Two interesting news articles caught my attention recently, both having to do with how in spite of improving test scores nothing seems to have changed in terms of student performance.

On June 26th, the Boston Globe reported that in spite of Massachusetts' students having to pass a test for graduation, 37% of freshman at public colleges still need remedial help. That's down only 2% from 2002, the year before the test was required.

On June 29th, the New York Times headline writer opined, "Test Scores Are Up. So Why Isn't Everyone Cheering?". In spite of a reported jump of 10 percentage points in the number of New York City students deemed proficient on the state's fourth grade proficiency test there was not any evidence students were learning more. Rather, at a City Council hearing it was pointed out that test preparation drills, the excluding of English language learners, and the rescaling of the tests were more likely responsible for the improvement.

Both of these seemingly overlooked news reports raise fundamental questions about our growing reliance on standardized testing as a measure of school quality. Here are but a few:

• Does test performance equate to any other ability or performance? What is the evidence that doing well on the test means one can do well in the worlds of citizenship, college, or work?
• Are the current crop of tests susceptible to coaching? If tests are to measure ability are they really doing that or just measuring test preparation?
• How much is being taken away from the curriculum in order to prepare students for testing? For example, if tests focus on what are often called lower-order skills, i.e., memorization and recitation, are higher order skills like logical thought and reasoning being pushed out?

It certainly seems from anecdotal evidence that merely improving test scores does not get Americans what we want from our schools. After nearly two decades of insisting on more and more tests we seem less and less satisfied. As with the reports from New York and Massachusetts, there seems to be no evidence of a link between test scores and performance after school. (How well I know this as in my state, Ohio, where graduation tests have been required for almost 15 years, there have been no studies linking success on these tests to success in citizenship, college, or work.) And yet the only solution seems to be more of the same.

To challenge the current reliance on testing is to be accused of having low expectations. Test advocates say these tests finally tell the true story about our schools. That they show unequivocally that our schools are failing. And that by insisting on them we now have real standards for our kids to meet.

I am always skeptical when rhetoric heats up and attacks on people replace reasoned debate. It is sort of "the emperor has no clothes" phenomena---if unable to support a position with evidence, get everyone to look somewhere else. In this case, accuse those who challenge tests to be anti-standards, anti-student, or anti-minority group achievement rather than answer the challenges.

Such debates do not well serve anyone, least of all our children. I would propose we lay aside our axes and grindstones and instead take a hard look at what types of standards we should have to increase the chances that every young person leaves school prepared for the role of citizen, scholar, and worker.

To do this would not be difficult or all that expensive. We simply have to follow closely the lives of young people who graduate from various types of standards systems. This has been done before. The too often forgotten eight-year study of the 1940's followed graduates of high school for four years. Run by the Progressive Education Society, the evidence from that study directly linked the type of school children experienced with their success in college.

It's time we take another close look.

Too much of the current testing process is simply an unexamined experiment. We test as an article of faith. We simply do not know what the effect of making children pass standardized tests is upon their lives after school. Nor do we know how the changes this focus on testing has brought about in curriculum, teaching, or learning will change the lives of our kids. In this era of accountability, data-driven decision-making, and scientifically proven curricula, how can we justify taking so much action on so little evidence?

Here's what I would propose in the way of a new eight year study:

Pair up students who experience significantly different educational experiences. For starters, students who graduate in states and schools that require tests for a diploma versus those that do not. We should also look at students who have graduated under other forms of assessment, such as those used by the New York Performance Standards Consortium. We might also look at different ways of approaching reading, ways of structuring schools (large vs. small for example), and various levels of local vs. state control of the curriculum.

We could follow our students into life after the K-12 system. We could find out if they vote, read a daily paper, or are involved in civic activities. We could easily see how well they do in college and whether or not they need remedial work. Examining if they are employed, are they satisfied with their employment, and how their performance on the job is, would yield other data.

It is not too much to ask the proponents of massive change in our public school system to agree to such a study. Claiming that testing improves things does not mean it actually does. Before we spend another nickel on these tests or another moment preparing kids for them we need some data that says they work. We owe it to ourselves, and more importantly to our children, to find out.