Big Test

Remember when the term Big Oil was coined? It was actually popularized in print beginning in the 1960s. It encompasses the world’s five or six largest publicly owned oil and gas companies: BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, etc. The term has become a pejorative, linking the excesses and blunders of the oil giants to the negative effects they have had, from political manipulation to environmental damage. When people think Big Oil, they think of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 or the Deep Horizon (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Effects of both are still being felt.

Now we have Big Test. I use this term in the same manner as Big Oil, to describe a conglomerate of companies that, following the pattern of Big Oil, are in cahoots with politicians and policy makers to shape a sphere of influence to their own ends, with little regard to who gets hurt along the way. Big Test is doing the same “environmental” damage in schools as Big Oil did along the shores of Alaska and the Gulf Coast. People and institutions are being negatively affected as testing companies are raking in unprecedented profits. Unlike Big Oil, however, Big Test is not yet being held accountable for the damage they are doing.

Schools are suffering from a massive “test spill.” Students are being enslaved—and I use that term intentionally—by seemingly unrelenting tests that deprive students of real learning time and rob schools of funds they need that are, instead, now diverted into the deep corporate pockets of Big Test. The message from the disasters promulgated by Big Oil should offer cautionary tales for citizens, parents, and concerned educators. Big Test needs to be called to account—before further damage is done to children, schools, and the very future of our democracy.

(As a side note: I use the term Big Test in a different manner from Nicholas Lemann, who wrote The Big Test: The Secret History of American Meritocracy, which is about the SAT. Lemann’s book, written more than a decade ago, is worth another look, however, in light of recent maneuverings by the College Board. Readers may be interested in a recent New York Times article, “The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul,” in the Sunday, March 6, 2014, issue. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/the-story-behind-the-sat-overhaul.html?_r=0)