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RSS FeedNo Child Left Behind Bill: Should tests come from the federal or state governments?
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| States | 50% | 43 votes | Total: 86 votes | |
| Federal | 50% | 43 votes |
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Add to FavoritesAfter seeing the disastrous results of State-issued test and assessments over the past years, I would hope that the federal government would not start wasting tax dollars to oversee student testing. Allowing tests to be issued at the state level has breathed life to a "high stakes" testing environment that has eroded our schools and changed them from "institutions of learning" to places where students learn "memorization and regurgitation" strategies that give the appearance that learning is taking place.
High stakes testing has robbed many students of their confidence in believing that they can complete this 13-year education track and receive a state recognized high school diploma.
High stakes testing has stolen the rigor that was once the foundation of any school curriculum and replaced it with a "dumbed down" basic level to give parents the illusion that students are progressing academically.
High stakes testing has robbed our teachers of the creativity that uniquely qualifies them as "educators" and changed them into bad actors that cannot follow a script.
High stakes testing has reduced the role of our principals and administrators from "instructional leaders" to mere building managers with no on-site authority.
High stakes testing forces unrealistic mandates of school systems such as "all students will graduate from high school" or "all schools will provide all-day kindergarten" and then does not provide the funding schools need to achieve these mandates. In essence, high stakes testing has given life to the term "unfunded mandates" which now appears to many state education agencies is acceptable to force on local school districts.
High stakes testing has created an environment where the role of parents has been reduced from an educational partner to the schools "private fund raisers" and "cheerleader" of those programs the state education agencies want to implement.
High stakes testing has given us annual student report cards that state education agencies cannot guarantee are the actual test results of the student whose name is on the report card. Even still, in some states that information is recorded on the student's permanent transcript.
High stakes testing is making many large educational companies rich while bankrupting our children's future. Every year we hear stories of students that have met all local school graduation requirement, but denied a recognized state diploma because they did not pass a state issued test developed by some corporation based on "scientific data" and does not consider that student's K-12 performance.
High stakes testing has caused more children to be "left behind" by forcing school districts to place a higher emphasis on passing a test administered six months into the school year rather than students mastering subject content over the 10-month school year.
High stakes testing has changed education from a free and public service afforded to all citizens to a political platform that is only promised based on casting the right vote.
Federal and state governments should establish an accountability system that measures the performance of school systems and their individual local schools, but the current system of the state administering and scoring the test is not the right fit. All students do not learn the same thing on the same day at the same time in the same way, which is the premise that high stakes testing is based.
Federal and state governments need to work with local school districts and develop an accountability system that uses classroom data that actually links a student and their performance over the entire school year to performance measures, not a test administered by the state that measures the performance for a percentage of students.
So my answer to the question: should tests come from the federal and state government
is NO.
Learn more about this author, Tonya Wingfield.
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Federal
The No Child Left Behind Bill is federal legislation and the testing that is administered in respect to the bill should come from the federal government. This would remove the temptation for states to dumb down the standardized tests in attempt to inflate test scores. It would also ensure that all schools are held to the same standards. All children in the nation should be administered the same standardized tests if we wish to accurately measure the performance of the students and whether or not the bill is effective.
Part of the No Child Left Behind Act is that schools must show adequate progress on the standardized tests each year. They are offered financial incentives for performance. If a school fails to show adequate progress, not only are they missing out on the financial incentives but their school may also be in danger of being shut down. A school failing to show adequate progress on the standardized tests after a few years will be shut down and the school system will be faced with the problem of how to educate the students from the school that has failed by the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act.
This is a lot of pressure to put on a school system that may already be struggling. Faced with this pressure the states may choose to make the tests easier so that more children will pass the tests. While this may seem like a good solution to the state, it does nothing to further the cause of the NCLB Act.
Currently, the states are responsible for the standardized testing administered to students. A child who stays within the same school system until they graduate should be able to keep on path with the testing as long as they keep making progress until graduation. Children who move to a different state may find themselves behind the standards of their new state or far above the standards of the state they have moved to. This can truly become an issue for children who move a lot, such as children of members of the Armed Services.
You could argue that most students do not move out of the state that they start their schooling in and that the states should have the authority to administer their own tests to their own students. However, when children graduate from high school and begin their college education, it would be beneficial to them if they have been held to the same stadards as their classmates throughout high school so that they are on the same playing field as their classmates from all over the country.
The standardized test scores from students in each state offer picture as to how students within the state are performing in comparisson with each other. With each state having their own standardized tests there is no way to compare students from different states. This makes it hard to determine whether or not the No Child Left Behind Act is effective.
If the federal government takes responsibility for the standardized tests we could eliminate the differing standards that are placed upon students from state to state. A student graduating high school in California would, in theory have the same knowledge as a senior graduating in Mississippi. When this happens we can truly say that we are leaving No Child Behind.
Learn more about this author, Mutha.
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