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New High School
Tests Undermine
Inquiry Based Science Education
Though receiving little attention on campuses, the imposition of high stakes tests as the single criteria for high school promotion and graduation is exercising a major influence in secondary science education. Laboratory experience, hands-on encounters, and project based learning are being set aside by pressure to improve performance on tests that emphasize rote learning and shopping list education. These retrograde curricula changes are already underway in public high schools in Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and California. (An excellent recent summary is in Standardized Minds, by Peter Sacks, Perseus Books, 1999.) MIT and other colleges and universities that train future scientists and engineers draw a significant part of their entering classes from these schools.
Over the past few decades the National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, and AAAS have led an effort to modernize science education. The goals have been to produce students who know how to learn, how to inquire, how to identify problems and pursue solutions, as opposed to spitting back lists of facts, or mechanically fitting values into equations. Significant progress has been made in many states. Science curriculum tied to the actual investigations being carried out have been supported by NSF, NASA, and the Department of Energy. (Some of these are Web-accessible and easily explored such as Earthkam, Hands-On Universe, and Visualizing Earth http://www.cesse.terc.edu/PROGRAM.html developed by Cambridge-based Technology Education Resource Center.)
Unfortunately, these developments have been seriously set back by the imposition of single high stakes tests that must be passed for promotion or graduation. In Massachusetts, these tests are called the MCAS - Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. Presently these are given to 4th, 8th and 10th grade students, in English, math, social studies, and science. By 2003, graduation from public – but not private – high schools will require passing the 10th grade MCAS tests.
They test for retention of selected pieces of information from a very broad list. They exhibit the arbitrary and capricious character found in tests uncoupled from actual curriculum, but designed such that large numbers of students fail. They seriously disrupt a school's authentic educational activities. In efforts to prepare students for the tests, richer activities, such as hands-on investigations, field trips, or writing plays, have to be set aside. Careful analysis of the test questions by independent educators reveal a consistent pattern of age inappropriate questions, ambiguous questions, questions with multiple correct answers, and questions unrelated to curricular priorities (see, for example, http://www.fairtest.org/arn/masspage.html). The tests deeply damage children’s self image, and dampen their enthusiasm for learning. I have been appalled at the deletions from the curriculum in my children’s elementary school, in order to make room for a test prep drill.
The tests are extremely long, longer than the Massachusetts Bar exam, requiring weeks to administer. As a result they are very stressful for the younger students, and even more so for those facing the prospects of failing to graduate. As pen and pencil tests, they cannot assess the most profound aspects of student learning and education, but like most such tests assess test taking ability and test prep. Yet teachers are under enormous pressure to demonstrate improvement on the tests, regardless of correlation with actual educational achievement.
Test construction and scoring has emerged as a lucrative business. Thus the MCAS tests were not constructed by Massachusetts educators, but by an out-of-state company with no educational record in the Commonwealth. Governor Cellucci just awarded $75 million to a Texas firm closely associated with Governor Bush for the next five years of test preparation and scoring.
The testing madness has been promoted in the name of accountability and standards. They represent standardization, a very different value from high standards. The watchword "accountability" masks the actual transformation – narrow control from above. The recent (1999) National Research Council Report "High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion and Graduation" articulates some of these concerns.
Massachusetts parents and teachers and educators have been deeply disturbed over the tests, and frustrated by the insensitivity of the Department of Education to sound criticisms. It is instructive to examine who has brought these high stakes tests into K-12 education. Governor Weld appointed John Silber, former president of Boston University, as chair of the Board of Education. Silber is a leading proponent of privatization of public education. Weld and Silber engineered the removal of the representative and professional Board of Education, and passed new legislation allowing the sitting governor to appoint a smaller Board, without legislative confirmation.
The new Board is weighted with individuals associated with efforts to privatize education, including a group affiliated with the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts think tank aligned nationally with the Heritage Foundation. When Governor Cellucci replaced Weld, he continued in the same direction, appointing James Peyser, the executive director of the Pioneer Institute, as chair of the Board of Education. The Pioneer Institute is a leading proponent of privatization of government functions including education, and actively promoted for profit charter schools.
In the next few years the damage these testing regimes do will begin to be felt in colleges and universities. It is important that university faculty not sit by while the progress that has been made in K-12 education is dismantled. Education of our children and our students is too important to their future and the nation’s future to be left to those who hope to turn education into a private business for their narrow profit.
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