I’ve long been an opponent of using standardized tests for student and teacher evaluations. In fact, if you search “standardized tests” on my blog, you’ll find many entries as to my reasoning. In short, standardized tests do not correlate with most school curriculums, these tests are biased toward higher economic communities, and they are not valid because they were not developed to assess if what has been taught has been learned.
Recently, I learned of another major problem with using standardized tests to assess schooling, and it has to do with the technology many schools are using to administer the tests.
Apparently, the Los Angeles City Schools are being plagued with problems regarding testing for student progress. According to the report I read, students had trouble logging on to the testing platform. Once they were logged on, many were logged off for inactivity while they read lengthy passages. Some devices froze or didn’t save answers. Slow connections caused students to wait impatiently. Finally, there was a mysterious power failure on testing day at one campus.
In the long run, this may be good news if it reflects on the use of such tests. I’ve said it many times, and it’s worth repeating: Standardized tests are both unreliable and invalid for assessing what students have learned and totally misused for evaluating teacher effectiveness.
What are your thoughts on using standardized tests for student and teacher evaluations?
