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Kenneth Salguero
Turnbeaugh
English 1010
12/12/16
Who does Standardize Testing Help?

In the early days of 2002 a bill was signed into to law that radically reform our education
system, No Child Left Behind passed both chambers of congress near universal consensus, only
10 percent opposed it. The law introduced national standardized testing and empowered the
federal government to act against schools who failed to improve their testing scores, including
the ability to close them after 5 years without improvement. Yet in 2015 when law mandated all
students in all schools achieve proficiency, it was regarded as a universal failure. We are now in
transition period when it comes to education, No Child Left Behind has been replaced with
Every Student Succeed Act, while much has changed the standardized test remains.
I began school in 2003 and graduated in 2015; which makes my graduating class some of
the few students whove spent their entire primary and secondary education while No Child Left
Behind was the law of the land. When I recollect about my early education the one detail that
always stands out to me is how serious teachers took standardize testing. I remember my secondgrade teacher showing us a brief power point explaining what a standardized test was and why
we needed to do our best on them. She was particularly honest with us explaining that the school
needed money for books, pencils, paper and fieldtrips, the test was how they decided how much
money each school received. She then said the school wanted to see how much we learned this
year so they could decide what to teach us next year. When I was child these multiple-choice

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tests were very easy for me, by the time I finished high school I viewed them as a minor
annoyance that came at the end every year.
The first job I got out of high school was a position as a tutor for the school district I
graduated from. Working very closely with teachers gave me new perspective on challenges they
faced. My curiosity into standardize test started after I had discussion with the secretaries and
teachers regarding test scores in John F. Kennedy junior high. This school that I worked at had
over 60% of their students reading below grade level and 80% with a D or lower in math. When I
looked up the SAGE (standardize test for Utah) scores for this school I discovered that fewer
20% of students passed in reading, science or math. Even more shocking to me was the gap
between different ethnicities, only 10% of Hispanics at the school passed in one of the three
subjects. As a Hispanic and former student of the school I was very motivated to get to the root
of the problem.
Rachael Aviv is a writer for The New Yorker, in July of 2014 she wrote an article
concerning Parks Middle School in an impoverished neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. She
interviewed Damany Lewis a math teacher at the school. The teachers and principals of Parks
had great respect for Lewis, as he was very motivated to improve the school. Lewis and his
principle had focused their efforts in improving the school by building a community around it.
They wanted to make Parks a place where students could feel safe and welcomed. At the same
time, Lewis began teaching Atlanta hired a new superintendent, Beverly Hall. Hall began
reforming the school district by introducing stricter rules regarding standardize testing. The
punishments were much stronger than No Child Left Behind. Test scores were gradually
improving but they could not reach the districts standards. Lewis, fearing that the school could
be shut down, began changing answers on his students standardize tests.

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The school district began relying more and more on data and statistics to make decision,
they required every school to raise their scores by 3% every year and that students learn certain
subjects within a specified time frame. The principal and teachers at Parks felt they were under
too much pressure and cheating was the only way to satisfy the district. When the state began
investigating the school, Lewis and the other teachers confessed to cheating. Further
investigation found 178 teachers in 44 schools cheated. The investigators pinned the cheating on
a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation. Parks test scores dropped for several years after
the scandal.
What happened in the Atlanta school district is the unattended side effect of high stakes
testing. Teachers fearing that they could lose their jobs over poor test scores found it to their best
interest to cheat. However, Lewis viewed the standardized test was getting in the way of students
actual learning, he was making small improvements every year that turned around the school. I
believe 44 out of 56 schools in district are involved in cheating the problem lies with system in
place.
Chad Aldeman wrote an article in the New York Times defending yearly standardizing
testing from critics who say students are tested too often. Very prominent individuals such as Bill
Clinton and teacher unions have suggested limiting testing to once in elementary, middle and
high school. Aldeman is strongly against this proposition, he argues one of the major benefits of
testing is gathering data on how well disadvantage groups are performing. Schools right now are
held accountable on how well minority groups are performing due to fact that there is plentiful
data on their performance. He also claims that frequent tests allow educators to see how well
students are progressing in their education, testing student only when theyre in the fifth grade
will not show how they are performing in previous grades

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I agree with Aldeman on many of points that he had made, it is crucial that we collect as
much information as possible on students performance to help guide policy decisions.
Improvements can only be made when educators have a clear picture of what the situation is. I
find his argument on measuring student progress very convincing. Having year by year data on
how classes, grades, groups and students are performing allows school to focus their efforts on
the kids who need it most.
Kate Taylor explores the minority parent and student side of the issue in an article she
wrote in the New York Times. She examines how schools attempting raise test scores have had to
cut down on art programs to focus more attention on reading and math. In Baltimore, several
students even protested during class, lobbying the district to include more culturally relevant
classes. In some poorer communities, there is growing conspiracy that standardize test are just
used to identify future criminals. Many parents and educators feel like students education is
being compromised by emphasis on testing. The growing discontent against these tests stems
from the apparent lack of progress compared to loss of important classes. Taylor shows how
many schools have lost focus on what their communities expect from their education, and how
families are increasingly disillusion with the test. She quotes in the article testing provides an
incomplete picture of the problems at low-performing schools. The surprising thing is the
contrast Taylors article has with Aldemans; he views the data gathered from the test as the best
way to collect information on school while Taylor believes tests cannot reveal everything.
Annie Knox of The Salt Lake Tribune wrote an article detailing a list of complaints and
changes the Utah Board of Education would like the Department of Education to make to the
Every Student Succeeds Act. While the law gave school much more authority on accountability
schools in Utah are still unhappy with the law. One of the metrics used to rate schools is how

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many graduating students go on to college the next year, the Board claims this negatively affect
Utahs school due to having many students who postpone college to serve an LDS mission.
Another complaint was the federal requirement that no more than 5% of students opt out from
standardize test, many Utah schools surpasses that number leading to more negative assessments.
While the Every Student Succeeds Act is not yet in affect, many schools are already fearing that
they could be punished for factors out of their control. The law failed to take in account that
schools in Utah will score lower in the students going to college metric due to the religious
practices of the population.
I chose these articles to specifically to explore the relationships schools, teachers and
parents have with standardize testing. The issue is very complex one and any system of testing
will have its controversy. When I reflect upon my experiences working with teachers I
empathizes very strongly with them. There are many factors when it comes to teaching students
that must be taken in consideration, many of these can be quantified but many cannot. While
newer laws are taking more factors in account; some factors, such as Utah students postponing
college for missionary work, were not accounted for in the law. The article that had most impact
for me was The New Yorker article about Damany Lewis, it shocked me how a teacher who was
willing to do so much for a school had to cheat just to keep it open.
My solution would be to give more power to teachers and principals but keep a
standardize test for statistics. The people who have the most power to change a school for the
better are the teachers, administrators, parents and students. Its an outrage that students in
Baltimore had to walk out of class and protest their district for them to change the curriculum.
Schools need a system in place that empowers students and lets them take their education into

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their own hands. Standardize testing is just one many tools schools have, it is the responsibility
of the teachers to use that tool.

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Works Cited
https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/every-student-succeeds-act/

https://datagateway.schools.utah.gov/Assessment/SAGE/2016?leaNum=12&schNum=422

Aviv, Rachel. Wrong Answer In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a
shocking choice The New Yorker, 21 Jul. 2014
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer Accessed 10 Dec. 2016

Aldeman, Chad. In Defense of Annual School Testing The New York Times, 6 Feb. 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/opinion/in-defense-of-annual-school-testing.html. Accessed
10 Dec. 2016

Taylor, Kate. Race and the Standardized Testing Wars The New York Time, 23 Apr. 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/sunday/race-and-the-standardized-testingwars.html Accessed 10 Dec. 2016

Knox, Annie. Board worries federal education law wilding Utah for number of students who
serve Mormon missions straight out of high school The Salt Lake Tribune, 02 Aug. 2016
http://www.sltrib.com/home/4186646-155/utah-education-board-wants-more-leeway
Accessed 12 Dec. 2016