John Richard Schrock: Cap on external testing not enough

President Obama’s proposal to cap external assessments at 2 percent of student class time is seven years late and 2 percent too much.

It does not end the educational disaster of 14 years of No Child Left Behind over-testing. It does not bring back the art and music classes that were lost because they were not tested and therefore did not count. Nor does it address the concerns of growing numbers of parents who are opting their children out of testing. And it does nothing to re-professionalize teaching.

Also, reducing testing to 2 percent does not mean that a teacher will have 98 percent of class time for teaching. While the past 14 years of assessments only consumed a week each spring, the months before the test were often filled with pretests, practicing for the tests, and every form of coercion imaginable to get students to score higher. Reducing the actual testing to 2 percent of class time does nothing to eliminate the test prep.

The ACT and SAT have been around far longer than the NCLB testing mania. So why aren’t they just as bad as current assessments? The ACT and old SAT have been aptitude tests, not achievement tests. They have measured a student’s aptitude or general ability. Generally, teachers cannot “teach to” the ACT or SAT, so the tests have not distorted classroom teaching or promoted memorization and drill work.

But the government-mandated assessment tests are achievement tests that do respond to memorization and drill work. State boards of education latch onto standards that profess fanciful creative-thinking goals. But teachers under pressure don’t teach to the standards; they await the release of the first round of tests and they teach to that test.

To treat patients as unique patients, physicians must have the total professional judgment call on what tests to use. And to treat our students as the unique students they are, teachers must regain their professional right to be the sole testers of their students.

There should be no external test that requires them to teach to that test. Not 2 percent, Mr. President. Zero percent.

Ivory tower educationists rail that math and English are universal across the U.S. and therefore the tests must be universal. But teaching is about students as much as about the subject. City kids do not have the same experience base as rural students.

American teachers were unique in the world because we had the professional right and responsibility to teach different students differently. To restore our profession, we must regain that right. Our students come to us unique; they should leave our classrooms unique.

No more standardization means no more external testing.

This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 7:01 PM with the headline "John Richard Schrock: Cap on external testing not enough."