RALEIGH – North Carolinians have plenty of good reasons to be skeptical that the benefits of setting up an expensive new student-testing program will exceed the costs.
The state’s end-of-grade tests were useful when initially introduced in the early 1990s, but once lawmakers and the Hunt administration built the ABCs accountability system around the tests and began expanding them into other subjects and higher grades, problems proliferated. Until North Carolina policymakers finally bite the bullet and replace the state’s flawed tests with independent national assessments, parents and taxpayers will continue to lose faith in the accountability system.
Given this experience, perhaps North Carolinians can help to play a role in heading off the latest trendy idea originating from the nation’s governors: signing up states to participate directly in international tests such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) or TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study).
The idea is unwise – but not for the same reason that North Carolina’s tests are flawed. I don’t think anyone believes that the PISA or TIMSS tests are methodologically unsound or politically manipulated. The problem, as former National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Mark Schneider points out in the latest edition of EducationNext, is that states may well end up spending millions of dollars on test results that won’t really do much to improve education policy.
Are independent, comparative data on state educational achievement valuable? Of course. That’s what the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exists to do. While no such system is free from error, NAEP already fills this need with sufficient reliability and frequency to tell participating states what they need to know about how their students rank. While I favor annual assessment of North Carolina students using independent, nationally normed tests such as the Stanford Achievement Test or the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, there is also a need for periodic assessment of student performance with valid samples in every state and data going back in time. That’s what NAEP delivers. The other tests can’t.
So why not add an international test into the mix? Well, for one thing there are important differences in educational assumptions and curricula in other countries. Schneider is critical of PISA in particular, questioning the research basis for some of the policy recommendations it includes in its reports.
The most compelling reason to be skeptical, however, is that it’s not at all clear how states participating in another expensive testing program would really get information they don’t already have. Researchers can currently estimate a state’s international ranking in math and science by combining PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP data. Sure, administering the international tests to a valid sample of a state or district’s student enrollment would generate a more precise ranking, but so what? How would a more precise ranking really affect educational policymaking? Not much, I think.
The existing body of information about national education systems offers lessons that policymakers in North Carolina and other states seem loath to recognize or implement. Many European and Asian countries that outperform America in student achievement spent less money, have larger class sizes, and offer parents more choice among what we would call district-run public schools, independent or charter schools, and private schools. Their academic standards and disciplinary procedures are often more strict than those in America.
Special interests block the implementation of many of these policies in Raleigh and other state capitals. No amount of additional international testing is likely to erode those barriers to reform. I wish it would, but wishful thinking is no substitute for sound strategy.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation