A Noted Reformer Argues Against High Stakes Exams

WINGERT: Higher standards for all students is one of the rare reforms that Democrats and Republicans agree upon. Why are you opposed? MEIER: I’m for high standards. I’m not for standardization. I’m not in favor of more multiple-choice tests, or important decisions being made using only one instrument–while ignoring the input of the teachers who know these kids… There is no evidence that standardization produces more equality. This is a lazy and cheap way of trying to provide equity.

Some of the support for standardization springs from a distrust of the school system. Isn’t some of that distrust deserved? No. Students today read as well as they did in the past, and as well as everyone else in the world. What has been revolutionary is the kind of literacy we now think students should have. In the 1940s we didn’t think literacy meant being able to read a college text. Now we have enormously higher expectations, and a phony hysteria about the distance between where we are and where we’d like to go that is fueling this movement.

What started the hysteria? It came from a fear in the 1980s that we would be eclipsed by Japan or Germany. Now our economy is doing very well, so I don’t get why we still have this panic. Of course students could do better, but the kind of citizens we need in the future are not those who will do better on a standardized test.

Are you worried that high-stakes tests will encourage schools to get rid of their tough-to-teach cases, instead of working harder to help them? You said it. I think we’re going to see a lot of interesting games going on, like who we’re going to hope will drop out of school.

What should we be doing instead of more testing? We should be focusing on smaller schools and keeping students and parents more involved in decision making. The most powerful thing you can do for kids is get them into something interesting, help them imagine a life doing interesting things. Those are the life-transforming experiences. My fear is that all this emphasis on testing is moving us away from those ideas.