DOC PREVIEW
CSUN SED 610 - Assessment Around the World

This preview shows page 1-2 out of 7 pages.

Save
View full document
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 7 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
View full document
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 7 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience
Premium Document
Do you want full access? Go Premium and unlock all 7 pages.
Access to all documents
Download any document
Ad free experience

Unformatted text preview:

November 2006 | Volume 64 | Number 3 NCLB: Taking Stock, Looking Forward Pages 58-63 Assessment Around the World Iris C. Rotberg How does NCLB fit in an international context? Here's what's happening in the rest of the world. Standardized testing is controversial everywhere, regardless of its purpose. Most countries use testing for tracking and for selecting students for admission into academic secondary schools or universities, but generally not for holding educators accountable. Many countries don't even administer standardized tests until the later grades. In fact, most Canadian universities don't require the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or other standardized admissions tests—except for students applying with a U.S. high school diploma! (Ghosh, 2004) In a recent collection of studies of education systems worldwide, which I edited,1 numerous experts discussed current education policies in their countries, including the role that standardized testing plays in their public schools (Rotberg, 2004). I draw on these overviews hereto set No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the context of testing across the globe. The current preoccupation with test-based accountability in the United States is founded on several misperceptions about other countries' practices as well as about international test score comparisons and the extent to which test scores are valid indicators of the quality of education or the state of the economy. These assumptions have dominated U.S. public policy dialogue for decades. Assumption: The rest of the developed world is one (high-achieving) country. Much of the rhetoric about international test score comparisons treats the rest of the developed world as though it were one mythical country that does a better job of educating students than the United States does. However, the rhetoric does not recognize the significant differences in student academic achievement among developed countries; the level and distribution of education funding; the extent to which schools track students by academic ability; secondary school and university enrollment rates; and perhaps most important, the quality of education thateach country offers low-income students, minority students, students with disabilities, language-minority students, and recent immigrants. Assumption: Other countries have found the “right” way to improve student achievement. Many people in the United States assume that other countries have centralized education systemsand that the resulting standardization is the magic bullet for improving student achievement. This assumption ignores the fact that many countries question that policy. France, for example, is reassessing its highly centralized education system because it doesn't meet the needs of an increasingly diverse immigrant population. Many other countries, such as China, Israel, and Sweden, are moving from a centralized to a decentralized system of governance. Australia, Canada, and Germany—countries with long-standing decentralized systems—envision little November 2006 Page 1 of 7ASCD11/27/2006http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.459dee008f99653f...change. In addition, no evidence supports the contention that organizational structure, whether centralized or decentralized, bears any relationship to academic achievement or the ability to compete in the global economy. Assumption: International test score rankings are valid measures of the quality of education. Data do not support the causal relationships that many people establish on the basis of international rankings. If a country ranks high on a given international comparison, people assume that its schools must be “good”; if the country ranks low, its schools must be “bad.” The problem is, international test score comparisons are virtually impossible to interpret, not only because of enormous differences among nations in poverty rates and in societal values and objectives, but also because of major sampling problems, which make it difficult to ensure that comparable samples of students, schools, and regions are being tested across countries. Assumption: A country's ranking on test score comparisons predicts its ability to compete in the global economy. This assumption has been repeated in various guises for the past 40 years, with little evidence to support it. The fact is, many countries typically perceived as high-scoring on international test score comparisons—such as Austria, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—are not the United States' main economic competitors. The United States outsources technical jobs because U.S. consumers are unwilling to accept higher prices and U.S. workers are unwilling to accept lower wages to compete with computer programmers in India or with computer manufacturers in China. These two countries enroll only about one-third of a given age group by the final years of secondary school. Moreover, the education systems of Western European countries and Japan have not immunized their economies against competition from less developed countries with significantly lower rates of literacy and lower enrollment in secondary and higher education. Assumption: Testing can help the United States address the problems that poverty has created. The rhetoric about NCLB ignores the overwhelming impact of poverty, the primary correlate of low academic achievement in every country (Grissmer, Kirby, Berends, & Williamson, 1994). Although the size of the achievement gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds may vary among countries, the existence of this gap is universal. The link between poverty and achievement is higher in the United States than in many other industrialized countries. This is not surprising, given the fact that the United States has both larger income gaps between rich and poor (Blackburn, 1997) and fewer social support systems than most industrialized countries do. But high-stakes testing, accountability requirements, and centralization cannot cure the problems associated with poverty. As one educator put it, We believe that schools solve the problem of poverty, and now this program [NCLB] assumes that tests solve the problem of schools. By implication, that means tests are supposed to solve the problem of poverty. (Rotberg, Bernstein, & Ritter, 2001, p. 14) Assumption: Countries that score high on international test score comparisons hold their educators accountable for students'


View Full Document

CSUN SED 610 - Assessment Around the World

Documents in this Course
Week 2

Week 2

6 pages

Week 11

Week 11

3 pages

Load more
Download Assessment Around the World
Our administrator received your request to download this document. We will send you the file to your email shortly.
Loading Unlocking...
Login

Join to view Assessment Around the World and access 3M+ class-specific study document.

or
We will never post anything without your permission.
Don't have an account?
Sign Up

Join to view Assessment Around the World 2 2 and access 3M+ class-specific study document.

or

By creating an account you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use

Already a member?