High Stakes Testing

I’ve written before about how the current system of testing is not healthy nor does it really help young people learn. But there is no way I could have said this as well as the Commissioner of Education for the State of Nebraska. I am not involved in the education system on a daily basis. Doug Christensen is. Here’s what he has to say about the assessment system in use in the US.

The culture of high stakes testing is toxic. It not only takes the oxygen out of the work, it also makes all the wrong things important, as if they are the right things. For example, high stakes testing treats students, teachers and data as “commodities” to be manipulated as variables in some kind of strange economy or in some perverse experiment. In addition, I believe high stakes testing freezes the current system in place treating current practice as if it is good practice and practice that should be continued even though the whole point of accountability is to improve the system where a lot of current practice does not work. High stakes testing standardizes the current schooling model assuming it can work for all students, in all settings and under all conditions and we know that it does not and we know that it cannot. High stakes testing prevents the very innovation we should be encouraging.

Click here to read his entire remarks at the 2006 Leadership for Classroom Assessment Conference.

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