Schools for Scandal
A U.S. News inquiry finds widespread cheating on standardized tests
Advocates of standardized testing say that kids must master basic skills before tackling more advanced work. But critics counter that teaching to the tests through endless workbook drills is counterproductive, that reading and writing are best taught by having kids read and write a lot, rather than by having them practice punctuation ad nauseam. "Skill drill by itself is the worst possible teaching," says Shepard. "It's boring for both students and teachers, and students learn best when skills are taught in context." Ironically, low-achieving students are hurt the most by test-driven teaching, testing critics charge, because they are consigned to skill drills for long periods.
The lesson of the corruption of standardized testing in recent years seems to be that the nation mistakenly has tried to ratchet up accountability in public education on the cheap. Multiple-choice tests of low-level skills may be relatively inexpensive to administer, particularly in the absence of tough test security. But as they are used today, many are of dubious educational value. This should serve as a warning to the advocates of national testing. If the nation is to build a new national examination system, as seems increasingly likely, it needs to invest the resources necessary to build tests with high standards and rigorous security. If it doesn't, the testing debacle in America's schools may only get worse.
OLD-FASHIONED CRIB SHEETS In 1990, Rosa Walker, a veteran teacher in North Carolina's Winston-Salem school system, was suspended without pay for giving five English classes a list of 35 spelling words that later turned up on the California Achievement Test. In the wake of the incident, Winston-Salem Superintendent Larry Coble received calls from a number of other North Carolina school officials detailing similar test-security violations in their districts. An investigation of the Walker case turned up state records of other teachers and administrators throughout North Carolina who had been punished for giving students advance copies of tests, helping students during tests and similar transgressions.
THE VALUE OF AN ERASER Public School 5 on Staten Island, N.Y., had the highest reading scores in the borough for five straight years, an accomplishment that earned the school lavish praise. But an official investigation revealed that between 1986 and 1990 the school's principal, Murray Brenner, had systematically changed his students' incorrect answers. The investigation was launched after the Staten Island Advance, a local newspaper, reported that a student with learning disabilities had scored in the 90th percentile on the reading test in 1987. The student's mother had twice raised questions about the inflated test score with her local school board, but her complaints had been ignored.
THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST Under a 1989 Oklahoma law, schools are put on probation by the state if their students' average scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills rank in the bottom fourth of schools statewide. In 1991, 121 Oklahoma schools worked their way off the state's probationary list by raising their test scores. Forest Reece, a member of the state board of education, conducted a study of the 121 schools. He found that a number of the schools had tested only their brightest students, by abusing a provision in the 1989 testing law that exempts special-education students from state testing with their parents' permission. In 20 of the schools surveyed by Reece, 2 of every 3 students had been exempted from standardized testing using this maneuver.
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