Others need alternative approaches, more individual attention, or more time to master a subject. As schools have developed different instructional programs to teach students who don't do as well in traditional classrooms, we have learned that many students are capable of achieving much more than we had believed. Such programs, however, require extra time and resources so that faculty members working in smaller classes can develop and modify new curricula and instruction to produce good learning as well as acceptable results on new state exams. Some who are advocating higher standards have not been so quick to call for the additional resources needed, especially in urban and poor rural districts, to support staff and program development. Nor have they understood that the current standardized assessments are not adequate for measuring the learning standards.
States also place a premium on standardization so that schools can be compared to each other.
As a result, rich and complex learning standards are often being measured only by high-pressure standardized tests. Moreover, because of the pressure caused by the tests as well as numerous articles and editorials comparing school and district results, many students have been made to believe they are failures because of initial poor test results. Some 4th graders are even being retained, despite the fact that these new assessments were originally implemented to alert schools and families about which students may need more support in order to pass the Regents exams years later in high school. In the North Colonie School District in New York, we understand that there is a role for standardized tests. They provide a good snapshot of how our students and our district perform compared to others in the state and the nation.