Eli Broad's Sick, Twisted Idea of Education Reform and the Insidious Nature of Standardized Testing

Standardized testing advocates won’t tell you what teachers already know. Standardized testing is an inherently unfair instrument to assess children’s educational growth and a horrible ordeal for many children. Why? The most egregious objection to high stakes testing is the standard error of measurement innate to all standardized testing events. Imagine a child with neurological or psycho-emotional conditions or any child for that matter, whose thinking capacities will naturally be hurried and confused during a timed, high stakes test taking event. Adult designers of the tests utilize semantic trickery in the selected response format to fool children who will know the content presented to them in regular classroom settings, but experience confusion and toxic stress caused by the deception built into the test. Significant numbers of children are going to answer incorrectly on these tests and they and their schools will lose out when the cut scores are selected and test scores fall short. These contrived tests are not reliable indicators of children’s true capacities as learners and are purposely designed to fail children.

Eli Broad of SunLife and the standardized construction magnate of KB Homes fame, wants to standardize your child’s mind through high stakes testing. Broad, through the billions of dollars he uses to leverage the standardized education reform movement has no business dictating the educational experiences of children.

Thinking about taking action? Congress is about to renew NCLB and all the high stakes testing that comes with it. Contact your representative now: http://www.house.gov/representatives/