Given that the current population of US school kids is the most intensively tested school age cohort in history via the NCLB requirementswhat have learned through that testing that we did not know before? What insights has this torrent of performance metrics given us about student, teacher and school performance?
I ask because I have not seen any layman level articles or papers referencing this presumed river of performance data that addresses any new or interesting facts or conclusions. I’m sure there must be something profound to come out of all this.
I’m not able to link to studies, but there is a lot we have learned. One field we’ve added a lot of knowledge in is achievement gaps. We have learned a lot about gaps based on race, gender, geographic location and economic background. We have also learned a great deal about college readiness, and have been able to determine in detail what students need to succeed in university, and how much of that is missing. We have learned that charter schools vary wildly in results.
One issue with the research is that the US is allergic to federal involvement in education, so all of the testing is on a state level, making it hard to compare across states. The Common Core hopes to address some of these issues. Another issue is that some people are eager to use test data to assess teacher performance and determine pay, despite the fact that the tests are not designed for that and there are all kinds of confounding factors. So that builds in all kinds of areas of resistance.
We already had standardized federal education testing going back 40 years in the form of NAEP testing. I guess NCLB has less statistical error, but since it isn’t as standardized and doesn’t have anywhere near the time coverage, I’m not sure it really provides info that we didnt already have.