The rebellion against high-stakes testing roils across country as states start saying no.

A hardy band of educators and parents have been complaining for years about the test-driven mentality of No Child Left Behind, which makes students’ prospects and teachers’ futures hinge on the outcome of high-stakes exams. Until now, decision-makers haven’t been listening, but the cheating scandal in Atlanta – where 35 teachers and administrators, including the former superintendent, have been implicated in a scheme to change test scores – has emboldened the rebels to turn their complaints into action.


Signs of this rebellion are visible nationwide. In Texas, lawmakers passed legislation in April that reduced the number of tests required for graduation. In New York, the rollout of the latest tests based on new national standards generated a flurry of complaints. Parents have resisted by instructing children not to take the exams.


A new report from advocacy group Broader, Bolder Approach to Education dissects achievement data in three cities – New York, Washington and Chicago – that have adopted what the report calls “market-oriented education reforms” that make test scores the do-or-die standard. The report shows such reforms “deliver few benefits, often harm the students they purport to help, and divert attention from a set of other, less visible policies with more promise to weaken the link between poverty and low educational attainment.”


In an April Washington Post op-ed, Bill Gates added his voice to this chorus. Achievement scores, he argues, should not be the primary basis for determining which teachers get fired and which get rewarded. “I’m all for accountability,” Gates wrote, “but if we aren’t careful to build a system that provides feedback and that teachers trust, this opportunity to dramatically improve the U.S. education system will be wasted.”


In 2009, Gates announced a $290 million donation to the Tampa, Memphis and Pittsburgh school systems, along with a charter consortium in Los Angeles, to implement a system that relies heavily on test scores in rewarding and punishing teachers. These districts were expected to devise quantitative measures for every subject.


There’s a place for testing, but testing must be kept in that place. The new Common Core national standards, now coming into effect, offer an opportunity to recognize the mistakes of the No Child Left Behind-era and get that balance right. Although there has been considerable grumbling over the new standards, their emphasis on hard thinking and creativity instead of memorization make sense. But measuring students’ performance is another, more vexing, matter.


The New York protests were powered by the fact that tests based on the Common Core standards were administered despite the teachers not having been adequately briefed and students not having covered much of the new content. This inept use of testing shows the potential for mischief, which is why AFT president Randi Weingarten, a supporter of the Common Core standards, is seeking a moratorium on testing.


Weingarten argues that such high-stakes decisions should be “held in check until states and districts develop – and carry out – implementation plans that include the time and resources necessary for professional development, curriculum, and instruction to fully reflect the standards.” Unless there’s effective pushback against exam mania, the new regime, intended to encourage independent and critical thinking, may backfire, spawning more high-stakes tests and, consequently, more teaching to those tests. Stopping that from happening must be the rebels’ next battle. 


DAVID L. KIRP, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is author Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives.