The Importance of No Child Left Behind: Part II (The Facile Arguments in Opposition to Standardized Testing)

Opponents of No Child Left Behind during the first half-decade succeeding its passage in the United States Congress tended to be members of the education establishment and liberal Democrats who get a great deal of campaign financing from teachers' unions. In recent years conservative Republicans have joined the chorus of opponents, although wailing from a different section that finds fault with the federal interventionist aspects of the law's implementation.

Opposition to standardized testing tends to come from the education establishment. Liberal Democrats then pick up the mantras issued by the education establishment and echo the criticisms without really giving the issues much thought. There are a number of criticisms leveled against standardized testing. Many members of the education establishment do not like standardized testing as a way to measure student performance. They subscribe to the so-called "progressive" view that portfolios, projects, and demonstrations are more flexible and "authentic" ways of determining what students know.

These demonstrative ways for students to exhibit knowledege and understanding may very well hold a part in an adroit teacher's classroom. But they are not dependable ways of finding out if students truly have acquired a broad and deep mastery of content in the subject area. Only with the objective instrument that is a standardized test do we really know if a Grade 3 student, for example, has mastered the multiplication tables from 0 through 9 and can apply these in real-world situations suggested by word problems. Only through standardized testing do we get an objective evaluation of whether a Grade 8 student has acquired vocabulary extensive enough and mastered reading comprehension cues well enough to enter high school with the promise of success in English courses. And only with an objective measuring tool can we be sure that high school students have accumulated the necessary skill base in algebra and geometry (at the least) that would signal the acquisition of a genuine high school mathematical education. The subjective instruments preferred by the education establishment are not reliable indicators of broad and deep factual knowledge.

There is also the criticism that standardized testing assumes that "one size fits all," with the attendant argument that "high stakes testing" places burdens on students who are not good at this kind of assessment, and that different students reach the necessary skill and knowledge base at different paces. But here again the arguments are insubstantial. One size should indeed fit all in the sense that all students should be able to read and do mathematical operations appropriate to particular grade levels. A test given once toward the end of the year should in a sense be "high stakes," holding educators accountable for transmitting the necessary skill and knowledge sets to all of their students, with consequences (mainly the mandate to go back and get the job done) flowing from failure properly to educate all students.

Criticism continues with the assertion that teachers who know that their students are going to take a standardized test will simply "teach to the test" and ignore other vital curricular matters. This is the flimsiest and most specious argument of all. Anyone who has actually looked at the standardized test in Minnesota known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (or at least a practice version) and knows anything about grade appropriate material will see with just a few flips of the pages that this is the most important material that students at the given grade level must master to have proper mathematical background for subsequent skill acquisition; or, in the case of the reading test, that this provides reading selections that anyone at the given grade level should be expected to comprehend. And in a K-12 context of education in the United States, which devalues factual knowledge and lacks a coherent curriculum within and across the various grade levels, it is far better to "teach to the test" than to teach very little at all.

Arguments against standardized testing are insubstantial. They amount to excuse-making from educators who are extremely uncomfortable with accountability. And they are parroted by politicians who are in the hip pockets of unions such as those of teachers.