Generally speaking, standardized tests do provide a reasonable assessment about student academic progress vis-à-vis grade level expectations and targets. Although there are differing opinions about their usefulness and predictability, the tests are helpful as administrators make decisions about the allocation of classroom resources to respond to remediation needs as well as the assignment of specialized teaching personnel. However, the greatest challenge for many schools has been finding the time during an already full school calendar to provide the additional teaching necessary to get many students to a level where they can perform adequately on the tests. To voice their concerns and disappointments about the time and resource constraints, teachers and administrators have been sounding off loudly and clearly from small and large school districts across the country. To make matters worse, there has been no shortage of shocking reports of teaching professionals who give students advance copies of tests, alter student answer sheets, and engage in other cheating schemes. I’m not sure too many of us ever thought that so many classroom teachers would actually jeopardize the academic promise of their students with these kinds of cheating exercises. Nevertheless, these are essentially the unintended consequences of nationwide testing and accountability that must be rooted out in order to restore the integrity of teaching and learning for all youth.

While I don’t believe for a second that the nobility of elementary and secondary classroom instruction has been lost, I do know that the profession has suffered tremendously in some of the toughest communities because of the lack of high quality teaching personnel and highly capable school administrators. The net result for students is that they perform below their grade levels and are not academically prepared to excel on standardized tests. Instead of exhibiting high levels of commitment and professionalism in their teaching roles, some classroom teachers are disgracing the profession and modeling the wrong behaviors for students. We used to teach young people that if they put the study time in, then they could expect academic success. It was never acceptable for young students to obtain answers from a classroom instructor or another student’s score sheet. One can only imagine what must be going through young people’s minds when their adult teachers actually give them test answers or advance copies of a test. For those who are not interested in raising the expectations and standards for America’s school aged youth, they should simply move out of the way so that those of us who truly care about the academic success of our youth can get to work. I guess some of the opponents of standardized testing really do harbor low expectations for certain groups of students, because by engaging in cheating schemes, the adults are essentially saying no to raising the academic standards and expectations for all schoolchildren.