{"id":517,"date":"2019-03-23T18:18:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-23T18:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/?p=517"},"modified":"2019-03-23T18:18:41","modified_gmt":"2019-03-23T18:18:41","slug":"test-based-accountability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/2019\/03\/23\/test-based-accountability\/","title":{"rendered":"Test-Based Accountability"},"content":{"rendered":"

One effort to close the achievement gap has been the accountability movement. This reform heavily prioritizes testing performance and essentially uses scores as the sole indicator of a schools apparent success or failure.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

The idea behind the accountability movement is similar to the capitalist notions that drive the American economy. Schools that are unsuccessful on standardized tests will be motivated to improve in order to remain open. This movement was put into law in the Bush administration\u2019s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and was not based off of any substantial concrete data that high-stakes testing would close the achievement gap nor improve achievement in general. <\/span><\/p>\n

NCLB had many unintended consequences. Educational historian and policy analyst, Diane Ravitch\u2019s book, <\/span>The Death and Life of the Great American School System, <\/span><\/i>explores and analyzes some of the negative impacts of the widespread use of testing as a sole measure of success and failure. A startling finding in Ravitch\u2019s book is that the black-white achievement gap narrowed substantially more prior to NCLB than following its implementation (Ravitch<\/a> 110). The goal of NCLB was to improve student achievement and narrow the gap, however, the law did just the opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The increased achievement gap can be attributed to the fact that the fact that heterogeneous schools and student populations were held to homogenous standards. NCLB required all students, regardless of background or previous achievement, to be proficient in reading in math by 2014. While students are all held to the same standards, which would, in theory lead to a more similar education, in reality testing \u00a0further polarized the quality of schools. Schools with enough resources to invest in high quality curriculum and to hire and maintain high quality teachers, were schools with a more affluent and historically higher achieving student body. Lower performing schools, desperate to keep up with the increasingly difficult standards, resorted to using class time for drilling and test prep in reading in math, instead of focusing on actually teaching multiple subjects. Ravitch finds that as administrators became more and more obsessed with test scores, \u201cchildren were being trained, not educated\u201d (109<\/a>). This training is more prevalent in lower income and schools with higher percentages of non-white students–schools that have more difficulty in meeting the standards, leading to a more uneven educational quality. <\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, Ravitch makes the insightful point that \u201ctest-based accountability\u2026 removes all responsibility from students and their families for the students\u2019 academic performance\u201d (162<\/a>). Many studies have found that home effects account for the majority of student achievement and outcomes in schools. For instance, educational researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley report on their research and find that there is a 30 million word gap between children from welfare families and children from professional families by the age of three (see here<\/a>). NCLB does not account for the variety in backgrounds of students, and places all of the responsibility of achievement on schools. In a way, this thinking does not confront the societal inequalities that exist within our society and assumes that a history of inequality can be solved with standardized testing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While the testing results have indicated that the achievement gap in undeniably present in the United States, NCLB does not provide any real solutions to improve and\/or solve educational discrepancies and problems. NCLB sees testing as a solution, as it assumes market forces will improve schools. However, as NCLB has run its course and continues to influence educational practices in the the United States, it is clear that test scores alone are not the means to closing the achievement gap. NCLB has given us data, not a solution. To even attempt to close the achievement gap, test scores must be taken with a grain of salt, as there are many different factors that play into each and every score. <\/span><\/p>\n

Post by: Julia Manning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One effort to close the achievement gap has been the accountability movement. This reform heavily prioritizes testing performance and essentially uses scores as the sole indicator of a schools apparent success or failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/achievementgap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}