The Pensacola News Journal has a
piece today about Escambia County Schools scaling back the number of standardized tests administered annually district-wide.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, agrees we were testing students way too much.
This is not a new issue, and the blame game between districts and the state as to whom it is/was that was requiring so many tests continues to this day;
local administrators blame the state for all the testing, and the
state blames the districts.
So last legislative session the issue was addressed via a law that limits the number of hours students can spend taking tests.
Many of us feel this law did not go far enough.
Now, the ideological perspectives bubble up, determining what tests to cut, and what tests to keep.
Establishment types, unions, liberals, and other educrats want nothing less than an end to all standardized, summative assessments that actually measure student mastery of content and that carry any real consequences. While they won't necessarily (openly) admit this, they DO want a return to the days of no accountability, no tests that can group students by ability levels or ----wait for it----- actually prevent social promotion. They want teachers to be the arbiters of pass/fail, not a test, and this scenario all but assures that social promotion will once again re-emerge even stronger than ever! (teachers can be, and are often, chided into passing students who should not be passed.)
Politicians and lobbyists for the testing industry are agnostic as to the value and or consequences of testing, but simply want more testing, summative, formative, and every type in between that they can sell. (they make money-- big money--- selling tests).
But conservatives and reformers like me want a better, more balanced approach. We want fewer tests and more classroom learning time and teacher autonomy. We don't want the elimination of summative tests, but rather fewer of them and much less "drilling and teaching" to these summative tests. We understand that an educational world devoid of summative tests does not prepare students for the real tests of life that carry real consequences. And to focus on formative tests exclusively is lazy and redundant; pop quizzes, classwork, projects, assignments, and homework give teachers the information they need to inform teaching practice to their students. Keeping only the formative assessments is akin to taking the easy way out and is, no matter what a bureaucrat tells you to the contrary, an act of dodging accountability.
In this battle, the educational establishment types have won this skirmish locally.
Is this a victory though, or is this regression?
On the current trajectory, I see the slow and plodding watering down of assessments that carry any real consequences, under the guise of saving class time and eliminating "high stakes testing". But
