Standardized tests unfair to students, schools

EDITORIAL BOARD Christine Byrd
Editor in Chief

Michael Litschi
Managing Editor

Jonah Lalas
Viewpoint Editor

Barbara Ortutay
News Editor

Amy Golod
Staff Representative

Timothy Kudo
Staff Representative

Brian O’Camb
Staff Representative

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Imagine taking a test in a foreign language in which you are not
fluent. Not only does the test measure your proficiency in the
language, but in math, as well. You barely understand what you were
tested on and after hours of testing you feel frustrated and
lost.

Now imagine your score from that standardized test and the
scores of thousands of other non-fluent English speakers getting
averaged in with the rest of the school district and compared to
other districts ““ including districts with more or fewer
limited-English-speaking students. A school with more
limited-English students who do not understand the language on the
test will have lower scores in comparison. The school will then be
labeled as a “bad” school with
“incompetent” teachers.

Welcome to the California school system.

The San Francisco Unified School District recently conceded to
the state Board of Education and agreed to administer tests written
in English to students who can’t read them. Students in the
district with limited English skills must now take the Stanford 9
test. This not only treats students, schools and districts
unfairly, it also places an unnecessary burden on teachers and
further exacerbates the inequalities pervading our educational
system.

In 1998 the California Department of Education sued San
Francisco for not testing close to 6,000 students lacking English
proficiency skills. In response, San Francisco and other cities
including Berkeley, Oakland and Hayward filed a countersuit arguing
the test infringed on the students’ civil rights.

But rather than sticking to their guns, last week the San
Francisco Unified School District agreed to administer the tests to
those students. This decision came after the state Board of
Education rewrote a rule and allowed schools to inform parents of
ways to waive testing for their children. But this still fails to
correct the deficiencies of standardized testing.

The Stanford 9 is aimed at measuring proficiency in skills
ranging from grammar to mathematics. But the state cannot expect
such a test to accurately measure student skills if the students
filling in the bubbles cannot even read the questions.

Imposing statewide tests wastes valuable class time, but also
cruelly sets limited-English students up for failure. The system
obviously discriminates against immigrant students.

Furthermore, the fact that bilingual education is no longer
available in California schools due to Proposition 227 only worsens
the existing problem. With the lack of instruction in a language
they can understand, many students, especially those from minority
communities, are placed at a disadvantage. In some areas, like
Santa Ana, 70 percent of the students speak limited English and,
therefore, may not understand the test. This does not reflect on
the quality of the teachers or the district, but the Stanford 9 is
used to compare Santa Ana to other school districts.

At the same time, it would also be unfair to allow school
districts to exclude all but the best students in their testing,
thereby inflating their scores and making their school look
better.

Yet the Stanford 9 only begins to highlight the inherent flaws
with all standardized testing.

The state uses standardized tests to unfairly compare between
“good” and “bad” schools. The difference in
quality of schools has little to do with the score on a test.
Emphasizing testing so much only encourages teachers to waste
valuable class time teaching the test. And that only hurts
education.

The quality of schools is directly related to the resources of
the school. Where the facilities, class materials and
extracurricular activities are better, the schools are better.
Where they are short on textbooks, desks and after school programs,
education suffers.

SFUSD should not have conceded to the State Department of
Education. Non-fluent students do not benefit from spending time on
a standardized test they cannot understand. And no student benefits
from spending class time preparing for one test at the expense of
various other educational opportunities.