During the Progressive Era, reforms helped remove children from laboring in factories and instead put them in schools. Standardized testing developed as a way to easily assess the skills of the students. By World War I, standardized testing was common; the army used Army Mental Tests to assign US soldiers jobs.
The SAT, one of the most widely-taken tests today, was developed in 1926 by the newly formed College Board. The original test was only an hour and a half long, and included 315 questions. By 1930, it had assumed the format that we are familiar with today; the separate language and math tests. The test had grown in popularity that by the end of World War II most high school students took the test to get into college.
Today, most high school students take dozens of standardized tests to increase their chances of getting into college. However, standardized testing is by no means unfamiliar to incoming high school freshmen. In 2002, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which was an improvement on Lyndon B. Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA was part of Johnson's "Great Society" vision for the United States. Under the act, the federal government offered more than $1 billion a year to districts to help cover cost of educating disadvantaged students. The NCLB improved on the ESEA by increasing the role of the federal government even more, placing a specific emphasis on disadvantaged children such as English-language learners, children in special ed, and disadvantaged children. The NCLB act was highly controversial, in that states were required to bring the students up to "proficient" level by 2014, which meant annual standardized testing from grades 3-8. Elementary school students were thus tested in English and math, often leading to schools placing less of an emphasis on other subjects, like social studies and the arts. As 2014 approached, it became clear that the 100% proficiency in all students that the government had hoped for was nothing more than a dream.
In December of last year, the Obama administration signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Under ESSA, schools are still meant to test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, but it allows schools to develop their own school accountability systems, slightly limiting the power of the federal government in the schools.
2016 is currently a transition year between NCLB and ESSA, but ESSA will be in full effect starting next school year. As of right now, it is too early to tell if ESSA will be better than NCLB, but one thing's for sure; the number of standardized tests aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Sources:
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/nochild/nclb.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/no-child-left-behind-is-gone-but-will-it-be-back/421329/
http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/no-child-left-behind-overview-definition-summary.html
I think this is an interesting topic to write about, considering we are about to take the SBAC test. What do you personally believe switching to ESSA testing will do and how successful do you think it will be?
ReplyDeleteWhy does the College Board seem to have a monopoly over most tests i.e. AP and SAT? The only competitor seems to be the ACT, but the SAT isn't mandated by law so it seems bad that one company can hold so much of the market share.
ReplyDeleteA large issue with these programs is that test results are some of the primary drivers of funding and resource allocation to schools. Impoverished schools end up falling into a cycle where their poor test scores relegate them to lower positions and they cannot get the resources they need to improve to get more funding. The cycle continues whether it is at the federal or state level. Fixes to this are not clear because by removing incentives, there will be no reason for any teachers or administrations to care about these tests. Standardized tests are good at finding trends across the country and if there is no incentive to many of these, there is the potential they will be ignored entirely (unless they're the SAT and college is dependent on it.) On the flip side however, if there is an incentive, teachers begin teaching to the test and fall within strict guidelines. Whether you are to the left or to the right and do not wish to see government control over creativity or government controlled education, incentives will only increase this. To find the middle ground of a country that is far to large to handle each school individually is a huge project and one that will never be fully perfect, but the least we could do is try.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the problem is in standardized tests so much as it is in having uniform standards that are the same for every state. In recent years, the government seems to be trying to give control of education standards and funding back to the states with Common Core, as annoying as tests like the SBAC are. It will probably never be possible to find standards that adequately balance providing incentives and reflecting reality, but at least they're trying new things.
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