The Problem With No Child Left Behind

Accountability and Testing Effective educational practice in terms of accountability is instilling in the student, or developing it if it is already possessed, the desire to learn. Accountability should not be the student being accountable to the teacher in order to pass a test or show good marks. Accountability should be something that the student holds over him or herself. It can be measured by the desire to learn and the will to go through with exercises and do the homework and work on problems to overcome them.

By urging students to hold themselves accountable, the teacher can reinforce the notion that school is not about passing tests but about acquiring the skills to embrace lifelong learning. One way to do this is to have the students identify goals at the beginning of the year and hold themselves to those goals, measuring their improvement throughout the year to see how they are doing and what they can do to become better in order to reach their goals.

As Knight (2008) observers, "there is a direct relationship between people's basic beliefs and how they view such educational components as the nature of the student, the role of the teacher, the best curricular emphasis" (p. 41). If the student is able to see how this relationship works and their own role in it, they will tend to be more active in their pursuit of the goal, rather than passive instruments, expecting the teacher or curriculum to move them without any effort, will or desire on their part.

The point is to move the students to "own" their educational experience and make it work for them. Standardized tests contribute to the total process of education in the sense that they allow students to see how they are progressing in terms of being able to identify specific rules of language or use parts of speech correctly, for example. Standardized testing is helpful in that it serves as a barometer of where the student is compared to others or what expectations are for him or her.

Standardized tests can also support the "philosophy of objectivism" as "a more realistic and usable basis for the process of education" by providing students with an objective view of their progress based on reason (Koonce, 2016, p. 46). After all, tests are formed by rationale analysis of what a proficient student or moderate student, etc. should be able to answer correctly with regard to the subject. This type of test is very helpful in giving the student a sense of whether his or her progress meets the reasonable expectations of the school.

It is, in other words, like seeing if one can jump over the bar -- and every time one successfully jumps, it is raised a little higher. In this way, the student is continually challenged and pressed to improve. My reaction to the national testing emphasized in NCLB is conflicted.

On the one hand, I see why it is helpful to have a standardized test for all levels; but on the other, I see how important it is to approach each student as a unique individual whose accountability should not be based on a single standardized test. The value of such tests is that it shows where one is with regard to expectations.

The problem with such tests is that too much time can be spent on trying to pass the test in the class instead of on a broader or deeper or more thorough study of the principles of language from which the students might otherwise benefit. There becomes a "preoccupation with raising test scores" as Dr. Popham (n.d.) notes.

For example, some students may not need to the focus so much time on the test if they show the ability to already pass it or leap over the bar so to speak.