Standardized testing: less is more
Editorial
Originally published on November 28, 2015
A recent two-year study by the Council of Great City Schools has revealed that there is no correlation between hours spent testing and student performance in reading and math, and that tests can be redundant and have no clear purpose. “There’s no evidence that adding testing time improves academic performance,” the study professes.
“There’s no evidence that adding testing time improves academic performance.”
San Francisco Unified School District superintendent Richard Carranza is chair of the council’s Board of Directors, and should adjust the district’s testing policies accordingly based on these results. Shortly after the release of this study, the Obama Administration declared that many standardized tests were “consuming too much instructional time,” and that standardized testing in schools should not take up more than two percent of a school year, which translates to less than four days. In light of these recent events, SFUSD and Lowell need to cut down, in a huge way, the number of tests that students must take.
Teachers lose instructional time is lost
During the 2014–2015 school year at Lowell, students took five standardized tests, which they spent anywhere from four to twenty-six days on, depending on which grade they were in.
The CAHSEE (California High School Exit Examination), taken by tenth graders, took two days to administer, one for the English section and one for the math section.
The PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test), taken by both tenth and eleventh graders, took one day.
The SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) test, taken by eleventh graders, took between seven days and three weeks for English and math teachers to administer at Lowell.
Other tests taken by various grades, including the CLA (Common Learning Assessment) and IWA (Integrated Writing Assessment), took up to an additional five days.
“I don’t want to call it a nightmare, but it’s a puzzle.”
Teachers must change curriculum
Due to the amount of time testing is taking up under the current system, teachers are forced to substantially alter their curriculum in order to make time for the tests. Due to last year’s SBAC test, Advanced Placement English teacher Jennifer Moffitt had to rush material for her AP class and cut an entire novel from her junior-senior classes.
The SBAC has been expanded even further this year, adding two more hours of interim testing into the fall semester of English and math courses, which is now being administered to all ninth and tenth graders, in addition to the juniors. English teachers now have to hand grade every essay that their students write for the testing in the fall, which cuts into time that they could have used to prepare or grade instructional material for their classes.
“I don’t want to call it a nightmare, but it’s a puzzle,” said assistant principal of curriculum Dacotah Swett, who is in charge of coordinating Lowell’s standardized testing.
Teachers don’t get test results
Along with standardized testing being excessive, it fails to actually allow teachers to assess their students, as they often do not receive the results of the tests their students took. This doesn’t help them correctly identify what students should be learning to meet the national goal and change their curriculum accordingly. Many districts do not receive the final state test results the final state test results until two to four months after the tests are taken, which means that the results often arrive too late in the school year to provide any help to teachers, as was the case with Lowell and last year’s spring semester SBAC, according to Swett.
Less is more
We should only take tests that are proven to be effective, or rewrite the tests entirely.
Although testing is being added in the form of two additional hours of interim SBAC tests, state-mandated testing is being cut down in a huge way with the revamping of the CAHSEE, which has been stopped for the next three years while the government redesigns a new test to better match Common Core standards. This is a good start. We should only take tests that are proven to be effective, or rewrite the tests entirely, as California is doing with the CAHSEE. The remaining tests need to be more time efficient and match the Obama Administration’s goal of two percent of class time or less. The district must get timely test results to those directly affected by them, such as teachers and students, so that they can utilize those results, improve curriculum, and focus on learning, not testing.
