Parents and teachers know that high-stakes testing has negative consequences on students and the quality of their education. It causes narrowing of the curriculum, so students have less instruction in history, civics, the arts, and even physical education. Some schools have eliminated recess to make more time for test prep.
Anthony Cody published a guest column by Rog Lucido, an experienced teachers who is co-founder of Educators and Parents Against Testing Abuse (EPATA). In this excellent article, he describes the mental abuse of children. He writes: What is happening to many students is often not immediately apparent to them or their parents/guardians. It is insidious. Students are being seduced into believing they are just ‘going to school’, when in fact their hopes, dreams and aspirations are being taken from them by the systemic focus on high-stakes testing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In child psychology, that’s called the “sleeper effect”
Children appear to be adapting to the high stakes testing at the beginning and often, without warning as they hit upper elementary and middle school they become depressed and/or give up completely
I have certainly seen a sharp increase in anxiety, depression and other issues in high school kids over the past couple of years. Our guidance counselors have remarked on it too, and say that their counterparts in other schools have also seen it.
Do we really want a generation of intellectually risk-averse, test-prepped people with PTSD? I suppose it is good for those needing passive worker drones, not to mention pharmaceutical companies.
Not to mention the teachers with PTSD….pretty soon we will have to convert all the public schools into psychiatric facilities.
The new testing, either SBAC or PARCC, is going to be very expensive and time consuming….using up much of our computer lab time. Read excerpt and full article:
School districts will need enough computers to allow almost every student to take multiple annual exams. These computers must be suitable for the “innovative” test items and must be maintained and upgraded. Add to this the cost of increased IT staffing, and you begin to realize the problems of buying a Porsche test on a Ford budget.
A recent study projects that states will collectively spend $2.8 billion and $6.9 billion over seven years on technology alone for Common Core. And the authors cautioned that they were accepting the consortiums’ cost estimates at face value; analyst Ze’ev Wurman has predicted that South Carolina’s annual testing costs may skyrocket to $100 per student, compared with $12 per student today.
School districts that can’t afford substantial new technology will have to rotate students through the computer labs; Smarter Balanced recommends a 12-week testing window. But that creates significant security problems — how to keep the earlier-tested students from talking to the later-tested ones? — as well as inequity in results. The students tested late in the window will have almost three more months of instruction than those first out of the gate. Might this give an unfair advantage? And might teachers, whose evaluations depend on these test scores, resent having their students put at the front of the testing window?
These problems will have to be worked out, assuming the whole concept of nationalized standards, tests and curricula doesn’t collapse under its own weight. When that collapse or implosion happens, I hope it is before too much damage is done to our budgets, our schools and our children.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/0…
http://www.thestate.com/2012/09/28/2459190_fair-sc-could-regret-new-student.html#.UGbdKaSns0g
Diane, Thank you for your tireless work. I can’t tell you how important it is to wake up people to the dangers of this high stakes testing culture. For me, it is personal.Please, let me explain why…
My daughter recently left for college. She was just starting elementary school as No Child Left Behind came into play. She was subjected to year after year of high stakes standardized testing in Florida. She did well, DESPITE the testing culture. In fact, for many years, she scored a perfect score on our FL FCAT test.
Now, my daughter is a freshman in college. She was recently assigned a paper about literacy and education. She wrote the following about high stakes testing: “However, the question always remains: Who’s fault is it? Why, as college freshmen, are we programmed to read for information as opposed to rhetoric and content? Throughout twelve years of public education were we not intelligent enough to analyze literature, instead settling for multiple choices and scantrons? In my opinion, the answer is clear: the testing in our country has made for lazy readers. Now, students know that paraphrasing and skimming is enough to pass a test, and passing a test is enough to pass a grade. The answers are not subjective, as literature should be, but closed off and simplified into four clipped sentence fragments.”
As a college freshman, she recognizes that so much of her time was wasted in high stakes testing. She continues, “As the daughter of two public school teachers, I know better than most how the testing rearranges lesson plans. Until the eleventh grade, seventy-five percent of the year is spent preparing for tests, practicing tests, grading tests, and taking tests. In my mother’s Literature class, only after the test is she able to actually begin teaching…well…Literature.”
And she does know. She was subjected to year after year of high stakes testing, validating tests, changing tests, late scores, missing scores, invalid scores… wasted time. It is a shame.
She recognizes that fact and hopes for better for her little sister. She concluded her paper with this comment: “My point is, excellent readers are derived from excellent teachers. I have had many excellent teachers throughout my years of middle and high school, however those teachers were limited in the knowledge they were allowed to share with me. Luckily, I lived with one of them. If you may have noticed, as a Florida resident I have not once yet named the standardized test used throughout my state. In my mother’s classroom, it is referred to as the ‘F-Word.’ In my home, the only person allowed to call it by its name is my eight year old sister who, ridiculously enough, will begin her first round of testing this year. How’s that for progress?”
From the mouth of babes…
I blogged her entire paper here.
http://gatorbonbc.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/you-cant-bubble-literacy-a-college-freshman-calls-out-standardized-testing-for-what-it-is/
I feel your pain. We are SO lucky that our daughter graduated before this absolute onslaught of “standardized” testing. As a teacher, I always told her to “have fun w/the tests. think of them as a challenging puzzle.” She always scored high (95th%ile & above) when tested early on. We wound up sending her to a school for gited students for grades 6-8 because, as she became a(n) (gifted) adolescent, she became overly sensitive & nervous, & did better with kids who were more like her &, also, w/older students (they had mixed grades according to ability, not age). Finally, there were no
more IOWAs or ISATs, so she could relax: she was always fine with subject tests, especially essays. She went to a really great public high school, which she was even better prepared for rather than having had to go to middle school with even ONE “standardized” test.
And she didn’t go bonkers…except her immense anxiety attack over the ACT which, thank goodness, was a one-time deal.
The other problem that testing causes is education is only about grades. As a public school teacher on Long Island, I had to give a benchmark assessment for the first time. Students found out that their assessment would not be averaged into the quarter grade, thus was not important. On my writing assessment, a sophomore wrote about how much he loves pie and he thinks it is stupid he can’t write his essay in pencil. I tried to explain to my students prior to the assessment that this could be a valuable tool. When was the last time students would be able to see their growth from the start of a new school year to the end. I haven’t drank the Kool aide, but if it has to be done, lets do it right.
Oh–VERY important!–I need to mention that, as a Special Ed. Teacher, I have been collecting horror stories about SpEd. students & high-stakes testing–I have over 50.
Terrible stories. Giving grade-level tests to students who read far below grade level?
Tantrums. Crying. Acting out. Filling in the circles any with any answer, & finishing in 5 minutes to be done with it. Throwing pencils into the ceiling. Filling in the blanks w/the highlighter (supposed to be used for reading passages) when only #2 pencils can be Scantron-read; students sleeping; students hiding under their desks; students saying, “I’m stupid!” students pleading for help; Asperger’s students who become frustrated becuase they don’t understand long-form response questions having to do with “how would you feel if you were…” students who eat their answer sheets! And on & on…
total disregard/disrespect/abuse of a student’s rights!
Lawyers, weigh in please!!!!!