Perez
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Thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion on assessment
and equity. My work focuses on elementary education as well as university
admissions, so I will try to address both of these arenas in my opening
remarks.
Popular discourse surrounding education reform frequently (mis)equates
"high
standards" with "standardized testing." Arguing that many of the failings
of
public education are a consequence of setting the bar too low, testing
proponents advocate for K-12 state and national exams as a driving force
that can improve the learning experiences of children in general and
traditionally underserved children in specific. This "leave no child
behind" lingo would seem to cater to notions of fairness and equity,
arguing
that all students should have access to high-quality instruction. Yet in
practice, it often leaves many children behind and falls short of the kind
of true reform that will authentically improve education for diverse
learners.
The history of standardized testing in the United States is an important
aspect of this debate, as it points to the original intentions of testing
children and helps explain some of the current racial, gender, and class
disparities in test scores. The first standardized tests given in the
United States came about during the early part of the twentieth century
when
Lewis Terman, an educator at Stanford University and the principle designer
of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, advocated for the use of IQ
testing
as a way to track students. By the mid-1920s he had convinced many school
districts to use high-stakes tests to sort out the "inferior" students for
special education and to identify "superior" individuals for "gifted"
programs. Underlying this was a belief Terman held that people from
certain
racial backgrounds, namely Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African
Americans, were intellectually inferior due to their genetic code. Many of
these ideas were revisited more than 70 years later with the publication of
Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's book _The Bell Curve_.
The original purpose for administering standardized tests ? to sort
students
according to perceived ability level ? still happens today, with many of
the
same educational consequences Lewis Terman was aiming for. Students are
tested and then placed into different "tracks," or held back a grade, or
put
into an accelerated program, or kept from graduating, and so on. Many of
these "high-stakes" uses for testing have substantial consequences for the
K-12 classroom, such as:
- less time is spent on the curriculum and more time is spent teaching to
the test
- monetary rewards/penalties are given to teachers and schools based on
test
results
- more time is devoted to "drill and kill" skills instead of complex
problem
solving and critical thinking
- students are taught only the subject content that is on the test(s)
- money is directed to testing efforts instead of good curriculum materials
- government threatens to shut down schools that don't perform well on the
state exam
- students of color and low-income students disproportionately fail many
state tests, and therefore are not allowed to graduate or are retained
Standardized testing at the university level is also fraught with equity
concerns. The SAT, the nation's most popular college entrance exam, does a
particularly poor job of predicting the academic performance of females and
students of color. For many years, females have scored on average 35 to 40
points lower than males on the exam, yet tend to receive better high school
and college grades than males. Thus, the SAT underpredicts females'
college
performance while overpredicting that of males'.
The test score gap is even more troubling when one considers racial
differences, which place females from underrepresented minority groups in
double jeopardy. Males outscore females in every racial category (with the
exception of African American females who have a slight edge over their
male
peers on the SAT-Verbal). This gap is greatest on the SAT-Math portion,
with males from all racial groups garnering a score advantage of 27 to 38
points. In an admissions process that heavily weighs SAT results or
utilizes "cut-off" scores, such gaps act as a culling device for those
groups at the bottom of the range.
Improving education for ALL students is not something that will happen
through the current testing regime, which may seem politically expedient
and
cost-effective compared with other options but which too often maintains ?
and, in fact, perpetuates ? an inequitable educational system. A start,
but
by no means an end, to achieving high standards for all children will
involve offering effective professional development for teachers,
eliminating tracking practices, implementing a rigorous curriculum that
encourages problem solving, critical thinking, and in-depth learning,
redistributing economic resources to schools most in need, shrinking class
size, and ensuring that all students have access to higher education.
I look forward to participating in this on-line discussion with everyone.
Christina Perez
University Testing Reform Advocate, FairTest (http://www.fairtest.org)
E-mail: christina@fairtest.org
and
Research Associate, TERC (http://www.terc.edu)
E-mail: christina_perez@terc.edu
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