Myatt: More tests won't help our high schools
By Larry Myatt / Guest Columnist
Tuesday, September 7, 2004

As students head back to classrooms this fall, for too many of them the doors will open on high schools that are academically and socially outdated, increasingly pressurized, and less able than ever to do the job expected of them.
     Despite the fact that our new workplaces are dynamic, global and increasingly interconnected, and require employees to possess listening and communication skills, learn and solve complex problems in teams, and visualize and understand complicated systems approaches, the academic framework in most high schools does not support, and actually devalues, those skills and behaviors.
     This past spring Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, an infrequent commentator on public schools, was uncharacteristically outspoken in stating that although our high schools may have served the nation well a century ago, they are no longer able to provide the kind of preparation required for life in today's world. I agree with Mr. Greenspan, but, if anything, he may have understated the extent of the problem. Simply put, one of our most important and valued social institutions -- the American public high school -- is showing signs of heavy stress.
     One sign of that stress is the increasing divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots." Those who can afford it increasingly put their children into private schools, while schools for poor children continue to decay physically and spiritually. Home schooling has become the fastest growing segment of pre-college education.
     Other signs of stress -- school violence and epidemic teasing and bullying, teacher burnout and protracted labor disputes, test-cheating scandals and finessed student performance data, increasing leadership vacancies and shrinking applicant pools -- point to a crisis in our high schools and to the need for creative solutions.
     Yet, our current administration and many state education policy makers are content to spend billions on test preparation and administration, unable, it seems, to imagine a new vision of what high schools could be in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.
     This past week the Center for Education Policy released the results of a study that revealed that many of the high school graduation tests in use around the country fail to measure skills required in college or the workplace, and that many states are unclear about the purpose of their tests. The staggering and still growing number of standardized tests being foisted on virtually every school and district has, ironically, locked in a set of values and priorities, structures and policies, and curriculum and assessment practices that Grover Cleveland would easily recognize, but which do little, if anything, to promote the improvement of our schools.
     This emphasis on testing is the center piece of current federal educational policy. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act has put in place a system of test-based accountability in every school in the nation. Without any evidence that such testing will either improve schools or make our children better suited for life after school, billions of dollars are being spent on this social experiment with our kids. Already the results are disturbing, with reports of more limited curricular offerings, less student focus on thinking are reasoning, and cut backs in the arts and other programs that parents want and students say helps keep them in school.
     Current federal policy demonstrates a lack of imagination and commitment to the extensive restructuring our high schools need. This is not for a lack of models -- all over the country small, personalized, engaging high schools are making a difference in the lives of our children. It is instead a failure of leadership.
     This colossal failure of leadership comes at too high a price -- the lives of our young people and the ability of our democracy to sustain itself. In no other arena would community and business leaders tolerate such an anachronism. Parents deserve, and should demand, more than their children are getting, and should work with their elected representatives and school officials to reclaim the billions being spent on testing, in the name of a false accountability, and reinvest it in local schools and in a sustained dialogue about the kinds of schools their children truly need.