Numbers like armor
An article in today's Tenneseean.com describes a local coordinator who carries test scores around "like armor":
The numbers [Metro Title I coordinator] Wanda Holman carries around with her like armor may be hard to understand, but her mission isn't...So many people, she says, see these like a boat with so many holes that it is useless to try to bail out any water. Holman wants people to know that even if struggling schools fail to bring runners home, some of them do consistently load the bases...The metaphors are Holman's, but the numbers she brandishes belong to the students she is defending. They're state test results, and they prove that some of Metro's poorest schools are outscoring their wealthier counterparts and are improving at a rapid pace...The numbers disarm those who do not think high-poverty schools can overcome their disadvantages, but then Holman brings out an even more powerful weapon: specific information about how those schools did it.
Holman has a simple approach. She has analyzed schools' state test scores and compiled a list of the 18 Title I elementary schools in Metro that scored above the national and district averages in all grades tested...Educators at those schools say the improvement started with data. A couple of years ago, Metro's testing gurus began providing them with scorecards that showed what skills their students did and did not pass on the state's standardized exam. They trained them how to use those scorecards to change what they did in the classroom...They analyzed the test to provide teachers with a list of skills that mattered most and were realistic for students.
I think Ms. Holman's conclusions are a good rebuttal to administrators who claim that testing is overrated and that testing pressure is always harmful to kids and to schools. While it's true that tests in and of themselves cannot make the necessary improvements to help change a failing school, the tests are an invaluable component of school improvement. I think that tests are not helpful if the scores are not used or interpreted in a timely fashion - certainly some of the current K-12 testing programs have been put into place too hastily and have not yet properly resolved the important score reporting and QC'ing issues - but I have yet to see a testing critic provide hard evidence that testing is overrated (in the sense of providing no help for school reforms), or that children are harmed by testing.