Measuring Schools without High-Stakes Tests

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

WAYS TO MEASURE SCHOOLS WITHOUT HIGH-STAKES TESTING
Washington Post "Class Struggle" Blog -- March 31, 2008
by Jay Mathews

Who is going to be our next education president? I know, but I'm not 
telling. Most of The Washington Post's political reporters these days 
are young, strong and potentially dangerous. They have warned me about 
previous attempts to tread on their turf. So I am going to confine 
myself to helpful advice for our future chief executive, without 
revealing that person's name.

I have gotten some astute assistance in this effort from Sharon L. 
Nichols, an educational psychologist who is an assistant professor at 
the University of Texas at San Antonio, and David C. Berliner, Regents' 
Professor of education at Arizona State University. Their 2007 book 
"Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools" 
is the latest selection to our Better Late Than Never Book Club, this 
column's way of spotlighting good work that I really should have read 
when it appeared months, sometimes years, before.

Nichols and Berliner attack from all sides the state testing that we use 
to assess schools under the No Child Left Behind law. Their analysis is 
clear, their arguments strong. What particularly impressed me was their 
willingness to suggest viable alternatives to testing as a way for us 
voters, parents and taxpayers to know which of our schools are doing 
well and which are not, a service to which some critics of testing seem 
to think we are not entitled.

Here are their four major suggestions, in the order they gave them, with 
their own titles. It is important to read the book to get the analysis 
in depth, but this should whet your appetite. The authors do not see 
these approaches as separate from each other, but as part of a network 
of assessments that would be both deeper and more helpful than the 
typical high-stakes state tests given at the end of a school year:

1. Formative assessments: Assessment for learning, not assessment of 
learning. Formative assessments are the many tools that teachers use to 
keep track of how their students are doing---start-of-class quizzes, 
discussion, projects, homework, chapter tests. They are different from 
summative assessments, such as final exams or state tests. Nichols and 
Berliner quote British scientist Paul Black's apt definitions: "When the 
chef tastes the soup it is formative assessment; when the customer 
tastes the soup it is a summative assessment." Some of us customers 
still want to see state test results, but Nichols and Berliner cite data 
suggesting that formative assessments, in skilled hands, are more likely 
to get the achievement gains we desire, since in the back-and-forth of 
examining the results of each small formative assessment, a great deal 
of learning occurs.

2. An inspectorate. Nichols and Berliner admire the school inspection 
systems used in Australia, England, Holland, Germany, Sweden and a few 
other countries. They describe very detailed and sophisticated visits, 
interviewing both teachers and students and others involved in the 
education process, to see if standards are being maintained and progress 
made. If this system worked, it would have real benefits. But it is 
terribly expensive---in Britain, they can only afford to do each school 
every six years---and it reawakens in me bad memories of the reports 
issued by regional school accreditation committees that operate in many 
parts of this country. Rarely have I seen prose more tortured or less 
comprehensible. Often such visits involve buddy-buddy relationships that 
teeter on the edge of conflicts of interest. So it is a promising idea, 
but I would have to see it executed better than I have seen in the past.

3. End-of-course examinations. Here, I think they are on to something. 
They propose that high-stakes state tests be junked in favor of local 
tests written by teachers and tied closely to actual courses. They cite 
as models the Standards of Learning tests in Virginia, which I have been 
watching closely for a decade. There are high school SOL tests for 
algebra, biology, American history and several other subjects. The tests 
and questions were designed by Virginia teachers, and are embraced by 
many critics of No Child Left Behind. Nichols and Berliner do not like 
the fact that the Virginia tests are high-stakes--a student has to pass 
six of them to graduate from high school. But you get the idea. I am a 
little surprised that they did not mention Advanced Placement and 
International Baccalaureate as models for this approach, since they have 
the additional merit of a testing standard that cannot be corrupted. 
That standard is based on a result everyone considers useful to the 
students themselves---being able to master introductory college 
material. Another advantage of this approach is that it is less 
expensive (as well as more comprehensible to outsiders) than their other 
suggestions. Less money spent on assessments could mean more money to 
pay teachers.

4. Performance tests, including project and portfolio defenses, before 
judges. The authors celebrate here my favorite example of this 
alternative to high-stakes testing, the Central Park East Secondary 
School created by a group of teachers led by the legendary Deborah 
Meier. High schoolers at CPESS were treated like graduate students, 
working on major papers and other projects, and being judged by 
committees of experts. This is a wonderful alternative to state testing, 
if the teachers and administrators are as good as Meier and company. But 
it can be expensive and leaves us voters and taxpayers somewhat out in 
the cold. We don't have time to sit in on all those oral exams.

All four of these ideas have potential. I think the best choice for 
critics of high-stakes tests is to show us what they've got. Create 
independent schools like CPESS--charters or pilots or privates, 
whatever---and try out some of these alternative assessments. If they 
work, they will be noticed by many, including the next president.

   
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033100704.html