchers from the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy (NBETPP) found that in 1986, nine of the ten states with the highest dropout rates used high-stakes testing, while none of the ten states with the lowest dropout rates used high-stakes tests.

In response to the rise in high-stakes testing, more organizations are taking a critical stance. In recent years, resolutions and policy statements have been adopted by, among others, the American Educational Research Association, National Council for the Teachers of English, National Education Association, National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics, and National PTA. In a January 2001 statement, Paul Houston, director of the American Association of School Administrators, made his organization's position on the dangers of high-stakes testing clear. "Only on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? can people rise to the top by rote memorization and answers to multiple-choice questions. The final answer to improving education is more than memorizing facts for a multiple-choice test. Children today need critical-thinking skills, creativity, perseverance, and integrity -- qualities not measured on a standardized test." Source: In partnership with National PTA. Adapted from "High-Stakes Testing" in National PTA's Our Children magazine.