Low Stakes Testing

Dana Goldstein had an interesting post a couple weeks ago (I move at a slower pace than the rest of the world) in The Nation’s group blog. (I recommend reading it.) The post is about standardized testing for preschoolers:

With new evidence of standardized test score-inflation and straightforward adult cheating on K-12 tests in Atlanta, Washington, DC, and across the country, you’d think it would be exactly the wrong time for the Obama administration to commit $500 million to developing additional state tests for a totally new population of children: pre-schoolers.

But Dana says she’s “cautiously enthusiastic” about the new focus on preschool testing, because

...the model the administration has in mind for pre-school assessment is low-stakes for individual teachers and students and measures not only academic performance but also children’s social, emotional, physical and artistic readiness for kindergarten.

The New Age of Testing

My brother forwarded me this Times article about Shael Polakow-Suransky, the soon-to-be second in command of the NYC public school system. The focus of the article is Mr. Polakow-Suransky's approach to assessment: despite a progressive pedigree—he attended an extremely progressive highschool and studied under Ted Sizer at Brown—he's for more testing and better testing. Strange as it sounds, that may be the only viable position for a contemporary progressive educator, working at the policy level; and though some will probably call it a softening of ideals, Mr. P-S's position represents not so much a compromise as an adaptation of old principles to new circumstances.