Almost no one benefits from high-stakes testing

High-stakes testing in the District of Columbia is especially burdensome to low-performing schools, write Josie Malone and Wagma Mommandi, a sixth-year high school English Language Arts teacher and a fifth-year high school science teacher, in The Huffington Post. The DC CAS (Comprehensive Assessment System) does not show student growth, which is needed for schools to demonstrate actual progress achieved by students. Also, the test is administered in early April, with nine weeks of instruction left. Teachers must either inject so much content into a short period of time that both subject and students are shortchanged, or must accept that students will take a test covering material they've not yet seen, jeopardizing their jobs and lowering the test-taking confidence of their students. And many teachers are pressured to identify "bubble" students in the weeks immediately prior to the test, who are within range of moving up a performance level. This means ignoring students whose grade-level reading comprehension skills are unlikely to grow before the assessment, or high-achieving students whose performance is assured. The students and teachers in low-performing schools in high-test districts deserve a higher level of attention from administrators around the nuanced issues of testing, rather than a higher level of anxiety over the repercussions of scores. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities.