Parent Power: Issues and Answers

Q: The Bush administration has claimed that their No Child Left Behind initiative is a big success since national achievement test scores are rising. Is this an accurate standard indicating that students are actually learning more?

A: No. Testing – even the standardized testing politicians like to hang their hat on – has its place in the evaluation process. However, it shouldn’t be the only success indicator. In fact, in a 1999 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll indicated that 33% parents believed that the most accurate means of assessing the quality of their students education was their portfolio – examples of their work, while just 27% chose standardized testing as the most important evaluative tool. Administrators and politicians use test scores like a placebo, waving them in front of us with all the authority and mastery required to create the appearance that they have the situation well in hand and under control. In truth, reducing the education of our kids to a series of relatively meaningless test scores is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American public. Test scores don’t reflect how a student will do in the real world. After all, how many adults are measured by test scores when it comes to getting a job, starting a business, getting married, raising children, or handling the myriad challenges that life will throw at them? Simply put, a successful school is one where students emerge knowing the basic building blocks of the following:
How to analyze problems of all types, ranging from mathematics and science to life experiences and human relationships;
How to independently seek and find data related to any problem on any subject;
How to create and devise innovative solutions based on this data;
How to work alone and in teams; and,
How to successfully apply the solutions they create.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to quantify the results from these factors into a neat sound-byte…so test scores take center-stage. Besides being politically expedient, the standardized testing industry yields annual revenues in excess of $250 million annually. So, with politics and money setting the standard, it’s easy to see how the true indicators of student success are left behind. This probably won’t change anytime soon on a national basis. But, where the rubber meets the road is with individuals. With knowledge comes the power to affect change, and parents, armed with knowing the basic building blocks of assessing their child’s education, can make the changes in their own homes and in their children’s schools. That’s where parents can make sure that No Child is Left Behind.