March/April 1999

The Human Cost of Over-Reliance on Tests
By Adria Steinberg

When students maintaining a C or B average in school receive "failing" or "needs improvement" on standardized tests, many people assume they are victims of low expectations and "social promotion" in schools. By this logic, the test scores reveal truths about students that their schools could not or chose not to see. The ultimate result of ignoring these truths, according to supporters of testing "gates," is that students will graduate from high school unable to get a job or be productive members of society.

Before school systems rush to implement policies of widespread grade retention or skill remediation based on performing below a cut-off score on a standardized test, they should take a look at the research that points to the ineffectiveness and human cost of such policies. For example, in the early 1980s, New York City instituted a program that resulted in the retention of all 4th- and 7th-graders who failed to meet a cut-off score on a standardized test, even after participating in special summer classes. A study conducted for the mayor's office found that it resulted in no greater achievement gains for retained students than for their low-achieving counterparts in previous years. Worse, the dropout rate for those held back was much higher than that of similar students who had been promoted.

Emerging research also indicates that such policies jeopardize approaches that are working. For example, Protech, a long-standing and well-developed school-to-career program in Boston accepts students with a C or above average and an 85 percent attendance rate. Most students who entered the program in 1993-95, scored in the lowest 40th percentile on the MAT, the standardized reading and math test given in Boston at that time. Yet, these young people have done very well in making the transition to college and careers.

A recent study by Protech and Jobs for the Future compares a sample of Protech graduates in 1993, 1994, and 1995 to a matched local control group and to all high school graduates for those years. Protech participants show significantly higher rates of college attendance and completion. For example, 64 percent of the 1993 Protech graduates completed a postsecondary certificate or degree in the four years after high school, compared with only 44 percent of the comparison group. Overall, benefits were greatest for African-American participants. For example, 79 percent of black school-to-career graduates were enrolled in college the year after graduation, compared to only 53 percent of black students in the comparison group. And black Protech graduates who were both enrolled in college and employed earned a mean hourly wage of $8.17, compared with $6.88 for their comparison group.

Not bad outcomes for young people whose scores on standardized tests, in today's high-stakes testing environment, could keep them from graduating from high school. The Protech research is consistent with other studies that have shown that young people who develop a focus during high school are more likely to accumulate credits in college and earn a degree. Yet in many cities and states, students who do not score well on new assessment tests will not have time in their schedules to develop such a focus by entering a career pathway or undertaking a career major. Instead, they will take and retake basic skills courses until they reach the cut-off score or drop out altogether.

One of the unfortunate effects of an over-reliance on test scores is that it creates the impression that students scoring in the lowest quartiles are essentially alike and hence need the same "treatment"-usually a renewed focus on the basics. But, especially in urban areas where most students score at the low end of the scale, the scores obscure important differences in students' educational strengths and needs.

For example, standardized test scores do not differentiate between a newly mainstreamed bilingual student who rewrites each paper four or five times and meets twice a week after school with a math tutor, but who does not yet know enough academic English to decipher arcane test items, and a student whose disengagement from school and low estimation of his own academic abilities cause him to give up midway through the first section of the test and leave much of the rest blank. Would both of these students benefit from the same educational approach? Is traditional remediation what either of them needs?

Perhaps it is time to balance the public concern about the dangers of social promotion with a concern for the dangers of denying students access to the very educational opportunities that could have a major long-term impact on their ability to lead productive lives.

Adria Steinberg is a program director at Jobs for the Future, a national non-profit organization working to enhance economic security and access to opportunity for individuals by strengthening the transitions and linkages between learning and work. Steinberg has 30 years of experience in the field of education-as a teacher, staff and curriculum developer, writer, and, most recently, as the academic coordinator of the Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, MA. She is also a former editor of the Harvard Education Letter.