From Teaching to Testing
The original purpose of the No Child Left Behind act was to improve test scores for all. It has been in place since 2001 and since then we have seen negative effects such as narrowing curriculum and missing out on valuable life lessons. Holding teachers and students accountable for making academic progress and reaching goals each year sounds good in theory. However, when that much pressure is put on both students and teachers to succeed on or suffer the consequences, the focus shifts from teaching to testing. Students inevitably go from learning necessary material and growing as an individual to learning how to pass a given test. I have found the statement, “At their best, tests are only a way to measure reform; they do not by themselves produce better results…” to be true while thinking about this topic of the testing culture (Hochschild 102). Despite this “solution,” children are still being left behind.
In the textbook that goes along with this course, the author sums up the purpose of education given by Benjamin Franklin and others by saying, “If schools teach the basics well, then there is no excuse for illiteracy: if schools provide civic education and democratic training, there is no excuse for bad citizenship” (Hochschild 10). It is evident that times have changed dramatically, but Americans still place “preparing people to become responsible citizens and helping people to become economically self-sufficient” at the top of their lists of what they want out of public schools (Hochshild 11).
Unfortunately, no matter how hard schools try, not all students will have the same opportunities and privileges. The amounts of social, human, and cultural capital usually pre-determine if a child will do well in school. The effects of testing are larger in poorer schools and results show that “urban children have much lower test scores than nonurban children, and they perform less well on measures of civic training” (Hochschild 25). To see any progress, “we need to take the education of poor children as seriously as we take the education of the rich, and we need to create systems that routinely guarantee all the elements of educational investment to all children”
To gain some perspective from people that see the issues with NCLB and other policies on a daily basis, I talked to a family friend, a middle school teacher from upstate South Carolina. She told me she sees that even as 6th graders, “These kids have known for years already which percentile they fall under based on a standardized test. For some students it’s a good thing and they feel really confident in themselves. But for some, they are so disappointed by their scores and develop this negativity towards school and towards their work.” Mrs. White says it is just “unrealistic to think every child will excel at every subject and that other factors will never get in the way of so many tests.”
“No nation has become high-achieving by sanctioning schools based on test-score targets and closing those that serve the neediest students without providing adequate resources and quality teaching.” — Linda Darling-Hammond
From the article Restoring Our Schools, readers are able to gain a perspective on how the United States as a whole is falling behind other nations. For example, Finland is smaller and could reform their education system in a more practical way, but they have really set an example by eliminating tracking and state-mandated testing. Their teachers are highly trained and they have based their curriculums and assessments around problem solving, creativity and independent learning. We are no longer seen as the world’s unquestioned educational leader. As a nation, we have been too busy setting goals for public schools (and punishing those that fail to meet them). To see a real change, we much start to really invest in “a highly trained, well-supported teaching force for all communities, as other nations have. We have not scaled up successful school designs so that they are sustained and widely available; and we have not pointed our schools at the critical higher-order thinking and performance skills needed in the twenty-first century” (Darling-Hammond, 15).
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Restoring our Schools, 14–19.
Hoschild, J.L (2003). The American Dream and the Public Schools. New York: Oxford University Press.
