Testing students

A new two-year educational study revealed that students sit for eight standardized exams a year, many of which are poorly designed, redundant, and counter-productive.

These tests could provide data to measure student progress and detect inequities, but the results come after the school year has ended and teachers are provided sterile data without effective strategies to address shortcomings.

That data is overwhelming and frequently misaligned with real-life college-preparatory skills.

The students are warned that each test is important, but with 112 tests over the K-12 school years, well, it’s like the boy who cried wolf.

I recommend reducing the number of tests, eliminating redundancies, returning results within the same school year in time for instructional corrections, providing consistent national standards so that benchmarks do not change from state-to-state and offering teacher education in research-based, real-life classroom techniques that work.

This story was originally published November 1, 2015 at 12:00 PM with the headline "Testing students."