{"id":144,"date":"2015-02-12T08:19:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T08:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbri.nl\/?p=144"},"modified":"2015-02-12T08:24:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T08:24:16","slug":"time-to-move-beyond-test-focused-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Time to move beyond test-focused policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anti-testing backlash has emerged among parents in the US demanding changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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The NCLB \u00a0Act<\/h4>\n

NCLB supports standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.\u00a0The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills. To receive federal school funding, states must give these assessments to all students at select grade levels. The Act does not assert a national achievement standard. Each individual state develops its own standards. NCLB expanded the federal role in public education through annual testing, annual academic progress, report cards, teacher qualifications, and funding changes.<\/p>\n

Yet, as a new National Education Policy Center Policy Memo<\/a><\/em>\u00a0published today points out, the mistakes in NCLB are still being repeated, and lawmakers\u2019 discussions in Washington, D.C., surrounding reauthorization of the law are failing to adjust course.<\/p>\n

Tests are ineffective and counterproductive when used to drive educational reform<\/h4>\n

NCLB was \u201can ineffective solution to some very real problems,\u201d according to the new NEPC Policy Memo. The memo discusses the broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform. “The problem is not how to do testing correctly. In fact, today\u2019s standardized assessments are probably the best they\u2019ve ever been. The problem is a system that favors a largely automated accounting of a narrow slice of students\u2019 capacity and then attaches huge consequences to that limited information.\u00a0Testing used as a diagnostic or summary instrument for children\u2019s learning can be a helpful tool. It is harmful, however, to use students\u2019 test scores as a lever to drive educational improvement. This use of testing is ill-advised because it has demonstrably failed to achieve its intended goal, and it has potent negative, unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

Thirteen NCLB years of intense focus on test-score improvement has yielded few if any benefits. Yet negative, unintended consequences have continued to mount\u2014in the form of narrowed and less engaging curriculum, constrained instruction, and deprofessionalized teachers and teaching, the memo\u00a0points out.<\/p>\n

\u201dWe see clear trends of abandoning our past pursuit of learning that fully encompasses arts, music, social studies, and science; and we see marginalization of values and skills that help students develop the ability to cooperate, problem solve, reason, make sound judgments, and function effectively as democratic citizens.The ultimate question isn\u2019t whether test scores are good measures of learning, whether growth modeling captures what we want it to, or even whether test scores are increasing. It is whether the overall impact of the reform approach can improve or is improving education.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The memo\u00a0points out that test scores \u201ccan be increased in lots of different ways, some of which focus on real learning but many of which do not. An incremental increase in reading or math scores means almost nothing, particularly if children\u2019s engagement is decreased; if test-prep comes at a substantial cost to science, civics and the arts; and if the focus of schooling as a whole shifts from learning to testing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NEPC Policy Memo, Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: Time to Move Beyond Test-Focused Policies, can be found on the NEPC website at http:\/\/nepc.colorado.edu\/publication\/esea.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anti-testing backlash has emerged among parents in the US demanding changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).\u00a0 The NCLB \u00a0Act NCLB supports standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education.\u00a0The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills. … Lees verder Time to move beyond test-focused policies<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5oc-2k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbri.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}