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This is bigger than just Readington schools, certainly. As was pointed out at a recent board meeting, there is some standardized testing that is mandated by the state—and there is more on the way. The testing movement is becoming institutionalized in our educational system, essentially forcing educators from superintendents down to the teachers to defend or at least play along with a game of “accountability” that promotes an over-simplified, reductionist view of education. Are these high stakes tests introducing unintended distortions in our educational system?

Perhaps politics and education should be separated in the same strict sense that we separate church and state. Author Linda McNeil, who wrote the book Contradictions of School Reform among others, calls it “legislated learning.” The term is a reference to the seemingly unstoppable “accountability” movement that reached steamroller proportions in the 1990’s and on to the present day. On the federal level, President George Bush convened an education summit with the nation’s governors in 1989 which adopted six National Educational Goals, many of which were to be assessed through standardized tests. Then President Bill Clinton tried in 1997 to push through the idea of a national standardized test in fourth and eighth grades, which ultimately failed. His 1999 Educational Accountability Act, however, was the precursor to the No Child Left Behind Act that was pushed by George W. Bush and finally passed by congress. The NLCB law has forced states and school districts to follow stringent standards, gauged by state developed standardized tests, whether they receive federal money or not. The reporting requirements alone are staggering, especially for smaller, non-urban districts.

As Peter Sacks described this test-driven accountability crusade in his book Standardized Minds:

“The formula goes like this: institute a common set of standards; measure with a common test how students, schools, and states stack up; encourage a public spectacle and media feeding-frenzy that reduces the complexity of learning to a set of test scores; and then let market forces do the heavy lifting by punishing ‘nonperforming’ schools and rewarding ‘high-performing’ ones.”

When test scores are released, politicians can also use the results to fuel their own careers. Low test scores result in dire language and a plea for more support to fix the problem. High test scores result in ecstatic praise of the political reforms which are finally making schools work. Educators, on the other hand, have mixed feelings and sometimes serious doubts. An October 5, 2005 article in the New York Times chronicled this very matter. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been crowing about rising test scores under his watch, calling them proof that his reforms are working. Educators, however, have pointed out that the 2005 test was simply easier than the 2004 test, especially for urban children who had trouble relating to some reading passages on the 2004 test. Test scores rose in 2005 because those passages were eliminated. One fourth grade teacher in the city school system was quoted in the article that:

“We know the test now, we start preparing them in September. When I go through a lesson, I always connect it to what’s in the exam. We know there is always letter writing, so we give more of that. We know there’s non-fiction, so we make sure we do it before the test.”

When asked if this meant that students are getting smarter and teachers getting better, the teacher answered: “I don’t know.”

That sums up the attitude of many educators today who are caught between their professional duty and their professional judgment. This tension can be palpable during presentations by educators to the public or during private discussions between parents and teachers. On the one hand, it is easy and uncomplicated for an educator to smile and hold up a high test score as evidence of progress and success. Plus, the system essentially requires them to do this. On the other hand, most educators know that great education is anything but easy and uncomplicated to teach or to administer. It has been noted by more than one author that we do know how to make test scores rise. We could turn our schools into test-prep centers and have our scores shoot through the roof, but would that mean that our children are better educated? Yet, if rising scores don’t necessarily equate to better education, what is the real meaning of the numbers?

The test-driven accountability crusade has another unintentional effect. Instead of school districts aiming high, they are aiming for the middle. State test scores are grouped by district type to help observers compare like districts to their own. For example, Readington is categorized in “District Factor Group I” in the state reports. Even if the tests are entirely accurate and valid, these sorts of comparisons encourage a growing mediocrity because schools are content to be in the same range of scores as other similar schools. As local curriculum is “aligned” with the tests, scores will rise because students are being specifically prepared for this simplified and incomplete assessment of their learning. The “alignment” effort results in a leveling off of scores in a few years and all the comparable districts will essentially be playing on the same field. So what is the problem?

The trouble is that during this process the programs, curriculum and teaching strategies that are unique to a district, exceptional in their scope, or incomparable to efforts being made in other districts are gradually squeezed out. Just as every mall in America now looks exactly the same, every school in America is starting to look the same. The joke about “Generica” (generic America) is quickly becoming a reality in our educational system as well as our strip malls and shopping centers. Communities like Readington, which may have extraordinary contributions to make toward the education of its children, are encouraged by a twisted system to ignore those special gifts in favor of an undistinguished program found everywhere else. Many educators intuitively understand this even as they are forced by circumstances to “de-skill” themselves. That word, coined by Linda McNeil, describes the process of dropping professional innovation in favor of a scripted kind of teaching or management. When oversimplified tests and the resulting statistics are the primary measure of success, what place is there for originality?

In some cases, educators feel pressured to do things that go far beyond dropping professional innovation. An October 12, 2005 article in the New York Times tells of a lawsuit being filed against New York City that charges a Brooklyn high school with pushing out students who are failing or unlikely to graduate as a way to boost test-score averages and recorded graduation rates. The lawsuit contends that these students are warehoused in an auditorium, given busy work until they fall short of the required credits and then are forced to leave the school. Similar shenanigans have been reported in Texas and other states. That sounds far-fetched in a community like Readington, but what about more subtle things? Could teachers here, as in other similar communities, feel enough pressure to “help” their children do better on a test? Could a principal feel temptation to reassign students or teachers based on previous test results and the desire to score higher? Are we reducing the time spent on music and art, or science or social studies in order to concentrate on a very specific language or writing skill featured on a standardized test? More to the point: if we are seriously posing such questions, can the work environment of an educator still be considered productive?

Of course, there are educators who wholeheartedly believe in the “accountability” movement. Some are comfortable with testing and perfectly happy to play a part in the crusade. Some accept the testing and the focus on statistical goals as a necessary evil and take solace in the fact that other forms of measurement are used too.

Whatever the views of individual educators, one thing is clear: the accountability crusade has changed the way educators behave and the way our children are educated. The field of education in well-known for movements that swing like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, with administrators, teachers and students hanging on for dear life as the weight on the bottom. In three years, or five years or ten years we will know better how long this crusade will prosper. In the meantime, educators will toe the line and cope with the system as they can. Smart parents will pay close attention to the effect on their children. By the time the test-driven accountability crusade has grown or died, another generation of children will have completed their public education, good or bad.