Officials Scrutinize Race to the Top
National Research Council Puts the Brakes on Assessment
Oct 17, 2009
While the Obama White House wants to make sweeping changes in education, The Board on Testing and Assessments says to wait a minute. There are more effective tools for testing.
Race to the Top
In President Obama’s efforts to improve schools, he has two major initiatives. Race to the Top is one of two competitions for federal stimulus funding approved by Congress under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which totals $787 billion. Race to the Top funding of $4 billion will go to states competing for the funding. The Board is not against the Act but is cautioning Duncan that the assessment portion of the Act is not on solid ground.
National Assessment of Educational Progress
NAEP is an assessment tool used to independently monitor education progress. While every state has an assessment tool that is used to measure proficiencies, NAEP uses a universal assessment for all states and is not aligned to any curriculum in any state or school.
NAEP also eliminates any chance of cheating or prompting on the part of teachers by performing the tests personally. Every two years, NAEP has trained teams visit randomly selected schools and test grades 4, 8, and 12 in reading and/or math. The school plays absolutely no part in the testing other than provide student lists. NAEP teams bring all materials necessary for the testing including pencils, calculators, testing booklets and scratch paper.
Assessment Tools Need Improvement
The Board on Testing and Assessment states that NAEP testing is not a true measure of learning. It also stated that the Department of Education’s plans to use student growth data to evaluate teachers could be premature. [1]
Chairman of the testing panel and professor of education at Stanford University, Edward H. Haertel, states, "Part of this is the respect that we have for the value of the NAEP as a low-stakes auditing tool. We don’t need one more high-stakes test to drive curriculum and instruction nearly as badly as we need the long-term trend lines that we get with the NAEP." [1] Since the NAEP test is not aligned with any curriculum, it is not an accurate assessment of how students are learning in any school. It is merely a general overview.
The BTA also has concerns about the Department of Education’s plans to use individual students’ progress, the value-added model, as a way to judge teacher performance. While it may be useful to link teacher and student performance for research, there is not enough evidence to show that this should be used for rewarding or firing teachers. [1]
Multiple Choice Tests Questionable as Assessment Tools
The board also questioned using multiple choice tests as assessment tools. While these tests are easily scored and result in quick scores, the board does not think these tests are the best to use for figuring out how to tweak what teachers do in the classroom. Multiple choice tests can not measure the knowledge and skills children need to acquire.
"What we really need are forms of assessment that require children to construct their own answers and not just select answers from prefabricated choices. But those can’t be graded in a fast fashion. This is a case of where the hopes and dreams of policymakers are getting ahead of realities," says Haertel.
While legislators that are not educators want quick results to show they are effective, those in the education field know that it is easier to pass legislation than to assess what children actually know.
Related article: Teach for America vs. Traditional Teacher Training.
[1] Maxwell, Lesli A. "Test Experts Wary on ‘Race to Top’ Rules, Officials Warned Against Using Single Assessment to Measure Gains," Education Week, October 12, 2009.
 |
