School Board Takes Stance Against High-Stakes Testing

Students in Three Village face too many high-stakes standardized tests, and the state needs to re-evaluate its focus on using those tests to evaluate both students and teachers – that's the sentiment behind a resolution on high-stakes testing unanimously adopted Tuesday night by the Three Village school board.

School board vice president Jonathan Kornreich, who introduced the measure to the school board based on feedback from parent advocates, said that "enough is enough."

"Our regimen of high stakes standardized tests are not good for kids and I am so thankful for the efforts of our teachers and administrators, board members and parent advocates to stand together and send a message to Albany that enough is enough," he said. "... We need to stop the practice of over testing our kids with high stakes standardized exams and let teachers get back to teaching and students back to real, engaged learning."

The parent advocates who brought the issue to the school board, Jennifer Anderson and Gina Lollo, who recently launched a group called Three Village Coalition Against the Common Core, called the measure "a first step in the right direction."

The board's measure comes as reports surface that Pearson, the for-profit company that creates standardized tests nationwide, made scoring errors on the test used to determine students' entry into gifted-and-talented programs in New York City public schools – not its first errors on its own standardized exams.

In his remarks on the measure, Kornreich said the current testing system administered to students every year in grades 3 through 8 is longer than the LSAT (law school entry test) and is about the same length as the MCAT (medical school entry test). He cited a National Academy of Sciences study that found testing systems have "little to no positive effects" on student learning and the educational process. "There is widespread teaching to the test and gaming of the systems that reflects a wasteful use of resources and leads to inaccurate or inflated measures of performance,” the NAS study said.

From the school board's resolution:

"...Whereas, we do not oppose accountability in public schools, but believe that standardized tests dominate instructional time and block our ability to make progress toward a world-class education system of student-centered schools and future-ready students; therefore be it resolved, that the Three Village Central School District calls on Governor Cuomo, Commissioner King, the State Legislature, and the Board of Regents to re-examine public school accountability systems in this state, including the Annual Professional Performance Review, and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools; and resolved, that the Three Village Central School District calls on the U.S. Congress and Administration to "overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently known as the "No Child Left Behind Act"), reduce the testing mandats, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators."