If you’re looking for a controversy in K-12 education, look no further than the issue of standardized testing. We loathe their high-stakes value, the anxiety they induce in our children, and the billions of dollars spent on tutors and programs to prepare for them. Yet standardized tests offer quick results and insight to guide the increasing micro-management of our children’s education.
Examples of this test-prep culture cover the hallways in many DC Public and Charter Schools. Posters showcasing the District’s mandated exam, currently the DC CAS, highlight practice sessions, study-prep rallies, and exam reporting dates. Schools know how crucial preparation is for these exams and why it is important to celebrate a culture of high expectations.
Our understanding of standardized testing in K-12 schools became clearer last month when Teach Plus released its report, The Student and the Stopwatch. The report calculated the amount of time students spend actually taking state- and district-mandated tests in English Language Arts and math in urban and suburban schools. It found that urban school districts spend considerably more time on testing than their suburban counterparts.
Two issues the report didn’t address, however, are 1) Does the amount of time students spend taking tests reflect the real time dedicated to testing?, and 2) Why do urban schools spend 24% more time on testing than their suburban neighbors?
Real Time Spent on Testing
The report concluded that across the 12 urban districts it evaluated, students spend 1.7% of their time taking tests. So why does it feel like 50% of education conversations are related to testing when it occupies less than 2% of students’ time? That’s because this finding reveals only the tip of the time-on-testing iceberg.
Beneath the water, where a great majority of the iceberg is hidden, is the amount of time students spend preparing for these exams. When exams hold such high stakes, as they do in Washington, DC, and many other cities, the need for great amounts of preparation time is imperative.
A study by the American Federation of Teachers, reported in The Washington Post, found that test prep and testing absorbed 19 full school days in one district and a month and a half in another. Although the Teach Plus report frames the time spent on standardized testing as quite low, the amount of time dedicated to preparing for these exams has grown into a major chunk of the teaching and learning experience, especially in many of the urban districts highlighted in the report.
Urban vs. Suburban
So why do suburban schools spend considerably less time on testing than urban schools? After decades of underperforming urban schools being largely ignored by those beyond (and sometimes within) their immediate communities, they are now the focal point of the education reform movement in the United States.
Major corporations, private foundations, and city leaders are heavily investing in urban schools. These stakeholders want quick, easy-to-understand, and tangible returns on their investments – and testing produces these. Therefore, testing, and the preparation culture it requires, is significantly more present in urban schools.
Regardless of the value we may place on testing, it’s important to understand that when calculating the total time students spend on testing, the amount of time they spend preparing cannot be overlooked. Evaluating this in both urban and suburban schools is a worthy study to pursue because it will provide a clearer picture of the true amount of time committed to testing in students’ education.