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Standardized testing threatens to replace the very essence, the definition of what it means to be an educated person. We trust fallible human judgment when it comes to deciding matters of great import: jury trials, selecting friends and spouses, deciding whether to go to war or not. But not when it comes to being promoted to 4th grade? Raising kids among adults that society doesn't trust is dangerous stuff. If you can't find a trustworthy babysitter, stay home. If you don't trust the driver, get out of the car. But don't ask kids to stay in school for thirteen years and then remove authority from the school. We can't pass on to kids what we are not trusted to exercise in their presence: our judgment. What's at stake is a powerful centralizing tendency to remove kids from their communities and remove decision-making from local hands. There are enormous disparities in inputs between the haves and have-nots, in school and out, and standardized testing exaggerates them. It underpredicts success for those who are least advantaged and overpredicts for white males. This is an indisputable fact. So this is not the time to gnash our teeth and cave in but to organize opposition. According to the polls, parents trust teacher judgment more than tests. We can capitalize on this trust by providing all families with forms of accountability that build on multiple judgments via shared public demonstrations of standards. Families need to see tangible evidence of better ways to judge school standards. They need to hear from us. Often. Meanwhile, mandated state and national testing are the enemies of high standards, equity and excellence.
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Back in the mists of the last millennium, I (along with most of you) took the SAT in preparation for college. In those fraught weeks while I waited for my scores and in the neurotic wake that followed their arrival, I told myself a thousand times, "There's no way they'll value how I did on a four- hour test more than everything I did all through high school." And I bet many of you whispered approximate words of comfort to yourselves. Many of today's high school seniors can't console themselves similarly. High-stakes, one-shot exit exams are on the rise nationwide and if students don't pass, everything they did all through high school doesn't matter. The work that Coalition schools do to assess students rigorously and carefully, considering the complexities of growth over time and getting to know students well in the process is, therefore, more crucial than ever before. One teacher to whom I spoke remarked that a school "had to have its Coalition act together" to sustain performance-based assessment. So keep on getting or keeping your Coalition act together. You'll be able both to create the best conditions for your students and to provide invaluable alternatives to evaluations of their abilities which don't show very much at all but upon which far too much depends. I'm grateful to the many people who contributed generously to this issue of Horace. My own limitations prevented me from including the voices of everyone to whom I spoke- a particular thank you, therefore, goes to Jay Rosner, Candace Fisk, Lisa Duty and Monty Neill. I am eager for the opportunity- on the web and in person- to tell you about their work, and to hearing and sharing your wisdom from the classroom.
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Deborah Meier
Jill Davidson