There is no single education policy more harmful than test-based accountability.
The idea goes like this: We need to make sure public schools actually teach children, and the best way to do that is with high stakes standardized testing.
It starts from the assumption that the problems with our school system are all service-based. Individual schools or districts are not providing quality services. Teachers and administrators are either screwing up or don’t care enough to do the job.
But this is untrue. In reality, most of our problems are resource-based. From the get-go, schools and districts get inequitable resources with which to work.
This is not a guess. This is not a theory. It is demonstrable. It has been demonstrated. It is a fact.
What is in question is its importance.
However, any lack of intention or ability on the part of schools to actually teach is, in fact, pure conjecture. It is a presumption, an excuse by those responsible for allocating resources (i.e. lawmakers) from doing their jobs.
Any time you hear senators or representatives at the state or federal level talking about test-based accountability, they are ignoring their own duties to properly provide for our public school children and pushing everything onto the schools, themselves.
That is the foundation of the concept. It’s hard to imagine more unstable ground from which to base national education policy.
But it gets worse.
With our eyes closed and this assumption swallowed like a poison pill, we are asked to accept further toxic premises.
Next comes the concept of trustworthiness.
We are being asked to question the trustworthiness of teachers. Instead, we are pushed to trust corporations – corporations that manufacture standardized tests.
I have no idea why anyone would think that big business is inherently moral or ethical. The history of the world demonstrates this lie. Nor do I understand why anyone would start from the proposition that teachers are inherently untrustworthy. Like any other group of human beings, educators include individuals that are more or less honest, but the profession is not motivated by a creed that specifically prescribes lying if it maximizes profit.
Business is.
Test manufacturers are motivated by profit. They will do that which maximizes the corporate bottom line. And student failure does just that.
Most of these companies don’t just manufacturer tests. They also provide the books, workbooks, software and other materials schools use to get students ready to take the tests. They produce the remediation materials for students who fail the tests. And they provide and grade the tests in the first place.
When students fail their tests, it means more money for the corporation. More money to give and grade the retests. More money to provide additional remediation materials. And it justifies the need for tests to begin with.
Is it any wonder then that so many kids fail? That’s what’s profitable.
There was a time when classroom teachers were not so motivated.
They were not paid based on how many of their students passed the test. Their evaluations were not based on student test scores. Their effectiveness used to be judged based on what they actually did in the classroom. If they could demonstrate to their administrators that they were actually making good faith efforts to teach kids, they were considered effective. If not, they were ineffective. It was a system that was both empirical and fair – and one to which we should return.
In fact, it was so fair that it demonstrated the partisanship of the corporations. Laws were changed to bring teacher motivation more in line with those of big business. Their evaluations became based on student test scores. Their salaries were increasingly tied to student success on these tests. And when some teachers inevitably felt the pressure to cheat on the tests, they were scapegoated and fired. There is no mechanism available to even determine if testing corporations cheat less than penalties for it.
After all, what is cheating for a testing corporation when they determine the cut score for passing and failing?
Yet this is a major premise behind test-based accountability – the untrustworthiness of teachers compared to the dependable, credibility of corporations.
Next, come the scores, themselves.
Time-after-time, standardized test scores show a striking correspondence: poor and minority students often do badly while middle class and wealthy white students do well.
Why is that?
Well, it could mean, as we’ve already mentioned, that poor and minority students aren’t receiving the proper resources. Or it could mean that teachers are neglecting these children.
There is a mountain of evidence – undisputed evidence – to support the former. There is nothing to support the later.
I’m not saying that there aren’t individual teachers out there who may be doing a bad job educating poor and minority children. There certainly are some. But there is no evidence of a systemic conspiracy by teachers to educate the rich white kids and ignore all others. However, there IS an unquestionable, proven system of disinvestment in these exact same kids by lawmakers.
If we used standardized tests to shine a light on the funding inequalities of the system, perhaps they would be doing some good. But this is not how we interpret the data.
Finally comes the evidence of history.
Standardized testing is not new. It is a practice with a past that is entirely uncomplimentary.
These kinds of assessments are poor indicators of understanding complex processes. Answering multiple choice questions is not the best way to determine comprehension.
Moreover, this process is tainted by the eugenicist movement from which it originates. Standardized testing is a product of the belief that some races are better than others. It is a product of white supremacy. It was designed by racist psychologists who used it to justify the social structure of past generations and roundly praised and emulated by literal Nazis.
It is therefore not surprising that test scores show privileged white kids as superior to underprivileged students of color. That is how the system was designed.
Why any educated person would unquestionably accept these scores as valid assessments of student learning is beyond me.
Yet these are the assumptions and premises upon which the house of test-based accountability is built.
It is a smokescreen to protect politicians from having to provide adequate, equitable, sustainable resources for all children. It likewise protects unscrupulous business people so they can continue to cash in on the school system without providing any real value for students.
We must no longer allow policymakers to hide behind this blatant and immoral lie.
Not only should voters refrain from re-electing any lawmakers whose constituents children are receiving inequitable school resources, they should not be eligible for re-election.
Not only should corporations not be trusted more than teachers, they should be barred from determining success or failure while also profiting off of that same failure.
In short, we need to stop worshipping at the altar of test-based accountability.
Schools can and should be held accountable. But it cannot be done with standardized tests.
Moreover, we must stop ignoring the role of policymakers and business in this system. They must also be responsible. We are allowing them to get away with murder.
It’s time to wake up and make them answer for what they’ve done to our nation’s children.
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