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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No Child Left Behind/Every Child Succeeds Act required school districts to jump through certain hoops each year involving high stakes state tests for students in grades and evaluating teachers in part based on student test score improvement.

Is there any evidence that requiring high stakes tests every year has actually improved student learning, though?

Because it's a LOT of testing. And causes a lot of disruption to the school day.  We have the state tests, then the county benchmark tests. And kids with accommodations get their accommodations but not always at the same time as the classroom tests, so they sometimes miss some more instruction. Not just once a year, but many many times a year.

Is all this testing showing good results?  Because if not, maybe we could get rid of all these mandatory tests and get rid of school report cards based on how well students perform on these tests.

([b]Except if we got rid of the school report cards, how would parents know where to buy a house?)[/quote][/b]

Or if the teachers can effectively teach the students?  Testing holds schools accountable.  Without them, parents will be kept further in the dark as to how much learning is really taking place relative to national standards.  Whenever I hear educators rail against testing, what I really hear are educators who want to reduce oversight and transparency in their classrooms.[/quote]

How do private schools do it? They seem to do ok[/quote]

My child’s private school gives students an Iowa test each year.  [/quote]

Ours' doesn't. The kids are obviously happy and learning though. They want to stay at school as long as possible, they get unhappy about being picked up early, they show off the schoolwork they bring home, make relevant comments about current events like different forms of government monarchy vs democracy vs republic in ways I didn't consider until much older. I'd say that they're learning better without the testing[/quote]

But you have no evidence of that.  You may feel that the work your child brings home is impressive to you but how do you know they are learning sufficiently without comparison to some standard?  I don’t know how old your child is, but my child was studying ancient Rome and writing essays comparing Augustus Caesar to Julius Caesar in 2nd grade.  I didn’t do that until high school.  But if I used his deeper history lessons as a standard, I would miss that he was falling behind in reading/math skills.

Schools can easily impress some parents with their many words and selective content depth.  It’s harder to explain away test scores in black and white.[/quote]

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