The School-Test Publisher Complex

Richard P. Phelps, via a kind email:

Within several months, the most important document in US education testing--the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing--will incorporate the conclusions of biased, irreparably flawed research that favors education's vested interests. School districts and taxpayers will be compelled to pay for the administration of more tests, perhaps twice as many in some areas. But, these new tests will not be used for any of the proven benefits of testing, such as feedback or motivation. Their only purpose will be to "audit" other, already-existing tests.

Why do current tests need "auditing" you ask? Allegedly, scores and score trends on standardized tests with consequences, or "stakes", can never be trusted and need to be verified by those from parallel "no stakes" tests. Presumably, scores from no-stakes tests, no matter how administered and no matter who administers them, are as trustworthy as a pug-nosed Pinocchio.

The notion reminds me of the Will Smith-Jon Voight film Enemy of the State, in which corrupt politicians and federal intelligence agents misuse their power to monitor their fellow citizens for mutual self-aggrandizement. After the miscreants' criminal activity is exposed, officials promise to "monitor the monitors", apparently within the same institutional structures that harbored the original malfeasance. To that announcement, the Regina King character in the film replies "Well, who's gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors?"

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 7, 2012 3:28 AM
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