Ask an Expert: Jim Cox and Pat Puleo
Measuring Up: A Parent's Guide to Testing, Grades, and Assessments

I know many reasons why standardized tests like the SAT-9 are helpful, but not a single reason why they're not. Can you list some?

That's a good question, because these tests definitely have their place in the overall assessment of student and school progress. But in many states, including California, they have taken on an unintended importance.

The results of the current SAT-9 were intended to reflect group scores, and track whether subgroups of students make progress. The results aren't reliable indicators of a single student's progress. Also, one can't compare the scores of children in different grades, although people frequently try to.

The SAT-9 doesn't test whether students are meeting the state's educational standards. It's a national test based on the combined frameworks and curricula of many states.

The test includes questions aimed below, at, and above grade level, so that the test company can project how well kids might do in subsequent grades. So students are answering questions about material they studied last year and this year, and content they haven't studied at all yet.

There is a wide margin of error on standardized tests, especially for young children. They may answer the same questions differently from one day to the next.

Because the SAT-9 is a multiple choice test, the results don't tell teachers whether students really know the material or just made good guesses. And because it's secured (not available to teachers for analysis), teachers don't know which questions were answered correctly.

While even the publisher (Harcourt-Brace) calls the SAT-9 an "imprecise instrument," some schools use its results to decide whether to promote individual students to the next grade or not. This has far-reaching consequences for a child and implies that his yearlong performance in class doesn't count, as long as he reaches a certain score on a single test.

California students who are still learning English must take the test. The results for these students—and their impact on the school's overall score—are of little value.

Many people don't understand what percentile rankings mean, and they often make incorrect assumptions—for example, assuming the results tell how many answers a child got right, instead of how her performance compares to that of other students.

All that said, standardized tests can give a good sense of a school's academic performance trends. Using the results along with other forms of assessment (including class work, teacher and state tests, and homework assignments), parents can track the students' and the school's performance.

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