President Barack Obama has unveiled a new Department of Education initiative in order to reduce “over-testing” that includes capping the percentage of time students can spend on tests to 2 percent of “her classroom time.”
Obama introduced his new education proposal in the form of a pop quiz, asking parents, “If your kids had more free time at school, what would you want them to do with it?”
Obama offered four options: “A. Learn to play a musical instrument,” “B. Study a new language,” “C. Learn how to code HTML,” or “D. Take more standardized tests.”
“If you’re like most of the parents and teachers I hear from, you didn’t choose ‘D.’ I wouldn’t either.”
“I believe in moderation, smart, strategic tests can help us measure our kids’ progress in school. It can help them… learn,” Obama stated. “But I also hear from parents who, rightly, worry about too much testing and from teachers who feel so much pressure to teach to a test that it takes the joy out of teaching and learning, both for them and for the students.”
“I want to fix that. That’s why I've asked the Department of Education to work aggressively with states and school districts to make sure that any tests we use in our classroom meet three basic principles: First, our kids should only take tests that are worth taking. Tests that are high quality, aimed at good instruction, and make sure everybody is on track. Second, tests shouldn't occupy too much classroom time, or crowd out teaching and learning. Tests should enhance teaching and learning. And third, tests should be just one source of information, used alongside classroom work, surveys, and other factors to give us an all-around look at how our students and our schools are doing.”
In order to accommodate Obama’s "fix" of testing, the DOE unveiled its fact sheet for the “Testing Action Plan.”
Part of the DOE’s plan is making sure tests are “time-limited.”
The DOE writes, “We recommend that states place a cap on the percentage of instructional time students spend taking required statewide standardized assessments to ensure that no child spends more than 2 percent of her classroom time taking these tests. Parents should receive formal notification if their child’s school exceeds this cap and an action plan should be publicly posted to describe the steps the state will take to review and eliminate unnecessary assessments, and come into compliance. States and school districts should carefully consider whether each assessment serves a unique, essential role in ensuring that students are learning.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate education committee, responded to the DOE’s proposal in Time.
“The president is right about students taking too many tests. But I hope he will stop and think before trying to cure over-testing by telling teachers exactly how much time to spend on testing or what the tests should be. Classroom teachers know better than Washington how to assess their students’ progress,” Alexander writes.
“Instead, the best way to fix over-testing is to get rid of the federal mandates that are causing the problem. That’s precisely what the United States Senate did when it passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 81-17, legislation to fix No Child Left Behind and give more flexibility to states and classroom teachers to decide which tests will decide what kind of progress students are making.”
“To discourage over-testing, we restored to states and classroom teachers the responsibility for deciding how to use these federal test scores to measure achievement.”