What Are Teachers' and School Leaders' Major Concerns About New K-12 State Tests? Findings from the American Teacher and American School Leader Panels

Many states have recently made major changes to their K-12 student testing programs. The media have reported growing dissatisfaction with the amount of testing happening in schools and the use of tests for high-stakes decisionmaking. However, there is little systematically gathered information on th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2015
Main Authors: Kaufman, Julia H, Hamilton, Laura S, Stecher, Brian M, Naftel, Scott, Robbins, Michael, Garber, Chandra, Ogletree, Cordaye, Faxon-Mills, Susannah, Opfer, V Darleen
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Education
RAND Corporation
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Summary:Many states have recently made major changes to their K-12 student testing programs. The media have reported growing dissatisfaction with the amount of testing happening in schools and the use of tests for high-stakes decisionmaking. However, there is little systematically gathered information on the perspectives of U.S. educators who have firsthand knowledge about testing and its effects on teaching and learning. This report shares U.S. principals' and teachers' main concerns about testing, drawing upon new survey tools for understanding educators' perspectives and implementation of major education policies: RAND's American Teacher Panel (ATP) and American School Leader Panel (ASLP). The findings are drawn from the ATP and ASLP surveys fielded in February 2015, before the full administration of most state-mandated exams. Findings indicate particular concern with students' test performance, as well as more prevalent concerns about the PARCC assessment compared with other assessments. The information about U.S. educators' concerns will serve as a baseline for tracking changes in attitudes over time. This analysis focuses on "the main state-mandated test for mathematics" and "for English language arts" (ELA) that teachers and principals reported their students taking.