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SAT Scores are Hugely Important. But What Does it "Really" Measure?

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SAT Scores are Hugely Important. But What Does it "Really" Measure?

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The problem with America's college entrance exam.

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The problem with America's college entrance exam

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How Standardized Tests Were Designed by Racists and Eugenicists

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How Standardized Tests Were Designed by Racists and Eugenicists

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Ibram X. Kendi, professor and author of two books confronting racism in the United States, discusses his new book, "How to Be an Antiracist." He talks about the racist underpinnings of standardized tests and their development as tools for prominent eugenicists to prove the intellectual inferiority of the poor, women and particularly descendents of Africans. The tests, he argues, blatantly discriminate against people of color under a veneer of scientific objectivity. He says, "These tests became the evidence they have been looking for, really, for hundreds of years to prove that people of color and poor people and women were intellectually inferior."

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How standardized tests were designed by racists and eugenicists

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Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

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Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing

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The companies that create the most important state and national exams also publish textbooks that contain many of the answers. Unfortunately, low-income school districts can’t afford to buy them.

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Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Testing

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The companies that create the most important state and national exams also publish textbooks that contain many of the answers. Unfortunately, low-income school districts can't afford to buy them.

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"Teaching for understanding is what we are supposed to be doing… (but) the bottom line here is that all they really want to know is how are these kids doing on the tests? …They want me to teach in a way that they can't test, except that I'm held accountable to the test It's a Catch 22…"

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Linda Darling-Hammond

Stanford University School of Education

Despite the rhetoric of American equality, the school experiences of African-American and other "minority" students in the United States continue to be substantially separate and unequal. Few Americans realize that the U.S. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and that students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status. In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10% of school districts in the United States spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10%, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. Poor and minority students are concentrated in the least well-funded schools, most of which are located in central cities or rural areas and funded at levels substantially below those of neighboring suburban districts. Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure-from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings-schools serving greater numbers of students of color had significantly fewer resources than schools serving mostly white students.

Not only do funding systems allocate fewer resources to poor urban districts than to their suburban neighbors, but studies consistently show that, within these districts, schools with high concentrations of low-income and "minority" students receive fewer instructional resources than others in the same district. And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many low-income and minority students within schools (Kozol, 1991; Taylor & Piche, 1991). In combination, policies associated with school funding, resource allocations, and tracking leave minority students with fewer and lower-quality books, curriculum materials, laboratories, and computers; significantly larger class sizes; less qualified and experienced teachers; and less access to high-quality curriculum.

The end results of these educational inequalities are increasingly tragic. More than ever before in our nation's history, education is not only the ticket to economic success, but also to basic survival. Whereas a high school dropout had two chances out of three of getting a job 20 years ago, today he or she has less than one chance out of three, and the job he or she can get pays less than half of what would have been earned 20 years earlier (WT Grant Foundation, 1988). The effects of dropping out are much worse for young people of color than for whites. In 1993, a recent school dropout who was black had only a one in four chance of being employed, whereas the odds for his or her white counterpart were about 50% (NCES, 1995, p. 88). Even recent graduates from high school struggle to find jobs. Among African-American high school graduates not enrolled in college, only 42% were employed in 1993, as compared with 72% of white graduates. Those who do not succeed in school are becoming part of a growing underclass, cut off from productive engagement in society. In addition, working class young people and adults who were prepared for the disappearing jobs of the past teeter on the brink of downward social mobility.

Because the economy can no longer absorb many unskilled workers at decent wages, lack of education is increasingly linked to crime and welfare dependency. Women who have not finished high school are much more likely than others to be on welfare, while men are much more likely to be in prison. National investments in the last decade have tipped heavily toward incarceration rather than education. Nationwide, during the 1980s, federal, state, and local expenditures for corrections grew by over 900%, and for prosecution and legal services by more than 1000% (Miller, 1997), while prison populations more than doubled (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996, p. 219). During the same decade, per pupil expenditures for schools grew by only about 26% in real dollar terms, and much less in cities (NCES, 1994). The situation is worse in some parts of the country. While schools in California have experienced continuous cutbacks over the last decade, the prison population there has increased by more than 300%.

In 1993, there were more African-American citizens on probation, in jail, in prison, or on parole (1,985,000) than there were in college (1,412,000) (U.S. Department of Commerce, table numbers 281 and 354, pp. 181 and 221). Increased incarceration, and its disproportionate effects upon the African-American community, are a function of new criminal justice policies and ongoing police discrimination (Miller, 1997) as well as lack of access to education. More than half the adult prison population has literacy skills below those required by the labor market (Barton & Coley, 1996), and nearly 40% of adjudicated juvenile delinquents have treatable learning disabilities that went undiagnosed in the schools (Gemignani, 1994).

Meanwhile, schools have changed slowly. Most are still organized to prepare only about 20% of their students for "thinking work" -those students who are tracked very early into gifted and talented, "advanced," or honors courses. These opportunities are least available to African-American, Latino, and Native American students. As a consequence of structural inequalities in access to knowledge and resources, students from racial and ethnic "minority" groups in the United States face persistent and profound barriers to educational opportunity. As I describe below, schools that serve large numbers of students of color are least likely to offer the kind of curriculum and teaching needed to meet the new standards being enacted across the states and to help students attain the skills needed in a knowledge work economy. In most states, schools serving minority and low-income students lack the courses, materials, equipment, and qualified teachers that would give students access to the education they will need to participate in today's and tomorrow's world.

CLOSING THE GAP: CHANGES IN EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

While the demands for knowledge and skill are growing, the gap in educational opportunity between majority and minority students has been widening. Although overall educational attainment for black Americans increased steadily between 1960 and 1990, this trend is reversing in some states that have imposed graduation exams without improving opportunities to learn. By 1995, 74% of black Americans had completed four or more years of high school-up from only 20% in 1960. However, dropout rates have been increasing for black male students since 1994. Recent evidence from individual states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia where exit exams have been instituted indicates that dropout and pushout rates have increased substantially for African-American and Hispanic students during the 1990s (Haney, 1999).

On national assessments in reading, writing, mathematics, and science, minority students' performance lags behind that of white students, and the gap has widened in most areas during the 1990s. The situation in many urban school systems deteriorated throughout the 1980s and 1990s as drops in per pupil expenditures have accompanied tax cuts while immigration and enrollments have grown. Urban schools serve increased numbers of students who do not speak English as their native language and growing proportions requiring special educational services. These students are increasingly served by growing numbers of unqualified teachers who have been hired since the late 1980s.

In addition, many urban systems have focused their curricula more on rote learning of "basic" skills than on problem solving, thoughtful examination of serious texts and ideas, or assignments requiring frequent and extended writing (Cooper & Sherk, 1989; Darling-Hammond, 1997). As new tests in many states (and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1994) focus more on higher-order skills, problem solving, analytic and writing ability, they diverge from the lower-level skills taught in many texts and tested by widely used multiple choice examinations. Students whose education is guided mostly by workbooks compatible with basic skills tests find themselves at a growing disadvantage when they confront the more challenging expectations of new standards and the assessments that accompany them.

INEQUALITY AND ACHIEVEMENT

The concentration of minority students in high-minority schools facilitates inequality. Nearly two-thirds of "minority" students attend predominantly minority schools, and one-third of black students attend intensely segregated schools (90% or more minority enrollment), most of which are in central cities (Schofield, 1991, p. 336). By 1993, 55% of all students in central city schools were black or Hispanic (National Center for Educational Statistics, NCES, 1995, p. 121). As Taylor and Piche (1991) noted:

Inequitable systems of school finance inflict disproportionate harm on minority and economically disadvantaged students. On an inter-state basis, such students are concentrated in states, primarily in the South, that have the lowest capacities to finance public education. On an intra-state basis, many of the states with the widest disparities in educational expenditures are large industrial states. In these states, many minorities and economically disadvantaged students are located in property-poor urban districts which fare the worst in educational expenditures. In addition, in several states economically disadvantaged students, white and black, are concentrated in rural districts which suffer from fiscal inequity (pp. xi-xii).

Not only do funding systems and tax policies leave most urban districts with fewer resources than their suburban neighbors, but schools with high concentrations of "minority" students receive fewer resources than other schools within these districts. And tracking systems exacerbate these inequalities by segregating many "minority" students within schools, allocating still fewer educational opportunities to them at the classroom level. In their review of resource allocation studies, MacPhail-Wilcox and King (1986) summarized the resulting situation as follows:

School expenditure levels correlate positively with student socioeconomic status and negatively with educational need when school size and grade level are controlled statistically...Teachers with higher salaries are concentrated in high-income and low-minority schools. Furthermore, pupil-teacher ratios are higher in schools with larger minority and low-income student populations... Educational units with higher proportions of low-income and minority students are allocated fewer fiscal and educational resources than are more affluent educational units, despite the probability that these students have substantially greater need for both (p. 425).

These inequalities are increasingly the subject of legal action. The State of New York provides a recent example. Studies have found that by virtually any resource measure-state and local dollars per pupil, student-teacher ratios and student-staff ratios, class sizes, teacher experience, and teacher qualifications- districts with greater proportions of poor and minority students receive fewer resources than others (Berne, 1995). In January 2001, the New York State Supreme Court declared the funding system unconstitutional because it denies students in high-need, low-spending districts like New York City the opportunities to learn needed to meet the state's standards, including well-qualified teachers and curriculum supports ( Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York). A similar suit is now pending in the Superior Court of California ( Williams v. State of California).

A critical problem is that shortages of funds make it difficult for urban and poor rural schools to compete in the marketplace for qualified teachers. When districts do not find qualified teachers, they assign the least able individuals to the students with the least political clout. In 1990, for example, the Los Angeles City School District was sued by students in predominantly minority schools because their schools were not only overcrowded and less well funded than other schools, they were also disproportionately staffed by inexperienced and unprepared teachers hired on emergency credentials ( Rodriguez et al. v. Los Angeles Unified School District, Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles #C611358. Consent decree filed August 12, 1992). In 1999, students in California's predominantly minority schools were 10 times more likely to have uncertified teachers than those in predominantly white schools (Shields et al., 1999).

A growing body of research suggests that inequitable distributions of qualified teachers are a major cause of the achievement gap. Recent studies have found that differential teacher effectiveness is an extremely strong determinant of differences in student learning, far outweighing the effects of differences in class size and heterogenity. Students who are assigned to several ineffective teachers in a row have significantly lower achievement gains-creating differences of as much as 50 percentile points over three years-than those who are assigned to several highly effective teachers in a row (Sanders & Rivers, 1996). These studies also find evidence of bias in assignment of students to teachers of different effectiveness levels, including indications that African American students are nearly twice as likely to be assigned to the most ineffective teachers and about half as likely to be assigned to the most effective teachers.

Analyzing a data set covering 900 Texas school districts, Ronald Ferguson (1991) found that the single most important measurable cause of increased student learning was teacher expertise, measured by teacher performance on a state certification exam, along with teacher experience and master's degrees. Together these variables accounted for about 40% of the measured variance in student test scores. Holding socioeconomic status (SES) constant, the wide variation in teachers' qualifications in Texas accounted for almost all of the variation in black and white students' test scores. That is, after controlling for SES, black students' achievement would have nearly equaled that of whites if they had been assigned equally qualified teachers.

Ferguson also found that class size, at the critical point of a teacher/student ratio of 1:18, was a statistically significant determinant of student outcomes (Ferguson, 1991), as was small school size. Other data also indicate that black students are more likely to attend large schools than white students (Paterson Institute, 1996), with much larger than average class sizes (NCES, 1997a, p. A-119), and confirm that smaller schools and classes make a difference for student achievement (for a review, see Darling-Hammond, 1997).

Ferguson repeated this analysis in Alabama, and still found sizable influences of teacher expertise and smaller class sizes on student achievement gains in reading and mathematics (Ferguson & Ladd, 1996). They found that 31% of the predicted difference in mathematics achievement between districts in the top and bottom quartiles was explained by teacher qualifications and class sizes, while 29.5% was explained by poverty, race, and parent education.

These findings are confirmed elsewhere. For example, in North Carolina, Strauss and Sawyer (1986) found a strong influence on average school district test performance of teachers' average scores on the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) measuring subject matter and teaching knowledge. After taking account of community wealth and other resources, teachers' test scores had a strikingly large effect on students' success on the state competency examinations: a 1% increase in teacher quality (as measured by NTE scores) was associated with a 3% to 5% decline in the percentage of students failing the exam. The authors' conclusion is similar to Ferguson's:

Of the inputs which are potentially policy-controllable (teacher quality, teacher numbers via the pupil-teacher ratio and capital stock) our analysis indicates quite clearly that improving the quality of teachers in the classroom will do more for students who are most educationally at risk, those prone to fail, than reducing the class size or improving the capital stock by any reasonable margin which would be available to policy makers (p. 47).

These findings are reinforced by a recent review of 60 production function studies, which found that teacher education, ability, and experience-along with small schools and lower teacher-pupil ratios-are associated with significant increases in student achievement (Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996). In this study's estimate of the achievement gains associated with expenditure increments, spending on teacher education swamped other variables as the most productive investment for schools.

WHAT MATTERS IN TEACHING?

Unfortunately, policymakers have nearly always been willing to fill teaching vacancies by lowering standards so that people who have had little or no preparation for teaching can be hired, especially if their clients are minority and low-income students. Although this practice is often excused by the presumption that virtually anyone can figure out how to teach, research consistently shows that fully prepared and certified teachers-those with both subject matter knowledge and knowledge of teaching and learning-are more highly rated and more successful with students than teachers without full preparation (Druva & Anderson, 1983; Greenberg, 1983; Evertson, Hawley, & Zlotnik, 1985; Ashton & Crocker, 1986, 1987; Darling-Hammond, 1992). As Evertson and colleagues (1985) concluded:

(T)he available research suggests that among students who become teachers, those enrolled in formal preservice preparation programs are more likely to be effective than those who do not have such training. Moreover, almost all well planned and executed efforts within teacher preparation programs to teach students specific knowledge or skills seem to succeed, at least in the short run (p. 8).

A number of studies have found that teachers who enter the teaching profession without full preparation are less able to plan and redirect instruction to meet students' needs (and less aware of the need to do so), less skilled in implementing instruction, less able to anticipate students' knowledge and potential difficulties, and less likely to see it as their job to do so, often blaming students if their teaching is not successful (Bledsoe, Cox, & Burnham, 1967; Copley, 1974; Gomez & Grobe, 1990; Grossman, 1989; 1990; Bents & Bents, 1990; Rottenberg & Berliner, 1990;). Most important, their students learn at lower levels (See figure 3).

Teacher expertise and curriculum quality are interrelated, because expert teachers are a prerequisite for the successful implementation of challenging curriculum. Teachers who are well-prepared are better able to use teaching strategies that respond to students' needs and learning styles and that encourage higher-order learning (Peikes, 1967-1968; Skipper & Quantz, 1987; Hansen, 1988). Since the novel tasks required for problem solving are more difficult to manage than the routine tasks associated with rote learning, lack of knowledge about how to manage an active, inquiry-oriented classroom can lead teachers to turn to passive tactics that "dumb down" the curriculum, busying students with workbooks rather than complex tasks that require more skill to orchestrate (Carter & Doyle, 1987; Doyle, 1986; Cooper & Sherk, 1989). Teacher education is also related to the use of teaching strategies that encourage higher-order learning and the use of strategies responsive to students' needs and learning styles. Thus, policies that resolve shortages in poor districts by hiring unprepared teachers serve only to exacerbate the inequalities low-income and minority children experience.

POLICY FOR EQUALITY: TOWARD EQUALIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY

The common presumption about educational inequality is that it resides primarily in those students who come to school with inadequate capacities to benefit from what education the school has to offer. The fact that U.S. schools are structured such that students routinely receive dramatically unequal learning opportunities based on their race and social status is simply not widely recognized. If the academic outcomes for minority and low-income children are to change, reforms must alter the caliber and quantity of learning opportunities they encounter. These efforts must include equalization of financial resources, changes in curriculum and testing policies, and improvements in the supply of highly qualified teachers to all students.

REFERENCES

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Winkler, J.D., Shavelson, R.J., Stasz, C., Robyn, A., & Feibel, W. (1984). How effective teachers use microcomputers for instruction. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation.

Wise, A.E., & Darling-Hammond, L. (1987). Licensing teachers: Design for a teaching profession. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

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Inequality in Teaching and Schooling: How Opportunity Is Rationed to Students of Color in America

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Despite the rhetoric of American equality, the school experiences of African-American and other "minority" students in the United States continue to be substantially separate and unequal. Few Americans realize that the U.S. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and that students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status.

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Racial Justice and Standardized Educational Testing

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Racial Justice and Standardized Educational Testing

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Young people of color, particularly those from low-income families, have suffered the most as
the explosion of high-stakes standardized testing in U.S. public education has undermined equity
and school quality.i
Positive assessment alternatives that will help these students and their
schools do exist. They must be fought for and won in the policy arena.

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Alarmingly, 44% of American students in grades 6-12 do not feel a sense of self-worth at school. Philadelphia high school junior Nikki Adeli knows firsthand the challenges that young people face navigating standardized tests. Through the story of her own real-world educational experiences beginning in Mississippi by way of Iran, Nikki reminds us all that the value and purpose of schools is to grow a citizen not produce a good test-taker.

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What standardized tests don't measure | Nikki Adeli | TEDxPhiladelphia

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The push for high scores requires a mounting need for test prep, forcing teachers to abandon creativity and individualized education. According to one report, 60 percent of teachers responded that standardized test prep either dictated or substantially affected their teaching. That’s over half of what they taught. Also, affluent families have the means to pay for tutoring and other classes to help their children do well on tests. Students from less affluent homes, especially if they live in poverty, do not generally have the same kind of access to learning these skills.

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Standardized testing, used widely across the United States to diagnose learning disorders; assess students for admission to everything from kindergartens to colleges; and evaluate the effectiveness of curricula, teachers, and schools, is damaging the American education system.

The negative impacts of high-stakes standardized testing are both broad and deep, and felt by students, families, and educators alike. Here are six ways standardized testing hurts everyone involved in education:

When educators are under ever-increasing pressure to raise test scores, tests become the focus of education, not subject matter. And any subjects that aren't tested become peripheral or even superfluous.

Science, social studies, foreign language, physical education, handwriting, and the arts are all among the subjects squeezed out of class time and funding for the sake of standardized test prep. Unfortunately, these are also the subjects that often nourish a student's creative spirit, expand their consciousness, and bring them joy. Do we really want a system that drains the joy out of learning?

As the pressure builds, funding and job security is often tied to student performance on standardized testing, which inevitably leads to cheating and corruption. Students cheat. Instructors cheat. Entire school systems cheat by doing things like inflating test scores and misrepresenting dropout rates.

Rather than providing equal opportunity to all students, research shows that standardized testing negatively impacts students of color and those from low-income families. This affects both individuals as well as the school systems serving them, and, frankly, just isn't fair.

The push for high scores requires a mounting need for test prep, forcing teachers to abandon creativity and individualized education. According to one report, 60 percent of teachers responded that standardized test prep either dictated or substantially affected their teaching. That's over half of what they taught.

The intrinsic limitations of standardized testing neglect to truly demonstrate student knowledge and ability - in other words, they don't work. They simultaneously prohibit the development of more important skills. Renowned author and lecturer Alfie Kohn discusses this eloquently in his case against standardized testing. Worse yet, it goes against all reason to place high stakes on a test where guessing constitutes a valid strategy.

The high-stakes nature of standardized testing and its accompanying pressure take a serious toll on the job satisfaction of teachers. A 2014 survey by the National Education Association revealed that a full 45 percent of teachers surveyed had even considered leaving the profession because of standardized testing.

We cannot afford to lose talented teachers to tests.

While standardized testing is utilized internationally to a degree, other countries employ proficiency-based systems that assess students through various "show-what-you-know" opportunities. In fact, the U.S. is the only advanced industrial nation to depend so strongly on multiple-choice tests.

Ironically, even as American schools increase their focus on test prep, they lag behind the majority of other developed countries on international standardized tests. This is another strong argument that proficiency-based systems are far superior to those that revolve around standardized tests.

Ultimately, quality education is the bedrock of a strong, powerful, and compassionate nation. The young people of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and in addition to learning how to complete standardized math problems, they deserve to learn how to sing, how to make art, how to find their place and their passion.

We need to develop more than just their testing capacity; we need to develop them. Instead of sorting students into buckets that often carry the implication of failure or unintelligence, we have to start letting them know that every one is brilliant in his or her own way.

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6 Ways Standardized Testing Damages Students

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Standardized testing, used widely across the United States to diagnose learning disorders; assess students for admission to everything from kindergartens to colleges; and evaluate the effectiveness of curricula, teachers, and schools, is damaging the American education system. The negative impacts of high-stakes standardized testing are both broad and deep, and felt by students, families, and educators alike.