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Is Test Prep Educational Malpractice?

By John Norton

Our TLN colleague Anthony Cody (a teacher-coach in Oakland, Calif., who blogs here at teachermagazine.org) fired up the Teacher Leaders Network daily conversation with this provocative question: Does the heavy focus on standardized test preparation in many schools and districts amount to educational malpractice? It proved to be a timely topic, evoking nearly 40 replies. Here are some excerpts from that discussion.

After noting that the U.S. Department of Education may promote some form of merit pay based on standardized test scores, Anthony wrote:

I think teachers and schools should examine the test scores of our students, and we should seek to improve our instruction to respond to the weaknesses our scores may reveal. But I think the heavy consequences attached to test scores have...