Solution or Fad?

By Peter D. Rosenstein

It seems that the education world is now completely focused on testing and assessment. To the point that, if you don't follow the discussion daily, you might think this is the latest idea-fad, like "schools without walls," or cooperative learning, or any of a number of other ideas that were appropriate for some but degenerated into fads when they became vehicles to solve all our children's problems.

President Bush has recommended that we require testing of all children in grades 3-8 each year, as if this is something that teachers have never done and that will, on its own, save our education system. The bigger problem, however, is that both the president and the states are looking at how we can use testing and assessment to accomplish more than simply finding out how students are doing and giving them the help they need. They are looking at testing and assessment as a way to reward or penalize schools, teachers, principals, and maybe even the building janitors, if some connection can be found between what they do and low test scores.

The feeling seems to be that, if we are to spend so much of a student's time and the public's money on these tests, they ought to do more than monitor whether children can read...