On Saturday, October 24, President Barack Obama went on Facebook to announce his administration’s intention to roll back the number of hours spent on standardized testing by American schoolchildren.
This move comes at the end of what has been called the “No Child Left Behind era,” which began in 2001 with the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, itself originally signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. With the re-authorization early in President George W. Bush’s first term, the Act’s signature change was to compel states to develop and administer assessments in basic skills beginning in the earliest grades.
The effects of NCLB on American education have been immense, but with the new call from President Obama to limit testing to no more than two percent of classroom time in a given year, here are three positive outcomes that, as a father and former educator, I hope to see realized in American schools in the coming years.
More Time Spent Outdoors
An increasing number of studies show that time outside, especially time spent engaging with natural surroundings, improves the ability of children to think critically. Yet, the emphasis on test scores has led school districts around the nation to reduce or even eliminate recess time in favor of more seat time in the classroom. Given the conclusions reached by this research, not only should recess be restored, but outdoor time increased in other ways, as well, including hands-on, exploratory science instruction.
More Music, Theater and Visual Arts
The arts are another area that have taken a hit under various state testing regimens, given that playing in the band and creating a self-portrait are not activities that can be evaluated using a multiple-choice test, and therefore do not immediately affect the scores of a school or a district. Just as with time spent outside, however, the arts provide both an outlet for expression and a crucial channel for learning for many children. Cutting time and funding for instruction in the arts is not only damaging to kids, but is, ironically, likely to hurt the very test scores it is meant to help.
Developmentally Appropriate Standards
Perhaps the most appalling effect of the testing mania of the last fourteen years has been the insistence that all students reach the same level of proficiency at the same time. As a public school special education teacher for 10 years, I have seen dozens of my students make great progress during the school year with instruction tailored to each one, yet give up when presented with a standardized test developed by people who have never met them. Coupled with the push to raise grade-level standards to points outside even an “average” student’s developmental level, the last decade and a half has created a punishing educational environment for a great many students for little to no gain.
Here in Georgia, the state mandates a 180-day school year, which is common around the country. If you figure a six-hour day for each student, that’s 1,080 hours in the year. Two percent of that is 21.6 hours, or just under four days, set aside for standardized testing under the Obama administration’s new guidelines. Surely, that should be enough time to determine whether students are learning what they need to learn.
Featured image by geralt via Pixabay, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
