High-stakes testing has become an issue within the education system due to its increasing influence on school funding and the way that curriculums are designed. Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa complete a poll each year, since 1969, to measure the opinions on the public school system in the US, and have found that 64% of participants are disappointed with the emphasis on standardized testing in public schools. This is because not only are students pressured to score well for their future placements in classes or college, but teachers have their jobs on the line of their students’ results, along with the school’s funding. With this, it creates a high stress environment that decreases the morale of students and faculty, and can lead to a poorer education.
Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher and an associate editor for Rethinking Schools, a nonprofit magazine that “remains firmly committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy” (https://www.rethinkingschools.org/about/index.shtml).He also is the editor and contributing author to More Than a Score:The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing, which shows his continuous devotion to educating and improving the education system, especially through decreasing the emphasis placed on student testing. A few of the issues he has reviewed are the documents passed that dictate the way schools are funded and the effect test scores have on that necessary funding. The No Child Left Behind Act requires for schools to improve student testing results on state tests each year in order to receive funding. Having education funding dependent on student grades not only places pressure on the student and teachers, but also the institution itself. Hagopian has found that if the funding the school depends on is not steady it leads to more toxic environments that are more focused on numbers rather than how each student is learning. Race to the Top is similar to this, where state and school district funding is aligned with test results, teacher evaluations based on these test scores, and whether Common Core standards are being abided by. In his Seattle Times piece called “Why As Teachers We Refuse to Administer ‘Misguided’ Standardized Tests, Hagopian explains that this results in teachers being pressured into taking time out of their curriculum to go over specific testing practice and strategies, rather than covering the full course material. With this, he advises that the focus of education be moved to the in-class experience and success instead of basing funding and student success off of a single test.
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Hagopian emphasizes that this narrows the education a student receives since they spend “from 60 to more than 110 hours per year directly engaged in test preparation activities” (More Than A Score, pgs 7-9). This evolution has caused teachers to feel increased pressure since they are being evaluated based off of their students’ performance on a test, rather than how well they do in the classroom. According to a survey conducted by the National Education Association, 72% of teachers reported to feeling “moderate to extreme pressure” due to the standardized testing their students must be prepared for (http://neatoday.org/2014/11/02/nea-survey-nearly-half-of-teachers-consider-leaving-profession-due-to-standardized-testing-2/). Since student test results are tied to the evaluations of their teachers, more time must be taken away from the class curriculum for test preparation, which leads to a decline in teacher morale. The NEA survey also found that 45% of teachers have considered quitting simply because of the pressure of standardized testing (http://neatoday.org) This shows that, not only are students less inclined to be motivated in the classroom, but also the educators are.
As emphasis increases on the importance of standardized testing results, pressure and declining morality will be more apparent in the public school system. This form of ranking students across the board applies stress to a student’s performance, which affects the evaluation of teachers and schools as a whole. Due to this, it can be advised that the emphasis be shifted from standardized testing in order to understand that students are more well rounded than a single test can account for.
