Standardized testing has become controversial in a way few predicted a decade ago. As I wrote in the first piece in this series, test scores give us important information about the quality of schools, but they leave out a lot of other important information.
Consider, for instance, the school that suddenly had to take in 60 new students midyear, because a nearby school closed. The newcomers’ scores on tests given two months later would not tell us much about the quality of that school.
Or how about schools that were closed for a month because of a hurricane and flooding? Wouldn’t their scores misrepresent their quality?
And what about specialized schools, like those that focus on dual-language immersion or the performing arts? Would reading and math scores really tell us what we need to know about their performance, if we don’t also rate them on how well kids are learning their second language or their singing, dancing or acting.
Outstanding schools do many things that test scores don’t measure, such as engaging families, motivating students, regularly assessing their progress, offering remedial help for those who are behind and paying attention to social-emotional learning. Science tells us that these are all important practices. Wouldn’t it be nice if state accountability systems encouraged schools to use them?
Read the rest of the piece here.
