High-Stakes Testing & Standards Based Reform
	What If? What if nearly every student in the state passed the state mandated test with scores well above the standards? Would the governor, the legislators, and the media proclaim what wonderful schools and teachers the state has? (Do we hear skeptical laughter?) Or is it more likely we would hear that the test was too easy-that the standards were set too low? We know the answer. The reason we know the answer is because high-stakes testing is more about sorting students than about raising the achievement level for all students. Many of the public at large including legislators, business leaders, and self proclaimed pundits are still basing their thinking on the industrial age need for managers, middle managers, skilled workers, and unskilled workers which needed the public education system to sort the workforce into appropriate categories. However, we are now in the information age and all workers need to function at higher levels. So the old sorting function is no longer appropriate. This is essentially the same message presented by Alfie Kohn to the ASCD 2000 Conference on Teaching and Learning. More information can be found at http://www.alfiekohn.org. Standards based reform should not be equated with high-stakes testing. High-stakes testing typically uses the result of a single test to determine graduation, promotion, or some other life-altering event for a student. Standards based reform can be used to raise the curriculum quality, instructional delivery, and achievement for most, if not all, students. Standards can be used throughout education at many levels. Standards need not be focused into one high-stakes test. The NCTM has a position statement on high-stakes testing that needs very little modification so that it would apply to all the other subject areas as well as mathematics. The NCTM, as usual, has done an excellent job of analyzing an educational situation and producing a reasoned, appropriate response. The statement can be viewed at http://www.nctm.org/about/content.aspx?id=6356