Feb 28, 2008 1:12 PM
A new study of the impact of Texas’s public-school accountability system, which served as the Bush administration’s poster child for No Child Left Behind, found that the high-stakes testing system actually contributed to more dropouts and lower graduation rates in large urban districts. Researchers found that the state’s emphasis on high-stakes testing created incentives for schools to welcome the early departure of academically troubled students — who were disproportionately black or Hispanic, or English language learners —because their exodus increased schools’ average test scores. That made it look like test-score gaps between white and minority students were closing. They were, but only for the remaining students who did not drop out.
The report found that “disaggregation of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnerable youth…at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school ratings can show ‘measurable improvement.’”
In a news release announcing the study’s results, Linda McSpadden McNeil, director of the Center for Education at Rice University and one of the report’s four authors, said, “High-stake, test-based accountability doesn’t lead to school improvement or equitable educational possibilities. It leads to avoidable losses of students.”
The report, “Avoidable Losses: High-Stakes Accountability and the Dropout Crisis,” is available online at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/.
Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog, Feb. 14