Standardized Tests: Making Our Students and Teachers Sick?

Debate has arisen regarding standardized testing in our U.S. classrooms. A recently released report shed light on the statistics: Between kindergarten and 12 ^th grade, students are tested about 112 times. But what is the evidence that this testing has any positive effects?

As with so many initiatives, the intent at the start was most likely laudable. An attempt to build an accountability system, the goals included ensuring that all students received certain standards of education to help them achieve in life. No one could argue with the premise.

This premise was the genesis for the beginning of the Common Core. The idea that schools could be equalized to give all students a more level chance at success after high school was supposed to elevate the bottom half of students and institutions, precipitating their rising to the occasion and improving the knowledge base for all students. In addition, it was surmised that this could potentially position the U.S. to better compete in the global markets. A lofty but admirable goal. However, in the last few years, there is increasingly hostile debate on whether the core actually can succeed without making students hate school.

Along with the Common Core State Standards, other campaigns followed: No Child Left Behind; Race to the Top. Again, at the core, these are tenets of education we can all embrace. Great ideas, but have those initiatives been effective in meeting their goals?

At the front line, teachers are faced with many challenges on a daily basis: huge variation within one classroom. Students can fall all along the spectrum in cognitive, developmental and psychological abilities. Massive amounts of material need to be taught, including effective use of ever changing technology. Over the years, job security, financial stability and professional worth have begun to hinge on performance. And, with outcomes in every arena difficult to measure, the surrogate metric for judgment of success for teachers and learning institutions has landed on student performance on standardized tests.

The results have been less than stellar. Data fail to show statistically significant differences in most studies on measures such as college preparedness, college attendance or improved classroom performance, despite the various initiatives, at least when considered in aggregate. Unanticipated consequences have also emerged.

Increased pressure on students has resulted in more test-taking anxiety. Encouraged not to miss testing days, children may come to school ill and not at their full ability for successful performance. Multiple cases of children being moved to tears or vomiting are widely shared by educators. Sleeplessness, loss of self-esteem secondary to poor performance and lifelong mental blocks can be seen in individual children. Parents, fatigued from the endless hours and days of testing, are increasingly frustrated. And with mounting pressure to perform being directly correlated to job security, teachers have succumbed to this pressure and changed their approach in the classroom: they teach to the test to attain the required result. The cost of this approach is tremendous and yet tough to measure -- valuable learning for life is supplanted by learning to benchmark well on a specific test. The result is anxious students no better prepared and educators who leave their profession at an alarming rate, frustrated at not being able to give children the breadth of knowledge and skills needed for life achievement.

Obviously, these aren't the intended results of the educational initiatives. And there are things we can do, both as caregivers and as a society, to return to the true intention of the ideas.

Locally, we can assist our children in preparing for these tests. They need to understand, in appropriate terms, the point of the test, and what it says about education as opposed to what it says about the individual being tested. They need perspective about how it can help share their education, not how it may impact their self-esteem. Test days should be treated like any other school day: You attend if at all possible, you get plenty of rest, you eat breakfast and you give your all during the day. Those are the hallmarks of successful days for anyone, whether their profession is full-time student or nuclear physicist. We must help kids understand the results -- where we do well and where we have opportunities. These tests need to help them develop the life skills of self-awareness so they never give up on personal improvement set by their own goals. We need to support our teachers to have time for creativity and personalization in the classroom. Their value needs to be determined by many factors, not just how their class performs on standardized tests.

As a society, there are also areas behind which we can and should unite. The current political administration has started the process of reforming these practices. Recognition of the unintended consequences of testing and building awareness are the initial steps to dealing with the issue. Developing a powerful coalition that includes educators at every level, caregivers, child psychologists, developmental specialists and legislators could inspire real change. While limiting the testing time to 2.5 percent of class time is a start, it is not on its own the solution. Taking honest stock of where the U.S. education system is succeeding and failing, and putting the plan in the hands of those who do the work will begin to elucidate the roadmap for change.

Every proud citizen wants the U.S. to race to the top of the global educational arena. Nobody wants any child left behind because of the school district he belongs to or resource limitations. But just maybe we have been going about this from the wrong direction. Perhaps supporting our teachers to find professional fulfillment in educating students, rather than teaching to the test, will allow their enthusiasm for knowledge to shine and seep into their pupils. Perhaps this will result in a respect and commitment to lifelong learning in our children, giving our society adaptive capability not only to face change in the world but to lead it. That might just be a lesson worth teaching.

Dr. Elaine Cox is the medical director of infection prevention at Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. She is also the Riley clinical safety officer. Dr. Cox practices as a pediatric infectious disease specialist and also instructs students as a professor of clinical pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. The former director of the pediatric HIV and AIDS program, Ryan White Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Riley, Dr. Cox helped lead the effort to change Indiana law to provide universal HIV testing for expectant mothers.