Dive Brief:
- As debate on testing reaches a boiling point, NPR's Anya Kamenetz is addressing the issue in a new book, "The Test," which provides historical context for the nation's current testing fever, as well as recommendations for how parents and teachers can stay above the fray.
- At a recent promotional event at the New America Foundation, Kamenetz spoke about flaws in the testing obsession, explaining how there is a lack of transparency around the content of high-stakes tests and how they have become more punitive then diagnostic.
- Kamenetz acknowledges that testing is here to stay, but also offers solutions for how tests can be used more effectively. She suggests separating assessments from consequences, as well as using other forms of measurement like social and emotional data.
Dive Insight:
Testing in America has become a hot-button topic, especially now that Congress is making moves to re-authorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now more widely known as No Child Left Behind. In January, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, released a 400-page draft bill outlining two different options for testing. One option would give states agency to decide how and when they want to test students without requiring those ideas to be submitted to the U.S. Secretary of Education for approval. The other would maintain the status quo of having states test annually in grades three through eight and once during high school.
Since the release of Alexander's draft bill, many have come forward to explain why they do or don't believe standardized testing should hold so much weight in America's classrooms.