Testing Trap
Richard F. Elmore,
Harvard Magazine,
Sept 13, 2002
Let's take it as an assumption for the moment that some schools are failing. It follows that we want to identify them so we can help them improve. And if not by testing the students, then how? Anecdotes? But that said, the standardized test is too blunt an instrument for the task. As the author notes, "Schools are often misclassified as low- or high-performing purely because of random variation in their test scores, unrelated to any educational factor." Moreover, once a failing school is found, what then? We would assume that the school should be helped. It seems to me that imposing sanctions is the exact opposite of what should be done. As the autrhor of this article says, "Low-performing schools, and the people who work in them, don't know what to do. If they did, they would be doing it already."
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