Too much emphasis on standardized tests

Owen Nelson, Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008 | 2 a.m.

I’m writing to comment on Dave Newton’s Tuesday letter, in which he seems to be telling us that standardized tests are here to stay, so we had better just accept the situation. I’ve taught at all levels, from elementary through university, for more than 50 years and, while I agree that standardized tests will always be used, they are now being drastically overused because of the No Child Left Behind law.

Schoolwide standardized testing now consumes weeks of time in any elementary child’s school year.

A major consideration many aren’t aware of is that standardized tests crowd out other forms of evaluation. I am most concerned about the day-to-day evaluations made by classroom teachers and the day-to-day evaluations made by responsible parents. These people are in ideal positions to know a great deal about students based on face-to-face contact, but those evaluations almost uniformly take a back seat to the results of standardized tests.

By acting as though test scores and only test scores can tell us how a child is doing, we discredit both teachers and parents.

If we do not value the teacher’s opinion, let’s get the School Board to eliminate grades and report cards. It’s a certainty that teachers could do more with subject matter if they could free up the large amounts of time involved in grading and making out report cards.