We've seen this for well over a decade now - one false myth after the other.
"Testing and accountability CAUSE a narrowing of the curriculum." "Testing and accountability CAUSE teaching to the test." "Testing and accountability CAUSE one-size-fits-all teaching." "Testing and accountability CAUSE a loss of morale among teachers."
All of it is palpably false, as I've shown in column after column, citing hard evidence that disprove these mostly politically-charged assertions that have been purely designed to drive the public to stick with the woeful status quo.
The sad part is that while the propaganda is false it has been taken as truth and has done great damage to the the standards movement and the progress it's been making.
One other piece of propaganda that has been propagated out of the myth machine has been the assertion that testing and accountability drive students to drop out. Yet, as is clear from the study whose link is provided below, quite to the contrary, we've experienced stunning gains in the graduation rate during the accountability era. These gains parallel the strong gains in student achievement as measured on the NAEP.
The big issue is whether we'll continue to see all these gains if the current efforts to weaken accountability persist and are effective. I fear we won't. Citizens should wake up to what's going on here before all the hard won momentum that has been achieved over the last 20 years is lost.
- 2015 Building a Grad Nation Report | GradNation