Study: Standardized Tests Overwhelming Public Schools (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new study examined the amount of time U.S. public schools spend on government-mandated standardized tests, and found that the requirements are detrimental to both students and teachers. On average, students will take 112 standardized tests during their K-12 education. From grades 3-11, students spend over 20 hours per year on standardized tests alone. "It portrays a chock-a-block jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said."

The U.S. Department of Education has issued an action plan to school districts outlining ways to reduce useless tests and eliminate redundant ones. President Obama even posted a video pledging to reduce the test load of American students. "Standardized testing has caused intense debate on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to craft a replacement for No Child Left Behind. Testing critics tried unsuccessfully to erase the federal requirement that schools test in math and reading. Civil rights advocates pushed back, arguing that tests are an important safeguard for struggling students because publicly reported test scores illuminate the achievement gap between historically underserved students and their more affluent peers."

Comments

Re: Did they learn anything??

[PopeRatzo]

Vouchers will get students out of failing public schools, like, Newark, Chicago, etc. and give them a chance to break the cycle of poverty.

School vouchers are a scam to keep the prisons full. If you hear someone talk about "school reform", run for the hills. They're famous flim-flammers.

The school "privatization" movement is one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century. Charter schools fail. They exist to funnel money upward, not to educate kids.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/1...

http://www.philly.com/philly/b...

http://www.eschatonblog.com/20...

Re:20 hours? That's nothing.

[AthanasiusKircher]

There shouldn't be any 'prepping'

If they're teaching to the test, it's corruption and fraud. They shouldn't know what's on it, and they sign agreements not to open/look at the tests in advance.

It's pretty obvious you don't understand how pervasive the test material stuff has "infected" everyday teaching in many states.

You're talking about a different phenomenon of actual cheating on tests where teachers give students answers (or something close to it). That's not the kind of preparation that goes on in most classrooms.

In many states, the standardized tests are derived from state-approved "standards" that spell out specific exercise types which are likely to occur (particularly in basic subjects like math and reading). Teachers who have any experience with these tests over the years notice certain patterns of the types of questions that always show up. (This isn't just for normal "standardized testing" -- it goes for AP tests and such as well. When I taught AP physics, there were all sorts of "lore" passed down among AP teachers because all the previous tests were available, so you knew there was likely to be a question dealing with X, a question on topic Y would probably take a certain form, etc.)

For decades in states that have had "high-stakes" standardized testing, it has been common to have extra review sessions for students going over these clear patterns in testing, and generally to spend at least 1-2 weeks before the tests reviewing this stuff in class as well. When I taught high school math quite a few years ago in one of these "high-stakes" states (which had such testing even before No Child Left Behind), our district paid teachers extra to do evening review sessions going over such stuff.

For example, a disproportionate number (95%+) of math problems involving right triangles would involve either (1) the Pythagorean triple 3,4,5 or its multiples, or (2) the triple 5,12,13. (It's possible that 8,15,17 could show up too maybe... but I think it was just the first two which were common.)

Anyhow, so we'd tell students if they saw a problem with a right triangle, either to expect 5,12,13 or if they saw other numbers to check to see if it was a multiple of 3,4,5.

Of course, this is ridiculous and antithetical to "deep knowledge" of how triangles or even the basic Pythagorean theorem works, but this is the kind of crap that would show up on tests. And teachers were strongly urged to teach these known patterns because administrators were usually under pressure to maintain certain levels of passing scores on these tests.

It's gotten much, much worse in the past decade or so -- some states have alliances between the standardized test designers and textbook publishers, so textbooks come with practice tests bundled directly into the textbook.

I've seen this with some kids of my friends or other family members -- it would not be an exaggeration to say that some of them spend 20%+ of all classtime doing standardized tests, practice tests, or direct prep for such tests (e.g., worksheets designed around known test prep patterns), particularly in core areas like math and English/reading. Many schools adopt "benchmark" schemes with these practice tests to check whether students are "on track" at various points of the year leading up to the actual tests.

THAT'S what GP was presumably referring to as "test prep" and that's what people usually mean when they talk about class time being monopolized by "teaching to the test." They do NOT generally refer to illegal cheating scandals, but rather the amount that class activities and exercises are tailored to whatever stupid patterns tend to show up on these tests... and that can be much, much more significant than the couple percent or whatever of class time literally spent on taking the tests.