NY Times - Average scores on the SAT fell across the nation this year, with the reading score for the high school class of 2011 falling three points to 497, the lowest on record, according to a report Wednesday by the College Board, which administers the exams. The average writing score dropped two points, to 489, and the math score was down one point, to 514.
The College Board attributed the decline to the increasing diversity of the students taking the test. For example, about 27 percent of the nearly 1.65 million test-takers last year came from a home where English was not the only language, up from 19 percent a decade ago.
But Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of much standardized testing, said the declines were an indictment of the nation’s increasing emphasis on high-stakes testing programs and of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has driven it.
“How many wake-up calls do policy makers need before they admit that their test-and-punish strategy is a failure?” Mr. Schaeffer said. “Policymakers need to embrace very different policies if they are committed to real education reform.”
[Note: FAIR's accounting finds even white students at esseentially the same level they were in 2006. The only group to make progress were Asian-American students]
3 comments:
If white test scores stayed the same and Asian test scores went up, then clearly either non white, non Asian scores went DOWN, or there were more of them. Doesn't this support the College Board's argument? I am no fan of No Child Left Behind, but I fail to see how this data supports the belief that this Act is to blame for the drop off in test scores.
Standardized tests are a poor measure of learning. All standardized tests show is which children take that type of test well. Any child who doesn't test well, won't do well on the test, even if they could otherwise demonstrate they have the knowledge and skills the test is looking to measure.
The lower scores for nonwhite students are usually traceable to a cultural bias in the way the tests are written, or from inequalities in the school districts, like channeling blacks and latinos to the inferior schools.
Post a Comment