Forum on Educational Accountability
Press Release:
The Forum for Education and Democracy
http://www.forumforeducation.org
for further information:
Dr. George H. Wood – (740-448-3402)
for immediate release Tuesday, August 14, 2007
LEADING EDUCATORS, SCHOLARS, AND RESEARCHERS LEND
SUPPORT TO CIVIL RIGHTS ORGS. CALL FOR “MULTIPLE MEASURES” IN “NO CHILD”
OVERHAUL
More than 100 leading educators, scholars, and
researchers have sent a letter to members of the Senate and House
education committees in support of a call from civil rights groups that
any overhaul of NCLB include “multiple assessments of learning and
multiple indicators of school performance.” Twenty-three civil rights and
disability organizations, including the National Association of Colored
People (NAACP), League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), ASPIRA,
and the National Alliance of Black School Educators, conveyed that message
to Congress in an August 7 letter. The groups called for changes in NCLB
that would assess schools “in ways that produce high-quality learning and
that create incentives to keep students in school.”
Among the 117 signers of the letter are policy makers
Nebraska Commissioner of Education Doug Christensen, Massachusetts State
School Board member Ruth Kaplan; leading measurement and evaluation
experts, including Gene Glass, Edward Haertel, Robert Linn, Lorrie
Shepard, Richard Shavelson and Eva Baker; educational researchers Linda
Darling-Hammond, Howard Gardner, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Henry Levin;
civil rights advocates Nadine Cohen and Clyde Murphy; and leaders in
school renewal including Ted Sizer, Wendy Puriefoy, Pedro Noguera, and
John Goodlad. (Complete list of signers at
http://www.forumforeducation.org/foruminaction/index.php?page=391
The letter of support explained that “current
administration of federal educational policy has, through its exclusive
emphasis on (primarily multiple choice) standardized test scores, both
narrowed the curriculum in many schools and led to a focus on lower level
intellectual skills” as opposed to “the higher-order thinking skills our
democracy and economy require.” It has also undermined efforts to develop
more valid assessments of learning for special needs students and English
language learners, while increasing incentives to exclude students from
school.
Lorrie Shepard (Dean, College of Education at the
University of Colorado and President, National Academy of Education)
praised the effort to push for multiple measures: “Measurement experts are
keenly aware of the limitations of standardized tests. That’s one reason
that the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing require that
critical educational decisions be based on more than a single test score.
We also know from 20 years of research on the effects of high stakes
testing that greater and greater pressure to raise test scores exacerbates
the known weaknesses of standardized measures. The call for “multiple
assessments of learning” and “multiple indicators of school performance”
would provide some protection against the narrowing and dumbing down of
curriculum that occurs in response to multiple-choice accountability tests.”
The letter emphasized that using multiple sources of
evidence, including performance and locally-based assessments, provides
many benefits to education and accountability:
- The use of an index of measures of school
performance provides a better picture of overall school performance;
- Multiple measures supports a balanced approach to
school improvement, insuring that a single-minded focus on standardized
tests does not lead to narrowing the curriculum or to inappropriate
practices such as keeping out or pushing out students who do not test
well;
- A range of assessment types is the only means for
assessing a comprehensive range of content and skills;
- Performance assessments provide for a focus on
higher-order thinking skills.
The letter also noted that NCLB calls for multiple
measures of student performance and a focus on higher-order thinking
skills, but little in the administration of the legislation had aided such
outcomes. The writers explained, “Our experience with the law as
educators, policy makers, researchers, and parents over the past five
years has shown us that the current law and its implementation have
discouraged the kinds of state and local assessments and reporting systems
needed to make educational progress and to validly assess all of the
students in our schools.”
Eva Baker (Distinguished Professor of Education,
UCLA) indicated she hoped that this effort would lead to improving “NCLB
to encourage student accomplishments that include but go beyond transient
test scores. Every student needs to demonstrate skills and knowledge in
technically sound ways that will serve them in school and work.” Linda
Darling-Hammond (Ducommun Professor of Education and co-Director of the
School Redesign Network at Stanford) noted that moving to such assessments
would also “direct more attention to the higher order skills and content
which are necessary for our children in the economy of the 21st
century.”
George Wood, Director of the Forum for Education and
Democracy, and a school principal, praised the focus on higher-level
thinking skills. “Many of us in the field know that the reliance on
standardized test scores as the only measure of school success is
narrowing the school curriculum, particularly for our most
school-dependent children. This is a crucial civil rights issue; denying
our children access to the skills and content which make democratic
citizenship possible consigns them to second class citizenship and
economic hardship.” He went on to note that he was pleased with the
response that calls for multiple measures of school and student success
have received in Congress and expressed optimism that NCLB reauthorization
would fund such options for states and districts.
The full copy of the letter and a complete list of
signers may be found at
http://www.forumforeducation.org/foruminaction/index.php?page=391
The civil rights group letter is available
at
www.edaccountability.org
