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Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post reported that over 100 education researchers in California are calling for the end of high-states testing and claim that there is no “compelling evidence” that the Common Core State Standards will improve education for the state’s K-12 students in a research brief released in February.
The California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education is, according to their website, “a statewide collaborative of university-based education researchers that aims to speak as educational researchers, collectively and publicly, and in solidarity with organizations and communities, to reframe the debate on education.”
In their brief they state, “Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set of curriculum standards, including those like the CCSS, will either raise the quality of education for all children or close the gap between different groups of children. Therefore attaching high-stakes testing to the CCSS cannot be the solution for improving student learning. “
“Yet, with the CCSS comes even more testing than before, and based on those test scores, any number of high-stakes decisions may follow, all of which are decisions using scientifically discredited methods, namely, the use of value-added modeling that purport to attribute gains in test scores to such factors,” they warn.
The group states that independent examiners found that the Common Core assessment systems “lack validity, reliability, and fairness.”
They call for a halt on all high stakes testing.
…we support the public call for a moratorium on high-stakes testing broadly, and in particular, on the use of scientifically discredited assessment instruments (like the current SBAC, PARCC, and Pearson instruments) and on faulty methods of analysis (like value-added modeling of test scores for high-stakes decision making). Instead, our schools require more robust instruments and the use of assessments in ways that are formative and that aim for improvement of systems, not merely individuals.
You can read the entire research brief below:
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