Striking A Balance With Testing

Anyone who has gone through the U.S. education system in the past 50 years is likely familiar with answering a test question by filling in a multiple choice bubble. Over time, the importance of those standardized tests for schools, teachers and students has steadily grown. Now, for the first time, that trend may be subsiding.   

Educators and advocates have called into question the volume of testing, and in New York that fight heated up after new Common Core tests resulted in plummeting state test scores. The number of students who passed the math and English Language Arts tests fell about 30 percent in 2013 from 2012. State officials said that the drop was expected and simply reflected higher standards, but parents and teachers worried about the effect of the failure rate on students. 

The stakes were raised this year when Gov. Andrew Cuomo doubled down on his efforts to reform the public education system with a vow to tie the teacher evaluation system to state tests. If his measure passes the state Legislature, 50 percent of teacher’s evaluations would be tied to students’ performance on the state tests. But with parents and teachers pushing back on that plan, the backlash has made New York a test model for a larger conversation on standardized testing—and there may not be one correct answer.   

Standardized testing has been around for decades, starting largely with the implementation of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s. The measure was a response to a growing awareness of inequality and civil rights and its goal was to measure the progress of all students—students of color, disabled students, English Language Learners, rich kids and poor kids—and hold schools accountable for that progress. 

The re-authorization of the ESEA in 2002, commonly known as No Child Left Behind, increased schools’ reliance on standardized testing and required states to give a test in math and English in grades three through eight as well as the Regents exams in high school. 

“It became a much more test-oriented system at that point,” Dan Kinley, director of policy and program development at NYSUT, said. “But it didn’t get to the point where it’s at today until they became more important in that they were no longer about simply looking to see how schools were doing, but it started to be about how are our students doing, and now in the last two years, how are our teachers doing. And that’s when it sort of shifted.”

Advocates for standardized testing argue that it is a necessary part of life and a skill that children need to develop. Officials at the state Department of Education say that “standardized” simply means students are demonstrating the knowledge and skills under standard circumstances so those results can be compared—a necessary part of evaluating success, but not the only component. This feeling is similar at the New York City Department of Education. 

“Testing is part of life. We’ve all taken a test. We’ve all been a part of that,” said Dorita Gibson, the New York City Department of Education deputy chancellor. “Our goal is to make sure that the students are prepared, that the education that’s taking place in the schools, that the rigor is high, so that when it comes time to take the test, they’re not worried or stressed out. 

“It’s just one day,” Gibson added. “It shouldn’t take over everything that’s happening in the school.”

Still, a growing movement is worried the high-stakes nature of the new state tests have caused teachers to “teach to the test.” That, in turn, has led many parents to have their kids opt out of taking the exam, which has skewed results. Last year, about 49,000 students in New York did not take the ELA test and about 67,000 students did not take the math test, according to the state Department of Education. In total, 1.1 million did take the state tests. 

“I’m certainly sure parents are disappointed in the level, amount and time of testing and most of all, it is ensuring teachers aren’t spending their time teaching or spending their time preparing to teach,” Assemblyman Jim Tedisco said. “They’re spending their time preparing to teach to a test and I guess the governor evaluates a good teacher on how well they teach a test and answer questions on it and he evaluates students on how well they answer questions on standardized tests.”

High Achievement New York disagrees. In a statement, they blasted Tedisco's bill saying the tests are a necessary tool.  

“More than a million New York students will take these state tests, which are a vital assessment of how children are progressing in acquiring the skills they need for future success," an organization spokesperson said. "These state assessments, which take less than 1% of total class time, are an invaluable tool to help identify problems early so they can be corrected before we lose another generation of kids to substandard performance. The opt-out bill proposed in Albany is an unfunded mandate that places a top down burden on local school districts, which is exactly what critics falsely accuse the Common Core of.”

The current state tests, Kinley argued, have little value to teachers because they do not receive all the results, and the data they do get are not public until the following September. 

“The state test is, again, this sort of photograph in time that comes back to the teachers the following school year. I’m not sure what that tells us,” Kinley said. “And then, you don’t get the information about what the questions were because they only release half of them. So the value of the state exam to teachers has dropped significantly from the days when you used to get all of the information.”

Tedisco, a former special education teacher, has introduced the Common Core Refusal Act, which would inform parents they can opt their children out of the state tests and ensure students and schools face no penalties for opting out. 

“What we’re trying to do is starve the beast with these refusals so we can go back to the drawing board, do this in an efficient way,” he said. “Have parents, teachers and administrators input in this, have hearings across the state … and come up with a plan that really enhances education. [Cuomo] is a bully and the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him.”

But supporters of Common Core standards argue that opting out can ultimately hurt students and teachers. By opting out, a student who is slipping behind may not be identified and get help. If too many students in a class opt out, a bad teacher may go unidentified, subjecting hundreds of future students to a year of substandard education.  

Several states have opted out of Common Core. However, many New York officials continue to back the standards, making a repeal unlikely in the state. In addition, the state received $413.5 million in federal funds to implement Common Core and will receive another $283.1 million if it continues to roll out the standards.

With standardized testing here to stay, the fight is now over the quality of the tests and how frequently students take them.

Tedisco said standardized testing has a role in the education system, if done right. NYSUT is adamantly opposed to the high-stakes nature of the state tests, but also believes standardized testing is necessary. 

“We think that the role of standardized tests should be about diagnostics—you know, to figure out what students need, to help teachers understand what changes they might need to make in their program in order to improve student learning in the future,” Kinley said. “I think that if you think back to when this originally started, you didn’t have all that controversy, and now that they’re high stakes you do. You can draw at least some conclusions from the fact that they became high stakes.”

Both critics and advocates of the state tests believe the goal should be a balance of testing and other measures to evaluate performance of both students and teachers. 

“[Parents have to] know that it’s not going to be like the sole decision that makes the decision about the next steps for the children,” said Gibson, the New York City education official. “It’s a balanced approach. There are lots of challenges in life, and this is just one of them. We’re trying to take off a lot of the stress that’s involved with the children, that it’s just another day, and that they’re prepared.” 

Updated: High Achievement New York issued this