This is a test with answers correctly marked. What are the intended or unintended consequences of high stakes testing as required by the federal laws, NCLB and ESSA, and the testing laws in most states?
- Punish teachers ● yes ο no
- Close public schools in distressed communities ● yes ο no
- Narrow the school curriculum ● yes ο no
- Put harmful stress on students ● yes ο no
- Determine if the mandated tests are valid ● yes ο no
- Reduce time for instruction ● yes ο no
- Fire teachers and principals ● yes ο no
- Provide teaching positions for Teach for America participants ● yes ο no
- Turn school districts over to private operators ● yes ο no
- Cause great teachers to take early retirement ● yes ο no
- Increase the turnover rate of superintendents ● yes ο no
- Provide merit pay for teachers ● yes ο no
- Justify state takeover of districts ● yes ο no
- Justify and expand vouchers and charters ● yes ο no
- Justify the vast expenditures on PARCC and AIR ● yes ο no
- Prompt the parent trigger takeover plan ● yes ο no
- Enrich the education behemoth Pearson and other corporations ● yes ο no
- Expand ALEC’s manipulation of education policy ● yes ο no
- Undermine public confidence in the public common school ● yes ο no
- Treat students as a proxy measure of institutional effectiveness ● yes ο no
- Distract attention from adequate and equitable funding for all students ● yes ο no
- Improve public education and provide more educational opportunities ο yes ● no
The historical role of the public common school has been to develop contributing citizens for the republic. That changed in 1983 with the release of the Nation at Risk report, which concluded that the nation’s common school system was a failure.
About six years later, the Sandia Report, a write-up of a study by the Sandia National Laboratories (U.S. Department of Energy), debunked the Nation at Risk report. But the administration buried it, because the “education” president was making political hay by bashing public schools and promoting “choice.”
Then Bush 43, with bipartisan support in Congress, cobbled together NCLB which put in federal statutes provisions that have had the effect of denigrating the common school. The Obama administration, with Arne Duncan as the point man, exacerbated the destructive forces of NCLB, the testing demands being chief among those forces.
