The Children Left Behind: Federally Mandated Testing Just Won't Work

By Monty Neill
Issue 108, September/October 2001

With great fanfare, George W. Bush focused the first week of his presidency on a plan to radically increase testing and institute vouchers through a new federal education program. While the voucher scheme did not pass Congress, the testing proposals passed both Houses. They constitute a major threat to assessment reform efforts and will harm poor children in particular.

In the name of "accountability," Bush proposed that, in exchange for receiving federal funds, the states be required to test all public school students in grades 3 to 8 in language arts and math every year. Students in low-scoring schools that fail to improve over three years would be able to use their share of federal funds to attend other public schools, while the schools and districts face severe sanctions. The threat of federal funding sanctions will make state tests high-stake, even where they now are not.

In promoting his plan, Bush appropriated Children's Defense Fund founder Marion Wright Edelman's slogan "No child will be left behind." But in Texas, the primary model for his proposal, many students are left behind.1 Although scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test have risen, similar gains have failed to appear on most other tests. Reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) did not rise in Texas from 1992 to 1998, while the score gap between minority students and whites increased. At least some of the increase seen in scores on the state test can be traced to three factors: intensive test coaching instead of real teaching, classifying more students as "special needs" (and not including them in the results), and much higher grade retention and dropout rates.

Texas's dropout/pushout rates are among the highest in the nation and have risen in reaction to the state's high-stakes testing program. Of the 15 urban districts in the nation with the worst dropout rates, six are in Texas. Houston, whose schools were headed by US Education Secretary Rod Paige until January 2001,is one of them. At the same time, the number and proportion of Texas students entering college who need reading remediation has increased, and SAT scores have not risen as fast as they have in other states. Bush has implied that opponents of his testing plan are "racist" for supporting "low expectations." As the evidence from Texas shows, however, it is his testing proposals that will really harm minority and poor children. Over the years, research has demonstrated that low-income and minority group children are much more likely than middle-income or white children to have their schooling reduced to preparation for tests. Stories abound in Texas of schools dropping untested subjects or requiring science or history teachers to teach reading and math instead of their own subjects. The consequences of testing throughout the twentieth century have mostly been to stratify the quality of schooling and the access to higher education by race and class. The new cycles of tests, including those based on "standards," are having the same effect.

It has become clear that schools by themselves cannot overcome the effects of poverty, even though they can and should do more than they now do. Many schools lack the resources to make the difference they should make. Bush's scheme not only fails to address these problems, it also distracts attention from these more fundamental realities by focusing on testing.