They fail to explain how, given the enormous differences in scores for affluent and majority students, such tests will improve the chances of success for poor and minority children. Under the gun of the tests, teachers are abandoning their usual curricula and modes of teaching to lecture about test-oriented material. In many instances, they are omitting aspects of the curriculum not on the test. One local school board in a large Virginia district held a special session to determine if they needed to mandate recess for their elementary schools because so many of them had abandoned it in favor of test preparation. When the science and social studies tests appeared, science and socials studies were quickly geared to what those tests tested.
Tests can easily misrepresent the achievements of a school.
For instance, six high schools in Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida, made a list of the top 100 high schools in the entire nation, based in part on the number of Advanced Placement examinations taken per student. Yet in the Florida state accountability system, which grades schools from A to F, all six of these same schools received a grade of C . The standards for test use promulgated jointly by the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association and the National Council on Measurement in Education say clearly that no decisions about human beings should be made in such a way. Some parents simply refuse to permit their children to take the tests, while others openly organize for their repeal. Some students, on pain of suspension, refuse to take the tests.