Fighting the Tests: Turning Frustration into Action

Alfie Kohn

Young Children, March 2001

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that U.S. schools are being transformed into giant test-preparation centers. American children are now tested to an extent that is unprecedented in our history and unparalleled anywhere else in the world. As if it were not sufficiently disturbing to tally up the number of hours lost to testing, the results of those exams are not even particularly informative because most of the differences in test scores can be explained by noninstructional (mostly socioeconomic) factors. Moreover the tests typically measure what matters least, simultaneously underestimating many students who are talented thinkers but not especially good test takers, and overestimating students who can memorize facts and techniques but may lack a real understanding of the ideas in question. This is particularly true of tests that rely heavily on multiple-choice items (which present children from generating or even explaining their answers) and tests that are timed (which reward speed more than thoughtfulness).

However, even to say that good test results mean far less than meets the eye (both at the level of the school or community and at the level of the individual) does not capture what is most disturbing about the use of these exams. High scores actually can be cause for concern because of what may have had to be sacrificed to produce them. Schooling is being fundamentally changed, almost always for the worse, as a result of the desperate pressure to ratchet up those numbers. This is particularly true when high stakes (that is, rewards and punishments) are employed to increase that pressure. Instruction tends to become less developmentally appropriate, less inventive, more rushed and regimented when children and schools are measured by standardized tests (e.g., Kohn 2000).

Problems with testing young children

The situation is bad enough in high schools where all 15-year-olds are judged by a uniform set of paper-and-pencil exams. Electives may be eliminated, enrichments scaled back, and extended projects shelved to give way to coverage of the material that will be tested. But the testing fervor is most pernicious when it seeps down into primary classrooms. This is true for several reasons:

  • Standardized tests are based on the premise that all children at a particular grade level must become academically proficient at the same things at the same time. Indeed, the tests are often yoked to grade-by-grade standards that explicitly say, “All nth-graders will be able to …” This is a dubious proposition where n equals 10; it is indefensible where n equals 1 or 2. Skills develop rapidly and differentially in young children, which means that expecting everyone of the same age to have acquired a given set of capabilities creates unrealistic expectations, leads to one-size-fits-all (which is to say, bad) teaching, and guarantees that some children will be defined as failures at the very beginning of their time in school.
  • Young children are rarely able to communicate the depth of their understanding in the formats typically used by standardized assessments. These tests therefore do not produce an accurate picture of what children can do. Even from a strict psychometric perspective, as educational measurement specialist W. James Popham (2000, 145) has concluded, “the validity of score-based inferences that such testing will yield is likely to be inadequate.” Indeed, one educator comments wryly that standardized tests do not measure young children’s cognitive capacities so much as their “ability to sit in the same place for a certain amount of time” (Jervis 1989, 15).
  • The stress that tests create in young children is particularly intense. Anecdotal reports abound of five-, six-, and seven-year-olds bursting into tears or vomiting in terror, their incipient self-confidence dissolving along with their composure. One study quantified the extent of that stress for kindergartners and noted in passing that, apart from the emotional toll the process takes on children, the pressure they feel also reduces the exams’ validity. “During interviews conducted after the testing, the children were able to answer orally some of the questions they had marked incorrectly” (Fleege et al. 1992, 23).

In my experience, the people who work most closely with children are the most likely to understand how harmful standardized testing is. Many teachers have what might be described as a dislike/hate relationship with these exams. But support for testing seems to grow as one moves away from teacher to principal to central office administrator to school board member to state board member, state legislator, and governor. Those for whom classroom visits are occasional photo opportunities are most likely to be enthusiastic proponents of testing and to offer self-congratulatory sound bites about the need for “tougher standard” and “accountability.”

Based on their own experience, readers of this magazine may have come to the same conclusions about the effects of tests. Even someone who does not have to be convinced of the merit of the arguments, however, may need to be reminded of their cumulative significance. It is this: As the year 2001 begins, we are facing an educational emergency in this country. The intellectual life is being squeezed out of schools, and the prospects for doing what is in the best interest of young children are bleak so long as those children are judged by the number of ovals they have bubbled in correctly.

Many of us have pet projects, favorite causes, practices and policies about which we care deeply. These include such issues as multiple intelligences, multiage classrooms, multicultural curricula, cooperative learning, whole language, the creation of caring classroom communities, and above all a commitment to respecting children’s capabilities and limits. But each one of these priorities is gravely threatened by the top-down, heavy-handed, corporate-style, standardized version of school reform that is driven by testing. That is why all of us, despite our disparate agendas, need to make common cause. We must make the fight against standardized tests our top priority because, until we have chased this monster from the schools, it will be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to pursue the kinds of reforms that can truly improve teaching and learning and ensure that it is developmentally appropriate.

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Whenever something in the schools is amiss, it makes sense for us to work on two tracks at once. We must do our best in the short term to protect children from the worst effects of a given policy, but we must also work to change or eliminate that policy. If we overlook the former—the need to minimize the harm of what is currently taking place, to devise effective coping strategies—then we do a disservice to children in the here and now. But (and this is by far the more common error) if we overlook the latter—the need to alter the current reality—then we are condemning our children’s children to having to make the best of the same unacceptable situation because it will still exist.

Making the best of a bad situation

Standardized testing being a case in point, let me begin by offering these short-term responses.

First, if you are a teacher, you should do what is necessary to prepare children for the tests—and then get back to the real learning. Never forget the difference between these two objectives. Be clear about it in your own mind, and whenever possible, help others to understand the distinction. For example, you might send a letter to parents explaining what you are doing and why. (“Before we can design exciting experiments in class, which I hope will have the effect of helping our children explore the world around them, we have to spend some time getting ready for the standardized tests being given next month. Hopefully we’ll be able to return before too long to what research suggests is a more effective kind of instruction.”) If you’re lucky, parents will call you, indignantly demanding to know why their kids aren’t able to pursue the most effective kind of instruction all the time. “Excellent question!” you’ll reply, as you hand over a sheet with the addresses and phone numbers of the local school board, the state board of education, legislators, and the governor.

Second, do no more test preparation than is absolutely necessary. Some experts argue that a relatively short period of introducing children to the content and format of the tests is sufficient to produce scores equivalent to those obtained by children who have spent the entire year in test-prep mode. For example, researchers found that a one-hour intensive reading readiness tutorial for young children produced test results equivalent to two years of skills-oriented direct instruction (Karnes, Shwedel, & Williams 1983). Of course, this can vary depending on the child and the nature of the test.

Or consider compromises such as this one:

One first-grade teacher in Kentucky helped her students develop their own reading program, which moves them faster and more effectively through (and beyond) the district’s reading program objectives than the basal. Even so, she is required by her school’s administration to put her class through a basal reader program on a prescribed weekly schedule. The solution, quickly evolved by the class: They do each week’s work in the basal on Monday, with little effort, then work on the meaningful curriculum—theirs—Tuesday through Friday. (Smith 1994, 29)

Third, whatever time is spent on test preparation should be as creative and worthwhile as possible. Avoid traditional drilling whenever you can. Several educators (Calkins, Montgomery, & Santman 1998; Taylor & Walton 1998) have figured out how to turn some of these tests into puzzles that children can play an active role in solving. The idea is to help children become adept at the particular skill called test taking so they will be able to show what they already know.

Fourth, administrators and other school officials should never boast about high (or rising) scores. To do so is not only misleading; it serves to legitimize the tests. In fact, people associated with high-scoring schools or districts have a unique opportunity to make an impact. It’s easy for critics to be dismissed with a sour grapes rationale: You’re just opposed to standardized testing because it makes you look bad. But administrators and school board members in high-scoring areas can say, “Actually our students happen to do well on these tests, but that’s nothing to be proud of. We value great teaching and learning, which is precisely what suffers when people become preoccupied with scores. Please join us in phasing out standardized testing”

Finally, whatever your position in the American education food chain, one of your primary obligations is to be a buffer—to absorb as much pressure as possible from those above you without passing it on to those below. If you are an administrator facing higher-ups who want to see higher test scores, the most constructive thing you can do is protect teachers from these ill-conceived demands to the best of your ability (without losing your job in the process), and indeed to help them pursue meaningful learning in their classrooms. If you are a teacher unlucky enough to work for an administrator who hasn’t read this paragraph, your job is to minimize the impact on children. Whenever possible, try to inform those above you about the drawbacks of testing, but cushion those below you every day. Otherwise you become part of the problem.

Rationalizing about tests

As important as I believe these suggestions to be, it is critical to recognize their limits. Only so much creativity can be infused into preparing children for bad tests, and only so much buffering can be done in a high-stakes environment. These recommendations merely try to make the best of a bad thing. Ultimately we need to work to end that bad thing, to move beyond stopgap measures and take on the system itself.

Unfortunately, even some well-intentioned educators who understand the threat posed by testing never get to that point. Here are some of the justifications they typically offer for their inaction:

  • “Just teach well and the tests will take care of themselves.” This may be true in some subject areas, or in some states, or in some neighborhoods. But it is often a convenient delusion. To prepare children for standardized tests in the most effective way may well be to teach badly—to fill them with isolated skills, for example, rather than encourage them to read good books of their own choosing.
  • “This too shall pass.” Education has its fads, and standards on steroids may be one of them, but there is no guarantee that it will fade away on its own. Too much has been invested by now; too many powerful interest groups are backing high-stakes testing for us to assume it will simply fall of its own weight. In any case, too many children will be sacrificed in the meantime if we don’t take action to expedite its demise.
  • “My job is to teach, not to get involved in political disputes.” When five- and six-year-olds must spend their days being drilled on what Jonathan Kozol (2000, x) calls “those obsessively enumerated particles of amputated skill associated with upcoming state exams,” the schools have already been politicized. The only question is whether we will become involved on the other side—that is, on the side of real learning. In particular, much depends on whether those teachers and administrators who already harbor (and privately acknowledge) concerns about testing are willing to go public, to take a stand, to say, “This is bad for kids.” To paraphrase Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil educational policies is for good education to do nothing.
  • “The standards and tests are here to stay; we might as well get used to them.” Here we have a sentiment diametrically opposed to “This too shall pass,” yet one that paradoxically leads to the identical inaction. Real children in real classrooms suffer when we submit to this kind of defeatism, which can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy: assume something is inevitable and it becomes so precisely because we have decided not to challenge it. The fact is that standardized tests are not like the weather, something to which we must resign ourselves. They haven’t always existed and they don’t exist in most parts of the world. What we are facing is not a force of nature, but a force of politics, and political decisions can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately reversed.

Working to change policy

How we take on the tests may depend partly on practical considerations such as where we can have the greatest impact. Those of us who see little benefit in giving standardized tests in their current forms to students of any age need to remember that this is not an all-or-nothing crusade but a movement that can proceed incrementally. We might begin by fighting for the principles most likely to generate widespread support. One such principle is that standardized testing is simply inappropriate for—and even damaging to—children younger than eight or nine. We need to communicate the following messages strongly and clearly:

  • Virtually every reputable expert in the field of early childhood education has taken a position against testing young children. Tests are imposed primarily by politicians and business people and are overwhelmingly opposed by those whose opinions have the weight of authority in the early childhood field and are based on the best available research and practice.
  • Standardized testing of young children—indeed, of students below high school age—is extremely rare in other countries.
  • Testing young children is unnecessary because there are other, better ways to gauge understanding and spot potential problems. Good teachers are constantly gathering information about how each child’s mind works. More formal assessments involving structured problem-solving tasks and interviews are also available, rendering standardized tests superfluous at best.

Even people convinced that raising academic standards is a top priority—or parents who are vigilant about making sure their own children succeed (in conventional terms)—will often concede that pressure need not and should not begin so early. It is particularly important during children’s first years in school that we nourish their curiosity and help them develop a sense of faith in themselves. They need time to explore and, yes, to play.

A test-based curriculum in first grade is profoundly counterproductive with respect to the intellectual dispositions we want children to acquire, and it is also simply disrespectful of children. Thus, when we read that many schools are reducing or even eliminating recess, that some new schools are being build without playgrounds—when we hear a big-city superintendent declare dismissively that you don’t improve academic performance “by having kids hanging on the monkey bars” (quoted in Johnson 1998)—all but the most callous individuals will react with incredulity if not alarm. Our job is to help our friends and neighbors realize that this sensibility is indeed loose in the land, to make sure they grasp its connection to what is going on in (or planned for) their local schools, and to offer concrete opportunities for them to act on their own best instincts so that the policies in question are actually changed and children are protected.