Standardized Assessments: Six Critical Reflections

Ignacio Barrenechea

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One Response to “Standardized Assessments: Six Critical Reflections”

Eliot R. Long says:

Monday April 12th, 2010 at 08:59 AM

The issues raise are all important, but our first consideration should be the lack of standardization in what are meant to be standardized tests. It is good to see the recognition that standardized tests have been subject to cheating and effort to inflate test scores, but we should all also understand the high frequency of these behaviors and the undermining of test score reliability in low performing schools and any opportunity to measure test score validity as a predictor of future performance.

A*Star Audits has conducted statewide reviews in the Midwest and East Coast and found a high frequency of irregularities in test administration that include confusion, misdirection, and purposeful manipulation – from modest to wholesale. These irregularities vary significantly from district to district and by school size, with some districts – and small schools generally – having a majority of schools with significant irregularities.

These conditions tell us that, #1, the test scores from these sources cannot be used to evaluate program (or teacher) effectiveness or for accountability and, #2, that, in many settings, there is an acceptance of efforts to raise test scores independent of achievement that not only undermine standardized assessment but will undermine any form of evaluation.

The high frequency of irregularities in test administration (due to both school administrators and teachers) must be dealt with by providing a detailed, written set of directions followed up by a program of regular oversight that holds all school personnel to these directions. In most cases, knowledge of meaningful oversight coupled with applications of professional development will cure irregularities. In the remaining cases, a a meaningful discipline is necessary. From our experience in the schools, most teachers will welcome such a program, taking school administrator pressure off their backs and leveling the comparisons between them and those teachers that do improperly influence their students’ test work.

When standardized test results are the product of truly standardized conditions, the evaluation of their role in guiding education policy will be more productive.

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