On her blog, VAMboozled, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley invites parents, students, teachers, and everyone else to let the American Educational Research Association know what you think about testing today. Too much or too little? Too long or too short? Used well or used poorly?
As the scholarly debate about the extent and purpose of educational testing rages on, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) wants to hear from you. During a key session at its Centennial Conference this spring in Washington DC, titled How Much Testing and for What Purpose? Public Scholarship in the Debate about Educational Assessment and Accountability, prominent educational researchers will respond to questions and concerns raised by YOU, parents, students, teachers, community members, and public at large.
Hence, any and all of you with an interest in testing, value-added modeling, educational assessment, educational accountability policies, and the like are invited to post your questions, concerns, and comments using the hashtag #HowMuchTesting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, or the social media platform of your choice, as these are the posts to which AERA’s panelists will respond.
They are extra interested in video recorded comments. The deadline is March 17 for your submission. Read the post for the links.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Continual testing is “paperclipping”. “Paperclipping” is when you bend a paperclip back and forth until it breaks. Of course, the person doing the bending doesn’t take any responsibility–“It must have been a defective paperclip.”
Educators (and the politicians who pull their strings) should be doing everything possible to make learning interesting, fulfilling, and successful. Inflicting children with pressure, stress, and anxiety doesn’t do anything to make learning appealing. It kills the intrinsic desire to learn! Once the students leave school and the onerous external intimidation it imposes, who will want to pursue an education on their own, especially if they must muster their own internal motivation.
Testing takes time away from more productive pursuits, like actual teaching and learning. Of course test scores will be low if less time is spent learning.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of statistics knows that it is not necessary to test every single student over and over again. A random, representative sample will give you as accurate results as testing every student.
It’s so obvious that the only people who benefit from testing are those who sell the tests to the school districts. It’s a racket and the kids are the victims.
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This is a barrier. I do not participate in the social media options, as in “using the hashtag #HowMuchTesting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, or the social media platform of your choice.”
I also have a problem with the idea that the social media are good avenues for contributing questions from “parents, students, teachers, community members, and public at large” to address the much larger problem: The near manic attention to testing and test scores as if these numbers and derivatives from them are the most significant thing in the whole world of educational research and accountability. For the great Centenniel Conference tests–the most trivial measures of outcomes–matter to scholars, not the quality of life in and beyond schools, not support for much needed resources for public education.
AERA has aggrandized the worst-in-the-world way of thinking about accountability.
If I did use the social media, that would be my message. It is not a question. It is a claim that AERA is distracted from more important issues.
Will AERA’s Centennial Conference include, in every large ballroom, pictures from the school buildings of Detroit? Will it show the charter schools operating in office buildings, filled with computers, not an ounce of greenery in sight, and in clear violation of codes required for nearby public schools?
How about 50 very large posterized NPE’s state-by-state ratings of support for public education. Will I find these in the halls of AERA?
I am a long time member of AERA. I hope to be in Raleigh. I will opt out of AERA’s Centennial.
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I also don’t use social media beyond blogs and comment forums. But I have an issue starting with the title. Why are we asking “how much” when first we should be asking “why”. Why are we testing kids and what do we hope to get out of it? Can any testing or any amount of testing deliver what we’re looking for? I think if we look at those questions the answer to “how much” will become quite clear: none.
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Thank you for making this distinction. I am confused by why anyone who claims to understand what a “test-based” school reform has done to our public schools can still call out for more testing. I especially like your question “Can any testing or any amount of testing deliver what we’re looking for?” It is a question which I believe goes to the heart of our current educational chaos — where testing our students simply begets more testing, which then lead s to…(voila) more testing.
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I apologize for this being so late as I did not know about this site.
In saying that I am still posting my opinion.
As a person of the Baby Boomer age, a collage graduate with a Masters Degree in Forensic Psychology, I think there is way too much testing!! The persons of this time frame have managed to live a full life, get a good education, raise a family, buy a home, run a business all without all of these ridiculous testing. It appears to me that our school systems believe all these tests are good when in fact they reek havick on the stress level and anxiety levels of our young people as well as the teachers that are forced to administer them. I have grandchildren ages 9 to 19 in a variety of schools. These children stress very heavily over taking these tests and are all A-B students.
I seriously believe the powers that be in regards to this testing procedure should very much consider reevaluating whether or not the children and teachers are truly better off having to put so much pressure, stress and anxiety on them when if fact it is not necessary.
Thank you
Melinda K. Maddox
Haines City FL
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