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High-Stakes Testing

Often criticized in curriculum studies as fostering a myopic view of curriculum, high-stakes testing has become a pejorative term referring to the gambling nature inherent in test assessment methods of many standards-based learning programs. A number of these testing protocols use a single, annual, standardized test to determine a student's academic progress. Test results are often used to identify a learner's progress and to determine promotion to the next grade or retention at the current grade level. Tests administered in large urban areas take weeks to grade and disseminate back to schools. The delays force students to either attend summer school or to repeat the grade in the following year.

Standardized tests have grown to become the preferred assessment method for public school districts, and consequently, their presence impacts the curriculum choices for schools. Testing is used to satisfy the assessment requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The NCLB act reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to distribute federal funds to the nation's public school districts. NCLB also includes accountability provisions with consequences impacting entire school districts. Failure to meet benchmark goals can lead to reduced funding, reconstituted schools, relocated students, and fired teachers and administrative staff.

In some cases, tests measure students' progress only in the core subjects of mathematics and language arts, ignoring development in other learning areas. This limitedness may have the unintended consequence of restructuring a school's priorities in curriculum planning. Some schools bypass non-test subjects such as art, music, physical education, and social sciences to spend funds and time on tested subjects. Still others claim the current use of tests has strayed from the original intent of measurement.

The Measurement Movement

Testing advanced in U.S. education at the beginning of the 21st century as educators strove for more rational structure in learning while meeting the need to assess progressive pedagogy. Influenced by the work of European psychologists Wilhelm Wundt, Frances Galton, Alfred Binet, and Theodore Simon, Americans began to institute scientific methods in learning and to experiment with intelligence tests. As the popularity of testing grew through the measurement efforts of E. L. Thorndike and the social efficiency curriculum of J. Franklin Bobbitt, education moved closer to instituting standardized curriculum and assessment policies through the 1930s and 1940s.

In time, growing criticism of a lack of structure in education goals led to calls for reform. The cold war of the 1950s and 1960s brought increasing funds and influence to the scientific community to improve education. Their influence led curriculum developers to include more structured development and assessment methods in their planning. The last half of the 20th century has seen the further inculcation of test-driven curricula in the nation's public schools even as questions arise concerning the efficacy, validity, and fairness of standardized testing.

The Arguments for and Against Testing

Proponents argue that testing is beneficial in identifying low-performing schools and targeting students in need of additional help. Others add that testing offers educators the ability to isolate problems in comprehension and in processing information. Some studies suggest that test-based accountability has a positive effect on student learning. Some critics question the fairness of tests when the factors key to success on high-stakes tests (better funding, smaller classes, less teacher turnover, more public PreK) are missing from neighborhoods of low-income, urban schools. Other critics argue that a test-centered curriculum, rather than measuring knowledge, assesses only what test makers decide is important. A high-stakes, one-shot, annual snapshot of a student's progress cannot effectively measure overall performance as well as a series of smaller, content-based tests.

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