Testing More, Teaching Less - American Federation of Teachers

IntroductionAll children deserve a rich, meaningful publiceducation that prepares them for the opportunities,responsibilities and challenges thatawait them as contributing members of a democraticsociety and a global economy. That vision shouldbe as true for students in Birmingham or the SouthBronx as it is for those in Beverly Hills. And it’s whythe AFT and our affiliates have been advocates ofclear, common, core curricular standards for morethan 20 years, and why we strongly support the CommonCore State Standards (CCSS) for mathematicsand English language arts and other career- andcollege-ready standards efforts today. But the deeperlearning we aspire to has too often been a rhetoricalaspiration—not accompanied by the supportsneeded to make implementation a reality—andeclipsed by the misuse and overuse of standardizedassessments required by policymakers fixated on accountabilityabove all else.The coupling of state standards and assessmentsto measure and report student and school performanceunder the No Child Left Behind Act narrowedcurricula across the country. Despite a laudatorygoal of shining the light on student needs, it took usin another direction, away from valuing the essentialskills of persistence, critical thinking and collaboration.Instead of resulting in the standards-basedpublic education system our nation and our childrendeserve, the current standardized test-basedaccountability system has left classroom teachersalmost solely responsible for the performance ofstudents and schools. Many districts piled on, addinga plethora of other standardized tests to benchmarkstudent performance levels, measure progress towardsa state’s standardized test, or layer on requirementsfor promotion or graduation.Educators know the necessity of gauging studentlearning—they use various assessment techniquesthroughout the school day. And we support theproper use of standardized testing and sensible accountabilitymeasures. Educators, parents and othershave joined the AFT’s efforts to restore the balancebetween teaching and testing, most recently throughour “Learning Is More Than a Test Score” campaign.The current test-and-punish accountability systemhas squeezed out vital parts of the curriculum thatare not subjected to accountability testing, sacrificedstudent learning time to testing and test preparation,and forced teachers—particularly those teaching ourmost vulnerable students—to focus their attentionon students achieving just below the passing score.That is not what countries with high-performingeducation systems do, and it is not what the UnitedStates should do.Last summer, delegates to the AFT conventionwent on record in support of testing that informs,rather than impedes, teaching and learning, and infavor of studies that shed light on the real costs oftesting. Testing More, Teaching Less is part of deliveringon our commitment to provide guidelines, studiesand other helpful information to our membersand the broader public about the nature, amountand costs of student assessments. Many otherstakeholders have voiced their concerns about theimpact of standardized tests and have taken actionto curtail overtesting and its consequences. In Texas,lawmakers cut the number of high school end-ofcourseexams required for graduation from 15 to five,and eliminated the requirement that results wouldcount for 15 percent of a student’s overall grade.The Orchard Park Central School District Board ofEducation in New York took a stand with a resolutionproposing that this year’s state assessments be usedfor “measuring the state’s progress in introducingthe Common Core Learning Standards rather thanfor measuring student performance or educatoreffectiveness.” Lawmakers in New Mexico called foran analysis of the cost, both in instructional timeand money, of all student assessments. And just thismonth, the New York Times ended a strongly wordededitorial about the dangers of “testing mania” with acall for the country to “reconsider its obsession withtesting, which can make education worse, not better.”We’re at a point where the adoption and implementationof the Common Core State Standardsfor the majority of the nation’s students should bedeepening the potential for all students to learn whatthey need to be college- or career-ready upon gradu-Testing More, Teaching Less 1