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The Daily Tar Heel

Testing fails students: Statewide testing scores don't show the whole picture

While harder statewide tests indicate that the state is setting higher educational expectations these tests are a flawed way to measure student success.

Test results released Nov. 7 showed a huge statewide drop in the percentage of students who passed. These figures are troubling for a number of reasons.

Officials blamed the lower scores on harder tests and a stricter grading scale.

Higher standards are certainly a good thing for tests and schools in general" and it's good to see the state is setting higher expectations for students.

But these test scores also highlight the absurd nature of the entire testing process in attempting to assess ""proficiency.""

The results indicate the inability of tests to truly measure this.

The problem is that proficiency has more to do with the content of the tests than with the level of teaching and learning. Thus" the focus is shifted to passing the test rather than educating the student.

Schools assumed they were teaching up to a high standard and that students were performing well enough to pass the tests — that is" until harder tests came out and proved that students really weren't ""proficient.""

For example"" the state classified the 84 percent of third-graders who passed the reading exams in 2006-07 as ""proficient."" But that number for 2007-08 is only 56 percent.

The change was in the test" not in the students' level of knowledge — so we can't really get a clear picture from these statistics of which students are truly acquiring the essential knowledge to succeed.

Tests can be a good way to measure some basic level of knowledge. But they shouldn't be the complete focus of education. Schools shouldn't become slaves to test results.

Unfortunately with these results the reaction will probably be an even greater focus on how to pass the state tests.

This is the wrong focus for schools.


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