March/April 2000

Why Current Assessments Don't Measure Up

By Marya R. Levenson

New statewide standards that emphasize accountability for all students have forced educators to look more closely at student data to see who is learning and who is struggling to learn. However, what administrators and teachers are discovering is that mandating high standards does not, by itself, raise achievement. Furthermore, current assessments such as standardized tests are not adequate for measuring those new standards.

Given the skills our students will need to compete in today's economy, many of us can appreciate the need for higher graduation requirements for all students. For too many years, educators and parents have not had high enough expectations for urban and poor rural students, or even for some students in affluent suburbs. Still, there is concern that some students may not be able to reach those new learning standards on the tight timetables set by many states-even where transitional safety nets such as lower passing scores are temporarily in place.

Students come into schools with very different backgrounds and preparation. Some face incredible hardship as they and their families grapple with poverty, illness, or other problems. Some do not learn well within traditional classrooms. Others need alternative approaches, more individual attention, or more time to master a subject.

As schools have developed different instructional programs to teach students who don't do as well in traditional classrooms, we have learned that many students are capable of achieving much more than we had believed. (See www.ncolonie.org for information about Shaker High School's Integrated Regents Program, an interdisciplinary program for students who learn better through problem-solving.) Such programs, however, require extra time and resources so that faculty members working in smaller classes can develop and modify new curricula and instruction to produce good learning as well as acceptable results on new state exams. Some who are advocating higher standards have not been so quick to call for the additional resources needed, especially in urban and poor rural districts, to support staff and program development. Nor have they understood that the current standardized assessments are not adequate for measuring the learning standards.

Multiple Measures Are Needed

State departments of education understandably want to have "foolproof" assessments of how schools are meeting the new standards, ones that can withstand challenges by angry parents or state legislators when many children fail to pass. States also place a premium on standardization so that schools can be compared to each other. As a result, rich and complex learning standards are often being measured only by high-pressure standardized tests.

In New York State, teachers have become so focused on preparing 4th- and 8th-grade students for publisher-developed English-language arts and mathematics tests that most feel they do not have time to develop creative, in-depth performance assessments in these and other subjects. Moreover, because of the pressure caused by the tests as well as numerous articles and editorials comparing school and district results, many students have been made to believe they are failures because of initial poor test results. Some 4th graders are even being retained, despite the fact that these new assessments were originally implemented to alert schools and families about which students may need more support in order to pass the Regents exams years later in high school. The New York state plan to rank and compare each school according to how students perform on the 4th- and 8th-grade tests may accelerate these pressures.

In the North Colonie School District in New York, we understand that there is a role for standardized tests. They provide a good snapshot of how our students and our district perform compared to others in the state and the nation. But we do not look at a student's performance on such tests as the only measure of achievement or criterion for placement in a program. After all, the student may not have tested well on that particular day. We consider class work, including performance assessments such as writing portfolios, teachers' observations, and data from various standardized and state tests.

At a time when there appears to be increasing national pressure to use new state standardized tests as the only criteria for judging schools and students, educators should advocate for multiple measures to assess whether a student has truly met the learning standards.

One final cautionary note: As schools focus on helping students who were previously allowed to "get by," we need to maintain appropriate standards and assessments for students at the top of the spectrum. It would be truly ironic if implementing the "higher" state standards ends up diluting the educational experiences of students who already meet and exceed the standards.

Creating and implementing high educational standards is an essential challenge. Never before in our country's history have we attempted to have all high school students attain such a high level of literacy and other skills. Implementing new standards incorrectly or too quickly can harm our children and our schools. As schools work to meet these ambitious standards, incremental accomplishments should be recognized. And since teachers understandably focus what they teach on how their students will be assessed, let's make the assessments worthy measures of the new learning standards.

Marya R. Levenson is superintendent of the North Colonie (NY) schools.