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CNN Saturday Morning News

Are Standardized Tests Effective?

Aired September 01, 2001 - 09:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Many educators are divided on whether standardized tests make the grade when it comes to improving education. We're going to explore both sides now. Joining us this morning, the author of the book "The Schools Our Children Deserve," is Alfie Kohn. He's a critic of standardized tests. He's in Boston. And in San Francisco, Christopher Cross, he's president of the Council for Basic Education and a supporter of standardized testing.

Thank you both, and good morning to you both.

CHRISTOPHER CROSS, STANDARDIZED TESTING SUPPORTER: Good morning.

SAVIDGE: Mr. Cross, let me start with you. In some of the statements and some of the things you have written, you have said the assessment and accountability should be thought of as a tool, not as a sanction. Yet there are many people that look at these tests and say that's exactly what they are.

CROSS: Well, I think it depends on what your objective is. In fat, if you're trying to find out if schools are not educating the children who need it most, testing has to be done, otherwise you don't have the data to really know who's being served and who's not.

The pressure to step away from standardized testing is coming from high-wealth, high-income communities. You don't hear many parents in inner cities, where their children have long been neglected in the schools, protesting that test data is a bad thing.

SAVIDGE: Mr. Kohn, you think these tests are worthwhile?

ALFIE KOHN, STANDARDIZED TESTING CRITIC: Oh, absolutely not. No thoughtful educator could ever claim that we need standardized tests to tell us which students need help and which schools are in trouble. We have those data, and we have anecdotal evidence just from walking through schools.

What the tests do is measure what matters least and then distort the curriculum so that schools become giant test prep centers. In fact, the resistance to this over-testing of American children has been growing among rich and poor, black and white. There have been boycotts of the tests among parents last spring, not only in wealthy Scarsdale, New York, but in a Tucson, Arizona, inner city barrio school, in New York City schools that feature primarily African- American students, in Boston, and so on. Parents, like teachers, are beginning to realize that this top- down heavy-handed movement is not in the interests of children. It's a desire on the part of politicians and corporate officials to show how tough they can get with teachers and with kids.

CROSS: But if you don't have data, how are you going to know which children and which schools need the help?

KOHN: Well, we have plenty of data. What we don't need is the pseudo-data that comes from timed, multiple-choice tests that tend to get kids to memorize facts they're going to forget anyway and to drive some of the best curriculum out of the schools. I can't emphasize this too strongly. It's not just that the tests...

CROSS: But you're confusing things.

KOHN: ... are unhelpful, it's not just that the tests are unhelpful, it's that across the country, kids are now losing recess, they're losing the chance to read good books, we're losing discussion of current events, music and the arts, high-quality electives, as the schools become absolutely set to try to jump through the hoops because they have bribes and threats leveled against them to raise scores, not to raise the quality of learning.

(CROSSTALK)

SAVIDGE: All right, let's let Mr. Cross go ahead and have a response here, please, sir.

CROSS: Thanks, Martin. You're assuming that all testing has to be multiple choice, it has to be fill in the bubble. That's not the case. As you well know, there are some excellent testing programs in this country that measure whether students can take knowledge, whether they can integrate it, whether they can compose an answer, and whether they have re -- and show, really, whether they've learned the material or not.

You're confusing standardized testing with all testing, and that's simply not true.

SAVIDGE: Mr. Cross, let me ask you this, though. I remember going to school, and I remember we would take these -- these -- these -- these tests, but we would also study for weeks, and you would take courses that would teach you how to take the test. There are books out there, how to take the test.

I'm not sure I learned any more than specifically the end run around how to do that.

CROSS: Well, I -- first of all, I don't think that we should have schools that become test prep centers. But it's clear from the data in states like North Carolina and Texas and others, and in Maryland, where I served as the state board president for several years, that when you have the data that shows which schools are failing, you then target resources, you move in, you help those children, and you help those schools. If you don't have test data, we simply don't have any data that's reliable across schools that tell us what the problem is and where to focus our attention.

SAVIDGE: Mr. Kohn, let me ask you, what's the alternative to testing? What do you suggest that we do?

KOHN: First of all, teachers who are the best educators for many years have given the fewest tests. They set up a curriculum and they set up an environment so they're constantly getting information about where kids' understanding falls short. Kids in the best schools are able to correct -- collect their projects and assignments in portfolios and to demonstrate what they know and can do, which provides far more meaningful information, as most parents, when asked, will acknowledge, than a single stressful test where kids have to come up with facts on command without asking for help on a single day.

SAVIDGE: How do you universities use...

KOHN: We can also sample...

SAVIDGE: ... that information? How do universities measure...

KOHN: Well, we're not -- Well, we're not talking here just about university admission tests here, like the SAT and the ACT. We're talking about subjecting even little kids, far before, long before they're interested in issues or should be concerned about getting into college, to this relentless testing to try to please politicians.

CROSS: You're creating a straw man.

KOHN: If you take a look at Texas -- No, absolutely not. First of all, multiple-choice tests remain the dominant testing mechanism in the United States, and second, there are problems even with the tests that aren't multiple choice.

But if you look at what's going on now with Bush's plan to force every state to test every kid every year, you are going to cannibalize the curriculum and force all kids to march in lockstep. Everybody has to be here at age 8, here at age 9, and so on.

What happens in a state like Texas, which is an educational nightmare, is that you have more than 40 percent of African-American and Latino ninth graders getting pushed out before graduation. That's going to be...

SAVIDGE: Mr. Cross, we'll give you a quick moment here...

KOHN: ... the sum total of this approach.

SAVIDGE: ... a quick moment just to summarize, give us the last word, please.

CROSS: Thank you very much. If we do not focus our attention on those schools and those children who are not receiving the attention, and we do not, by identifying it through what those kids are learning, then we're going to continue and widen the have and have-not problems in our society. Our best hope to raise those who are not getting served today is to have good data, to focus resources, and go in there and help them.

Thanks very much.

SAVIDGE: Thank you both, gentlemen, for joining us this morning. That was a spirited debate. Alfie Kohn, he is the author of the book "Schools Our Children Deserve," and our thanks also to Christopher Cross, he's the president for the Council for Basic Education. Thank you both for being with us this morning.

CROSS: Thank you.

KOHN: Pleasure.

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