Howl

The nice thing about taking a vacation last week was that I didn’t have to stomp my feet over another Washington (We love testing! We love it, we love it, we love it!) Post editorial on NCLB.

Instead, the Daily Howler stomped for me.

As often occurs when the Post writes about testing programs, the editorial makes a basic mistake. It seems to think that annual testing can show a school how to fix the problems the tests may reveal….

…“There is no question that No Child Left Behind has brought accountability to America’s classrooms,” the editors say. Note: By “accountability,” they pretty much mean “testing.” Here’s what the editors actually mean: There is no question that No Child Left Behind has brought testing to America’s classrooms.

For the record, we’re not opposed to annual testing (although it’s often put to bad uses). Quite the contrary; in our view, annual testing is extremely important. (Without it, schools are free to tell you any damn thing—and they frequently will.) But annual testing can’t tell a school what to do if its test scores are weak. In many low-income schools, annual tests will show that the school’s deserving kids are years behind traditional standards. But as a general matter, those tests can’t tell the school what to do to fix that grinding problem.

Testing’s one of those deceptive concepts; in the mainstream, most people think they know what it does and what it means. Of course, it’s far more complicated than that. Good for the Daily Howler for not letting the Post off easy.

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