Briefly summarize the arguments for and against high-stakes achievement testing

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The intended goal of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is to reduce the achievement gap between low-income or minority children and higher-income or white children by holding educators accountable. According to proponents of achievement testing, the purpose of using such tests is to set higher standards for student learning and raise student achievement. However, when some students do poorly on a test, schools and teachers can respond in several different ways. They can work harder with the students obtaining low scores, providing them with more personal attention, tutoring, and additional learning experiences, but such responses usually require additional resources, which many schools lack, especially ones that are already underfunded. Another possible response is that schools try to shed students with lower scores by encouraging them to drop out or transfer. This is clearly an unintended consequence of high-stakes testing and one that hurts the most educationally needy and vulnerable students. Research has found that, when schools define a good teacher as one with high pass rates, teachers became competitors rather than partners with their colleagues. The singular focus on increasing aggregate test scores thus renders school-wide discussions of the best interests of children obsolete.