In the continuing era of No Child Left Behind, which calls for verifiable data to be used to make decisions about schools and education policy, standardized tests have become increasingly common for most American schools. With more recent questions about how much these test scores should be used to evaluate teachers as well as the imminent dip in scores expected for the tests aligned with the new Common Core, the already vociferous debate about standardized tests has only increased in intensity. Two new poll results highlight the conflicts in this debate.
The first poll, conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public affairs, contained the following results:
- Sixty-one percent of parents think their children take an appropriate number of standardized tests and 26 percent think their children take too many tests.
- Teachers’ fates shouldn’t rest solely on test results, according to a majority of parents. Fifty-six percent said classroom observations should be part of teachers’ evaluations, and 74 percent of all parents said they wanted districts to help struggling teachers.
- At the same time, 72 percent of all parents said they want to make it easier for school districts to fire teachers who aren’t getting the job done. That position had the strongest showing among white parents, 80 percent of whom favored the idea. About 6 in 10 Hispanic or Black parents agreed.
- Among parents who are also teachers or share a household with a teacher, the opinions shifted. Only about 3 in 10 in that group think changes in students’ test scores should count in teacher evaluations. And 55 percent of households with teachers said standardized test scores in general should not be used to evaluate teachers.
- Despite many Republicans’ unrelenting criticism of the Common Core State Standards, in various stages of implementation in 45 states and the District of Columbia, 52 percent parents have heard little or nothing about the academic benchmarks and a third are unsure if they live in a state using them. Still, when given a brief description of what the standards do, about half of parents say educational quality will improve once the standards are implemented, 11 percent think it will get worse, and 27 percent say they’ll have no effect.
- Seventy-five percent of parents say standardized tests are a solid measure of their children’s abilities, and 69 percent say such exams are a good measure of the schools’ quality.
- A full 93 percent of parents say standardized tests should be used to identify areas where students need extra help. Smaller majorities think such tests should be used to measure school quality, evaluate teachers or determine whether or not students are promoted or can graduate.
The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey was conducted June 21 through July 22, 2013. The nationally representative poll, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, involved landline and cellphone interviews in English or Spanish with 1,025 parents of children who completed grades K through 12 in the last school year. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.
The second poll, conducted by Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup, offers results that suggest the opposite story about Americans’ opinions about standardized testing:
- Fewer than 25 percent of respondents said they believe increased testing has helped to improve public schools.
- In 2012, 52 percent of poll respondents said they favored using test scores to evaluate teachers. This year, support dropped to 41 percent.
- 58 percent of respondents oppose requiring teacher evaluations to include student scores on standardized tests. That’s a reversal of public opinion from just last year, when 47 percent of PDK/Gallup respondents opposed using test scores in evaluations.
The PDK/Gallup poll, which is its 45th annual survey on public attitudes toward public schools, was conducted by telephone in May. The national survey of 1,001 respondents 18 and older has a margin of error of 3.8 percent.
The difference in the polls, in addition to reflecting Americans’ conflicted opinions, also results from the way that the questions were asked:
In its question on testing, the PDK/Gallup poll told respondents that there had been a significant increase in testing before asking them to answer whether they thought more testing had helped, hurt, or made no difference in the performance of public schools. The AP survey—which polled parents and guardians with children in grades K-12—posed a different question. In asking parents how important it is for schools to regularly assess students, 74 percent said it was either extremely or very important to use tests to gauge both how their children are doing and how schools are measuring up.
For more information, please visit: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/08/21/02pdk_ep.h33.html
