Many U.S. educators now wonder whether they're teachers or targets. This mentality stems from the specter of their school being sanctioned for failing the state accountability tests mandated under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Unfortunately, most of those tests are like blunt-edged swords: They function badly in two directions.
We often hear teachers complain that their schools are actually better than their students' low test scores indicate. On the other hand, we rarely hear any teachers argue that their students' high test scores may actually be masking wretched instruction. Yet inaccurate judgments about school quality can harm students, whether those evaluations are negative or positive. We must pay attention to both kinds of evaluative mistakes.
Just for a moment, I want you to make a counterintuitive assumption. Please assume that many schools labeled as “low-performing” by the NCLB tests are actually doing a good instructional job, and that many schools identified as “high-performing” are actually doing a bad instructional job. If that seemingly perverse assumption happened to be true, you can readily see how high-stakes accountability practices could harm students in falsely labeled “ineffective” schools: This label is likely to cause their teachers to abandon their excellent instructional strategies and, in desperation, turn to such unsound classroom conduct as drilling students relentlessly or dumping key content that isn't covered on the state's accountability tests. Students in the falsely labeled “effective” schools are also harmed, though. Here, accountability is apt to increase the complacency of some self-satisfied teachers who will do little to improve a weak instructional program that appears to be wonderful according to test results.
Tragically, the counterintuitive assumption coincides almost completely with what is currently going on in U.S. public schools. More often than not, schools falsely labeled as “low-performing” serve lower socioeconomic-status students, and those falsely labeled as “high-performing” serve higher socioeconomic-status students.
I've personally spent time in many of these inaccurately labeled schools, and I assure you they exist in large numbers. Consider a school serving many students from low-income, single-parent families that children attend accompanied by little, if any, education assistance from home. These youngsters, frequently minority students, don't have access to the enrichment experiences that test makers often assume all students have. Although the teachers in this school do a bang-up instructional job, students' scores on the state's accountability test don't improve significantly. Students' backgrounds function as a barrier to this school's test-determined success.
At the other extreme, you can find a suburban school serving mostly upper-class white students who arrive at school with loads of test-relevant knowledge that they have acquired from home through dinner table discussions, educationally germane TV, and annual family vacations to intellectually stimulating locations. The parents of this school's students provide all sorts of support at home for what goes on in school. Even if the teachers in this suburban school do a slipshod job of instruction, their students will invariably score high on the state accountability tests. These students come into the education game, and the testing game, truly advantaged—and so does their school.
In previous columns, I have tried to explain why almost all of the NCLB tests now being used to evaluate U.S. schools are instructionally insensitive—unable to detect improved instruction in a school even when it takes place. Current NCLB tests are much too closely correlated with students' socioeconomic status (SES). As a result, a school's NCLB-based evaluation depends less on the quality of instruction that the school provides than it does on the demographic makeup of the school's student body.
In the last year or two, the clamor from U.S. educators has focused on the harmful consequences of NCLB tests inaccurately labeling schools as failing. Amid a cacophony of complaints about falsely labeled “low-performing” schools, few educators express concern about falsely labeled “high-performing” schools. Yet the label that NCLB tests put on such schools does an enormous disservice to students by making it unlikely that flawed instruction will be ferreted out and replaced. If the parents of children who attend such high-SES suburban schools ever discover that the instructional caliber of their school, when accurately evaluated, is far less fabulous than has been touted, look out for a well-warranted parental backlash.
I am not contending that all high-SES schools are serving up shabby instruction. That's obviously not so. Many teachers in these schools do a dazzling job of teaching their students. I am suggesting, however, that inappropriately chosen NCLB accountability tests—like blunt swords that don't slice well in either direction—lead to two types of school-evaluation mistakes that harm students. We must be on guard against both of these evaluative errors.
