MANSFIELD, Ohio – “Recognizing that we are over-testing our children is a necessary and important first step in undoing this culture of ‘test and punish’ kids and their teachers. It has gotten totally out of control,” said Columbus City Schools Teacher Courtney Johnson. Johnson, who is also the parent of a third-grader, joined Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in a news conference call March 4 in which Brown announced legislation to streamline and improve testing practices.
The legislation, introduced in January by Brown and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), is known as the Support Making Assessments Reliable and Timely (SMART) Act. It would update an existing grant formula to assist states and local education agencies in aligning testing materials to college and career standards.
According to Brown, the funding can also be used to speed delivery of test data to educators and parents, providing more time for educators to design instruction based on test results. States would have the freedom to undertake audits of existing practices to eliminate unnecessary assessments, design more effective systems, and amplify effectiveness of remaining exams to support educators.
Brown noted that parents and teachers were overwhelmed by testing. “Some districts spend 100 or more hours per year on testing,” he said. “More of our students’ time in school should be spent on learning, not on unnecessary and redundant testing.”
“We even test kindergartners now for days on end. We are unnecessarily testing kids over and over again in the same subjects,” said Johnson.
Johnson said that teachers were not even allowed to look at the tests, and results are often not available for months. “Our students will no longer be in our classrooms when results of this year’s PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) tests are revealed. How does that inform our instruction?” she asked.
Johnson said that so much time has been devoted to testing and test preparation that teaching has been greatly reduced. “We know that our students need to know more, yet we follow policy demands that will teach them less? It makes no sense to me,” she said.
“If testing has replaced teaching, then what are we testing?” she asked.
Brown noted that duplicative testing reduces instruction and learning time for Ohio students. According to the Center for American Progress, he said, students take 10 standardized tests each year in grades 3-8. Federally-mandated tests are responsible for 32 percent of testing time in Ohio, while another 26 percent of testing time is devoted to new assessments developed by the State of Ohio to implement a teacher evaluation system.
He added that the remaining 42 percent of testing time is devoted to tests required not by the federal government, but by the state or local school districts. The average student in Ohio spends almost 20 hours taking tests each year and another 15 additional hours practicing for tests each year.
“We need to give states and school districts more freedom to make sure testing is effective and efficient and doesn’t take away from time spent learning,” he said.
Johnson became emotional as she noted that her own third grade son must pass one test on one day in order to pass third grade. “When was the last time you had something that high-stakes in your life? Fail, and be left behind your friends in the third grade. Fail, and be reduced to a cold, hard statistic. Fail, and be more likely to drop out of high school. Fail, and lose your love of learning, your curiosity, your self-confidence.”
Johnson commended Brown for recognizing that too much educational time was sacrificed for testing.
“Our classrooms should be places where students develop a lifelong love of learning,” said Johnson. “All American schoolchildren deserve a thorough investigation into the truly harmful high stakes testing culture that they are subject to.”
“Some districts spend 100 or more hours per year on testing,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown. “More of our students’ time in school should be spent on learning, not on unnecessary and redundant testing.”
