Yesterday’s Mom on a Mission isn’t the only person to think that high-stakes testing isn’t beneficial. Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, once a staunch supporter of No Child Left Behind, is now an outspoken critic with a new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. One of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing.
According to NPR, “The basic strategy is measuring and punishing,” Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. “And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there’s a lot of cheating going on, there’s a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it’s actually lowered standards because many states have ‘dumbed down’ their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are.”
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