Standards-Based Reforms: Problems and Possibilities

Falk, Beverly. “Standards-Based Reforms: Problems and Possibilities.” The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 83, No. 8 (Apr., 2002), pp. 612-620

Falk does a good job in her pretty comprehensive review of some of the dangers and effects of standards-based teaching and assessment lead education. The article begins with the observation that far too often “standards-based reform [has been] defined largely as making sure children do better on…standardized paper tests.” After marking some of the potential positives that could come from properly enacted standards-based education—setting clear and consistent macro/micro-goals for teachers and students—Falk delves in to a critique of the negative results of assessment led education.

While Falk addresses other major issues that she sees rising from assessment led education—“assessing new standards with old tests,” “high stakes testing causes harm,” “investing in testing instead of teaching and learning,” “cheating on the rise” (that of school administrators for higher scores), and the issue of “relying on a single test for high stakes decisions”—the most influential and drastic shift that is seen since assessment led education became the norm and policies such No Child Left Behind imparted high stakes costs for not following such has been the greater issue of “teaching to the test.”

A result of policy and higher administration hand-down mandates, assessment led education, which seems to be a reaction to low national test scores, spurring “teaching to the test” has played the greatest role in shifting the classroom into a prep environment as opposed to a learning environment. Teaching to the test is the result of an imposition of high demand on students and educator to meet bars test measured student success.

In this, teachers are pushed to model their curriculum on the standards in preparation for tests. There are two part of that statement—the thought of modeling curriculum to standards, and in preparation for tests. While standards based education is not wholly inhibiting, and in fact allows for some consistency in curriculum, current testing is rigid and is designed, as Falk calls it, to produce a “bell curve” where at least 50% of students fall below the mean. In terms of the students it enforces a game of winners and losers, insisting that there can’t be losers, as is the mission of No Child Left Behind. Furthermore, educators are then hung up on how to best prepare for a one-hour assessment of a student as opposed to preparing that individual for a lifetime of learning.

In this the failures of schools has only brought forth a system unfit and contradictory in its inability to address the dynamics of education and students, and indeed giving up on some in its rigidity and form. This becomes cyclical as schools no longer invest in education, but rather testing—a point that Falk addresses.

Falk’s assessment of assessment led education does well in pulling apart the problems that result from imposing a single form solution on a multi-formed and much more complex issue—that being how to improve education and student performance.