Almost twenty years after The National Commission on Education released A Nation at Risk, a report asserting that American students were performing poorly in schools compared to other industrialized nations, in January, 2002, President Bush signed into law the "No Child Left Behind" act. The idea was that systematic testing would improve academic achievement for students in America. This law fanned the fire of debate about high-stakes testing, the kind of testing that decides whether students are held back a grade, are placed in remedial training, or are able to receive a diploma. It should be noted that "No Child Left Behind" legislation mandates testing but does not require states to make them "high stakes" for individual students. Testing is used as part of the new legislation to evaluate teacher and school effectiveness. Critics of this strategy believe that public education in America may be compromised if school systems are forced to "teach to the test."

In December of 2002, Arizona State University researchers concluded the most comprehensive study to date on high-stakes testing. They evaluated student performance on tests that assess the same curriculum areas that are covered by the state's own high-stakes tests. According to the researchers, even states that have been using the tests for more than a decade continued to perform "much like the rest of the nation" even after putting high-stakes testing into effect. And, overall, the 28-state survey found that high-stakes tests have little effect on student achievement. These researchers also argue that as these policies have been implemented, they have created "negative, unintended consequences which disproportionately impact students from racial minority, language minority, and low socioeconomic backgrounds."

FINDINGS

Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Student Performance

• Analysis of scores and participation rates for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), American College Test (ACT), Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), and Advanced Placement Tests (AP) tests suggest that there is inadequate evidence to support the proposition that high stakes tests and high school graduation exams increase student achievement.
• Training causes test scores to improve, but doesn't show any effect on student learning from other independent measures, such as the ACT or AP. In fact, the analysis suggests that high-stakes tests may inhibit the academic achievement of students on these different and independent measures of student achievement, rather than fostering their academic growth.
• Although test scores on state-administered tests usually increase after high-stakes testing policies are implemented, the evidence presented here suggests that students are learning only the content and item forms of the state-administered test.

Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing

• More low-performing students are being held back before important testing years, to ensure they are ready for the test.
• More low-performing students are being suspended before testing days, expelled from school before tests, or reclassified as being exempt from test-taking because they are determined Special Education candidates or Limited English Proficient.
• None of the ten states in the study with the lowest populations of African Americans have implemented high-stakes tests; all but one of the ten states with the highest population of African Americans have implemented them. Overall, students from racial minority backgrounds are subjected to high-stakes tests at higher rates then their peers. This trend does not hold true for American Indians and Asians.
• High-stakes tests and high school graduation exams affect students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds disproportionately-high stakes tests are more often implemented in states that have poorer students and poor achievement.
• The study states that high-stakes testing have been linked to a "teacher exodus," particularly of grades in which the tests are administered or from public schools. Researchers found that roughly 75 percent of the teachers at schools with high-stakes tests had left one school over the summer. They left because the state designated the school as a low-performing school, and they wanted to avoid the forthcoming consequences. Many teachers are also seeking jobs in private schools so they can be free of state testing mandates.
• Students are seeing fewer opportunities to take art, music, science, social studies and physical education because these subjects are not often tested.
• High stakes tests and high school graduation exams are found more in states that have a highly centralized governing structure. Of states with localized governments, only 33 percent have implemented a high-stakes testing system, as compared to the 93 percent implemented in states with a central government.

The studies were conducted by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University and commissioned by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. These reports are the first in an annual series on high-stakes testing.

The winter 2003 issue of Peer Review, "Purposeful Pathways? A Look at School-College Alignment," is now available. Visit www.aacu.org/peerreview/index.cfm for information on this issue.

DID YOU KNOW?

• After high-stakes graduation exams were implemented, ACT, SAT, and AP scores declined in states that had these tests.
  
• In eight of the states studied, teachers with high average class scores or improvements in scores warrant financial bonuses, and in 17 states studied, low average class scores may lead to the displacement or removal of teachers or administrators.
  
• High stakes testing is more likely to be implemented in states that allocate less money than the national average per pupil for education.
  
• High stakes tests are implemented more often in large states with dense populations.
  
• High stakes tests and graduation exams are more popular in the South and Southwest.