The high-stakes outcome of some tests leads to cheating, and not just by students. The high stakes associated with some tests have caused teachers and administrators to pull to the hanky-panky. An elementary-school principal resigned in Potomac, Md., amidst charges that he'd coached children on state tests. High school graduation tests produce widespread failure, and many who fail are scarred for life by the lack of a diploma. Indeed, the specter of grading millions of lives on one evaluation is causing a backlash among edu-crats.
Tests are fallible.
Perhaps the gravest allegation is that testing skews educational priorities by focusing on a few subjects, and on the few ways of knowing that a computer can score. The school becomes a test prep academy, rather than an educational, instructional center. They're setting aside science, history, art, field trips to prep for the math and grammar tests. Brian Stecher, an education analyst at the Rand Corp., responds that tests can distort state curriculum rather than support it. Suddenly one set of signals says certain things are important, while the other says they are not.