Commentary on "Political Backlash Builds Over
High-Stakes Testing," The Washington Post
By: Craig Nicholls, Ph.D., and Jill Stirling
The issue of high-stakes testing was a political platform item in the recent Florida gubernatorial race. The outgoing Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and the Republican candidate Charlie Crist stood behind the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), while Democratic candidate Jim Davis tried to rally voters increasingly dissatisfied with the exam and the pressure it puts on students and teachers in the state.
The pressure is real. Researchers from Hezel Associates, conducting classroom observations in Miami-Dade County elementary classrooms as part of an experimental study of PBS TeacherLine resources, saw firsthand how the FCAT permeated instruction. Teachers routinely mentioned the exam to observers and FCAT preparation workbooks were evident in most classrooms. One third-grade classroom featured a poster saying “I promise to try my best on FCAT reading and math,” with each child’s signature below the pledge.
The larger issue revolves around No Child Left Behind (NCLB) accountability legislation and the role of standardized testing. Outspoken critics like Robert J. Sternberg, dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University, Alfie Kohn, author of the book, The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen, all condemn standardized testing as the bane of education and, further, of American society as a whole. Sternberg questions the validity of standardized testing results, believing the tests are valued too highly. Kohn argues against a test-driven curriculum and claims the rush to raise test scores limits the amount of meaningful learning in the classroom. Quindlen harps on the test obsessions of American culture and the bandage mentality of using tests to cover a broken education system. A recent Los Angeles Times article said critics of standardized testing “argue that ‘teaching to the test’ does not necessarily prepare students to become engaged in a broader curriculum.”
Opponents of the FCAT and other standardized tests argue that the serious consequences of high-stakes testing drive curricula and instruction toward rote learning. The assumption is that students are taught rote drills, where knowledge is retained but not applied critically, to conform to testing requirements. However, this assumption may be mistaken if the test examines critical thinking skills. Stated differently, the value of a test-driven curriculum depends on the quality of the test.
Research on the FCAT for the PBS Teacherline evaluation, commissioned by Hezel Associates and conducted by the Education Alliance at Brown University, shows that the tests are designed to be cognitively demanding. In the manual, FCAT Mathematics Grades 3-5 Test Item and Performance Task Specification, the Florida Department of Education mandates that FCAT test items and performance tasks address Florida Standard 4 of Goal 3: “Students use creative thinking skills to generate new ideas, make the best decision, recognize and solve problems through reasoning, interpret symbolic data, and develop efficient techniques for life-long learning,” (page 5). Critical examination of FCAT items suggested that the test does, in fact, align with the standards. If a test aligns with standards for critical thinking, then teaching to the test may not be as bad as the critics claim.
Interestingly, the results of the 2004-2005 PBS Teacherline experiment, encompassing schools in Florida, South Carolina, and New York, found somewhat better instruction in the states with high-stakes testing. Prior to the intervention (a sequence of PBS TeacherLine math courses) teachers from Florida and South Carolina scored significantly higher than New York teachers on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP), a standards-based observational assessment of reformed mathematics teaching practices (Figure 1). South Carolina administers the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT), while New York had no statewide standardized test.
Figure 1: Instructional practices of elementary classroom teachers by state.
Subsequently, students in Florida and in South Carolina—across both treatment and control groups—showed greater learning gains than students in New York on tests of mathematics developed for the study. Together, the data indicated a difference in the quality of teaching and in student performance where teachers and students were under pressure to show results (i.e., Florida and in South Carolina), compared to where they were not as pressured (New York). The findings from this study, though not conclusive, suggest that while the pressure might be high in Florida and other states with high-stakes testing programs, that pressure may be yielding tangible benefits.