Needed: Watchdog for Standardized Test Makers
That corporate business practices have infiltrated education in the last decade is taken for granted. That it is an unvarnished virtue goes unquestioned. Educators, borrowing from their corporate colleagues, now talk about high-performing schools, serving customers, outsourcing and marketing. Increasing productivity to grow the bottom line has been converted by corporate-driven school reformers into test-score gains on standardized tests.
Since the late 1970s, but especially in the last five years, individual and school-wide performance, as measured by test scores, have become the engines driving accountability plans in state after state. When scores on standardized tests rise, public officials beam like delighted investors uncorking champagne to celebrate high earnings. When scores drop, public officials, like shareholders unhappy with corporate management, scold teachers, principals, parents and students for not working harder.
The nation’s embrace of a performance ethic for schools has led to state-by-state rankings of schools by test scores, rewarding schools at the top with cash, shaming those at the bottom and not promoting or graduating individual students--all on the basis of a single test score. When one considers the shady practices that the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has uncovered in the last two years, raising the stakes for individual and school performance by copying what occurs in the private sector needs reappraisal.
* In 1997, accountants at Ernst & Young found that CUC International had exaggerated its profits by $23 million but had let the error pass because it was a small percentage of total profits. The inaccuracy was revealed when CUC merged with another company, which concluded that there had been widespread fraud at CUC and sued Ernst & Young.
* Also in 1997, Sunbeam reported earnings of $189 million. Current taxes on the income were $8.4 million, and deferred taxes were $66 million. But corporate officials said nothing about the deferred taxes. In effect, the company had reported higher earnings to shareholders than to the Internal Revenue Service. When the firm finally admitted that it overstated earnings, its stock price plummeted.
* Earlier this year, the SEC warned that companies and accountants may not hide exaggerations or other accounting practices, as the agency put it, to “manage earnings”; there must be full disclosure in reports to investors.
Such deceptive practices come as no surprise, because in the corporate world, high stakes are attached to what the numbers say. In that world, the SEC plays the watchdog role.
For schools facing escalating pressures of an accountability system harnessed to test scores, the temptation to engage in shady practices also runs strong. Over the years, there have been instances of schools and districts tampering with student scores, underreporting low results, preventing certain groups of students who would probably drag down results from taking tests and other unsavory practices.
Because of these instances and because public schools are now viewed as a national instrument for keeping the U.S. competitive in the global economy, why not establish a SEC-like federal agency for schools that would ensure the integrity of standardized-test scores?
The new federal regulatory agency would investigate allegations of test-tampering such as those that occurred recently in Austin, Texas, Rhode Island and elsewhere. Agency officials could assure the public that forcing students to repeat a grade because of a low test score will enhance their academic achievement. When states and districts misuse test results, that is, for purposes unintended by test makers, the agency could order public officials to end the shady practice. For example, Chicago’s much-publicized promotion policy of using a cutoff score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to send a student on to the next grade or to summer school explicitly ignores the publisher’s guide. Furthermore, the new agency could explain fully and clearly to American taxpayers why, year after year, test scores that mandate students to repeat a grade, deny diplomas and track low performers into less demanding classes hit mostly minorities, English-language learners, students with disabilities and low-income children.
Finally, an agency regulating standardized testing in schools could educate the public in ways that major test makers and education researchers have failed to do. For example, it could articulate the strengths and limitations of using test scores to reward and punish students, teachers and administrators. Truth-in-test labeling by test makers could be made available to schools, parents and journalists. Such a document should contain the following:
* Purpose of test;
* How individual test scores will be used (e.g., to pass or fail a student, place a student in another curriculum, award or deny a diploma);
* Evidence that the test measures what it’s supposed to measure;
* Evidence that what is on the test is consistent with what students have been taught;
* Options available to parents who want more information or who question decisions based upon the scores.
Calling for a new federal regulatory agency to monitor the uses and misuses of tests at a time when public officials and taxpayers have strong allergies against more government is a decided minus. But the states’ swift embrace, aided by the cheerleading of Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, of tests as a means to reward and punish schools and individual students has been stunning. It is, to borrow a phrase from the chair of the Federal Reserve, an “irrational exuberance” that calls for a national reappraisal of the $300-billion schooling industry, whose importance to the national economy goes unquestioned and in which the continued growth of deceptive practices and abuses limits our investment in children’s futures.
