The High Cost of Bad Tests

The Common Core State Standards are euphemistic on several levels. They are national in character and were made with little to no real input from educators in the various states. And they are detailed to such an extent as to create a set of curricula rather than standards per se. The Common Core is a national curriculum—plain if not simple.

Layered on this curriculum is a panoply of mandated tests, most intended to be administered on computers using the Internet. The notion of scattershot high-stakes testing is a bad idea largely conceived by a few misguided, well-intentioned politicians and a large number of not-so-well-intentioned lawmakers who are hell-bent on destroying public schools in their end run on democracy. The latter group wants to further corporatize the United States and get rich(er) doing it. I will assume that readers already know that this is bad public policy, regardless which side of it they’re on.

If the test pushers have their way, they will certainly enrich the testing corporations. Yesterday one of the two federally funded national testing consortia, PARCC (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) released a new cost estimate for its testing vehicles: $29.50 per student. Fortunately, there’s some pushback. As might be imagined, this news has infuriated already irritated state education folk, even those nominally in favor of bad tests. Georgia has been particularly incensed.

Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test costs $8 to $9 per student and covers five subjects. PARCC’s tests cover only two subjects at a cost three times higher. Consequently, Georgia has announced that it is withdrawing from PARCC. If three more states follow suit, PARCC’s $186 million in federal funding with be in jeopardy, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. Kentucky and North Dakota both withdrew in June.

Oklahoma, earlier this month, didn’t officially withdraw from PARCC but decided to design its own tests. Officials estimated that they could save at least $2 million a year using the DIY approach.

Indiana is a “governing state” in PARCC, but since Indiana lawmakers voted to “pause” the implementation of the Common Core, there has been a concomitant scaling back on participation in PARCC. Admirably, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said last month, “We will not be participating in consortiums that decide for us the cost of the test, the questions on the test, the cutoffs. Indiana will be doing that on its own.”

High cost is propelling a rethinking of Common Core testing. What we need next is some additional rethinking about the whole question of whether mass high-stakes tests offer any real value at all. (Spoiler alert: They really don’t.)