High Stakes Testing Can Lower Student Achievement

From Wasserman @ the Boston Globe

At Harvard School of Education, there is a lot of talk about Finland's public education system.  According to PISA (arguably the premier international testing measurement), Finnish students have scored amongst the top three out of 30 industrialized countries over the last decade. 

This piqued my interest, and I added the book Finnish Lessons - by PhD professor and former World Bank employee Pasi Sahlberg - to my Christmas list.  The book surveys the history of school reform in Finland, the differences between teacher training and teacher professionalism in Finland compared to other industrialized nations, and the future of the Finnish education system.

Although there are many marked differences between the Finnish education system and other industrialized nations, the most notable is Finland's abandonment of high stakes testing.  Whereas the past decade of school reform in countries like the United States, England, New Zealand, and Japan are largely defined by high-stakes testing accountability measures (the use of tests to make significant educational decisions for students), Finland is an anomaly.  Markedly, Sahlberg points out that, "...students' performance in mathematics in all test-based accountability-policy nations is...in decline, in cycle after cycle, between 2000 & 2006."  Sahlberg notes there is a similar trend for reading and science scores.

In essence, Sahlberg convincingly argues that high-stakes testing is not a vital organ for student achievement; in fact, an argument could be made that high-stakes testing is cancerous to student performance.

With this in mind, does American Educational Policy reflect these findings?  Ask Arne Duncan.  See what he says and get back to me.

Photo from Finnish Lessons, Page 66

Sahlberg, P., & Hargreaves, A. (2011). Finnish lessons : What can the world learn from educational change in finland?. New York: Teachers College Press.