In this post, Valerie Strauss interviews Daniel Koretz of Harvard University about his new book The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.
I just finished reading the book, which is a devastating critique of the current “reform” movement because of its reliance on standardized testing. Koretz is not anti-testing or even anti-standardized testing. He is upset by the misuse of standardized testing. He says that it was completely predictable that putting high stakes on tests would lead to score inflation, gaming the system, and cheating (I said the same things in The Death and Life of the Great American School System in chapter 8, about the false promise of accountability). He says that the so-called reform movement has been completely misled by its obsession with high stakes. Consequently, none of the gains that it claims can be trusted. He also lambastes the deeply flawed Common Core state standards, which presumes the value of having a single standard for all students regardless of their different ambitions, abilities, and interests.
I intend to review the book at a later date, and I will express both my admiration for the book and my concerns about the position Koretz takes about the value of standardized testing under the “right” circumstances. I appreciate the fact that he demolishes the “reform” movement and its alleged but nonexistent gains.
I don’t agree with him about the value of standardized tests. Remove the high stakes and they have a limited purpose. Unfortunately, as he points out, the “reformers” see test-based accountability as the heart and soul of their movement. If they can’t use tests to punish students, teachers, principals, and schools, then what is the point?
But for me, the current obsession with standardized testing is pernicious for other reasons. It reduces learning to multiple choice questions and answers. It rewards test-taking skills more than thinking skills. It punishes divergent thinking.
I could go on, but I will save it for a review.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, as the documentary, More . . . than a score illustrates in rebuttal for the value of Common Core testing “If the purpose of the Common Core Standards is to teach the children to think, then the testing piece does just the opposite, it teaches the children to think the way the test measures thinking!” Peter Greene imbedded the documentary in his blog and it can be viewed on Vimeo.com, Teachertube, and Youtube.
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In your review, I hope you include the importance of writing tests that are developmentally appropriate, well written, and fair. Of course, it would help if the Standards were themselves developmentally appropriate, well-written, and fair. They should be written by TEACHERS with experience of working with children. And they shouldn’t be high stakes.
Train your principals. They’ll take care of the accountability.
But who will train the principals? (I offer my services. So will many of us in the education field who care about children and learning and creativity.)
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Your suggestion that the teachers should participate in the writing of standards is a significant one which needs to be put into operation. Indeed teachers are well trained people and should play a much greater role in education, even advising and planning changes instead of the rich guys who know so little of what is involved in teaching young people.
While principals play an important role there is a greater need for a stronger partnership between principals and teachers.
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Thank you, Diane, for questioning Harvard-based Professor Koretz.
I have long felt it is the testing stupid (not just the misuse of the results). Koretz probably isn’t against nerve gas, either. Just the way it is misused.
He knows which way the anti-testing winds are blowing and he adopts academic positions that he can dance away from. Don’t be fooled by the word “charade” in his book title. It is designed to sell his latest offerings on testing, but he hedges his position in the bites he gave Valerie Strauss.
And, by the way, he didn’t discover score inflation or the predictability of math test items that were essentially the same from year to year with different numbers plugged in.
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I never paid much attention to standardized tests as a student or parent. While they were never really useful, I considered them a litmus test, some type of indicator of growth. I should add that both my children and I always did well on the so called measures.
“Reform” has used standardized tests like a weapon of mass destruction by attaching high stakes to them. Scores have been used to retain students in grades, close schools, and fire teachers. What is worse is that the preoccupation with scores serves to narrow the curriculum, and in some cases, test prep has become the focus of instruction. The arts, humanities, social sciences and recess have all been relegated to second class status due to fear of failing a high stakes test.
How people feel about testing has a lot to do with their perspective. As I have said, they were never an issue for me personally. When I became an ESL teacher, I got to see the negative impact on poor, language minority students. I got to see the pigeonholing, the tears and fear on these young people’s faces. They were frightened, and I couldn’t help feeling that we had betrayed them. I spent all year trying to build them up only to smack them down at the end of the year. We do students a disservice by giving them a test that is several grade levels above their level of comfort. How long will it take for them to internalize this sense of failure? We need to look out for the best interests of students, not feed the data monster.
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Okay, I’ll bite. Absent high stakes, the purpose of standardized tests is….?
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Incidentally, his university is at the forefront of the rephorm movement and among the biggest proponents of standardized testing. What is Koretz doing about that?
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Daniel Koretz is no newcomer to criticizing the misuse and abuse of high-stakes standardized tests.
Years ago I bought his MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2008, paperback edition].
I would still recommend it as a way of helping one to understand what, at its very best, standardized testing can do. And there is a lot in his earlier book about its inherent limitations.
I assume, like his earlier work—and that of almost anyone else—I will find points of agreement and disagreement.
But based on his earlier work, I don’t think I would be wasting my money on his latest effort.
Just my POV…
😎
P.S. For a much older and in some ways more devastating critique of standardized testing that holds up very well today, nothing I have read or heard about surpasses this Golden Oldie: Banesh Hoffman, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING (2003 paperback edition of the 1964 version of the 1962 original).
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I liked MEASURING UP
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PS. Did Koretz speak to the rigging of cut scores as a possible source of “inflation”? If not, he is avoiding the political misuse of the tests to make some less important academic point.
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He writes about how arbitrary they are.
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All we need from “testing” is short pre and post tests and that must be confirmed by teacher assessments.
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Thank you! As a person who lost my teaching credentials because of my efforts to throw a monkey wrench into one districts high stakes testing efforts, I’m so glad the conversations are continuing!
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For an alternative point of view: Dan Koretz’s Big Con, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better, by Daniel Koretz [book review] http://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Reviews/v13n1.htm
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I have not read Daniel Koretz’s book “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better”. I will to find the find and start reading during holiday. However, I agree that high-stakes standardized exam has misled in our education away from teaching students in critical thinking . The test results cannot measure students’ learning objectively. Students can practice to improve their test-taking skills. Students’ scores in state tests actually don’t correlate to their ability fully. In the book written by Anya Karmenetz “The Test” states that standardized tests are more likely to test their memorized routines to familiar question rather than students’ ability to solve problems in novel situation. Can the goal of preparing our students to compete in global workplace and marketing really be achieved by giving students a tons of multiple choices questions and template writing? My answer is definitely not.
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