Test Scores Provide Valuable Measure Of Success in D.C.

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Some DC schools are beginning show improvements on test scores.  After much upheaval throughout the district brought on by Michelle Rhee, it looks like things are getting better.  Rhee is the tough new Chancellor of the DC school system.  Her methods have been harshly criticized by many teachers across the country.  

Testing is a controversial issue.  Teaching-to-the-test is a natural outcome of score focussed schools.  The schools and teachers can not help but hone in on weaker areas to prep for the next round of exams.  The tests, however, should reflect only minimum knowledge needed to progress.  Ultimately, the test itself becomes the goal and not education beyond the minimum.

This, though, is a valid point:

Parents and educators who decry the rise of testing will cringe. Why, they ask, does everything have to revolve around multiple-choice assessments? (The BAS, which takes about eight hours over two days, has some essay questions, as does the DC-CAS, but is mostly multiple choice.) What happened, these skeptics ask, to helping students explore literature, mathematics, history and science and letting their conversations and writing reveal how much they learned?

There are two problems with this critique. First, for the vast majority of students, particularly in the Shaw neighborhood, that golden age of deep learning never existed. Schooling in America, with bright exceptions, has been shallow, unimaginative and easy for students to avoid by not showing up to class. Second, in an age of data-driven teamwork in business, science and politics, education could not avoid the 21st-century impulse to measure results and galvanize groups of experts to improve performance. 

So far the only options seem to be no bar or low bar.

Full article: Washington Post