Very Good Op. Ed. on Bush Testing Scheme

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@EARTHLINK.NET>]

           Comment: BUSH'S PLAN HAS ALREADY BEEN TRIED
      Evansville (IN) Courier & Press -- February 14, 2001
                       by Robert Boostrom

    What is President Bush advocating for the schools of America? He
wants to see children tested every year in core subjects. He wants the
tests to be comparable from one school to another and from one state to
another.
    Only in this way, he says, can we know how schools are doing and how
students are doing. Rigorous tests, embodying high standards, will tell
us, he says, whether or not we're getting our money's worth in public
education and whether or not we're serving our children's best
interests.
    With this plan in place, says Bush, we can reward the schools that
are working and reform those that are not. We can stop paying for
schools that don't produce results.
    Will this plan work?
    It didn't the last time it was tried -- 130 years ago in Britain.
    The British plan was called "payment by results." It was based on
the belief that school examiners needed to be rigidly guided in their
testing of students. The old system of more informal assessments that
depended on the judgment and experience of the school examiner was
abandoned.
    One of those examiners was Matthew Arnold, now known best for his
poetry and essays. He deplored the reform, arguing that the rigidly
prescribed examinations led to rigid and narrow teaching.
    Teachers knew that their jobs depended on what we would call good
test scores. So they spent the year preparing their students for the
test and nothing else. Students would spend an entire year practicing
reading from one book. At the end of the year, Arnold wrote, they could
read from that book, but not from any other book.
    Under payment by results, the "test scores" said that students were
thriving, but schools floundered and the system was abandoned.
    Payment by results didn't work then and it won't work now because it
is based on fundamental misunderstandings.
    Bush's plan assumes (as did payment by results) that test scores
provide information about how well schools are performing. This is not
true.
    One of the important findings of an enormous study, "Equality of
Educational Opportunity," in 1966 was that test scores tell us more
about parental income and education levels than school performance. The
tests tell us more about school inputs than outcomes.
    Bush's plan assumes that test scores provide information about
student performance. In a trivial way, this is true: The tests tell us
how well students do on the tests. But what does that performance mean?
As Arnold learned, it may not mean much. And as tests become more and
more rigidly prescribed, with higher and higher stakes, we learn less
and less.
    Bush's plan assumes that we know what should be on the tests. It
assumes that everyone agrees about what children should know and be able
to do. This is not true. Even if everyone agreed that school is just
about teaching children certain facts and skills (an assumption I do not
agree with), we would still face the impossible task of selecting which
facts and skills to "teach."
    Even in 13 years of public schooling, there aren't enough days to
teach -- and test -- every fact and skill that might be taught. Should
every child read "Hamlet" or perhaps "The Great Gatsby"? Should every
child demonstrate proficiency with calculus or perhaps with woodworking?
Should every child study African-American history or maybe the cultures
of aboriginal peoples?
    Should every child learn to play the piano or maybe program a
computer? Who will tell us what should be on the tests?
    Finally, Bush's plan assumes that "If you don't test kids, you don't
know how they're doing." This is not true. Teachers who talk with
children (instead of at them) and who listen to children are assessing
all the time.
    They question, they provoke, they prod. They come to know their
students.
    They can predict strengths and weaknesses because they pay attention
to the children every day of the year.
    By making teachers accountable to a single, high-stakes standard, we
discourage them from teaching with feeling and sensitivity. Bush's plan
is a great idea for those who want to move forward into the 19th
century.

Robert Boostrom is an associate professor and coordinator of graduate
programs in education at the University of Southern Indiana.

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