Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Show Me the Money: The High Stakes of School Reform

A recent article in The Gainesville Sun focuses on rewarding students for high test scores. The FCAT (i.e., the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test) is used to determine whether students can advance in grade level and whether seniors can graduate. It is an enormously high stakes test in Florida.

For motivational purposes, students from one of the lowest socio-economic school zones who showed improved scores from the previous year were given 15 second turns in an inflated box filled with one and five dollar bills where a fan blew the money all around them. Students raced to grab as much money as they could.

Yes, the students were given a lesson about banking, savings and checking accounts. The school’s parent teacher association, the advisory council, and local businesses chipped in a little more than $2,000 US.The school’s principal reported that the money machine was a way of saying “good job” to the students. She also encouraged parents to invest the children’s “winnings” in a savings bond.

Similarly, a school in Panama City conducted a sweepstakes where students with perfect attendance, good test scores, and positive attitudes were entered into a sweepstakes for a variety of prizes including a new car worth $18,000 US.Bribery? External motivation? No different than awarding plaques or pizza parties? Perhaps you would like to see evidence of how effectively external rewards raise test scores?

The effect of high stakes tests

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) suggests that several negative outcomes can result from high-stakes testing, including:

• An increased risk of student failure and drop-out
  
  
• Blaming teachers for issues (social and resource-based) out of their control
  
  
• Test scores become the coin of the realm, not education per se

On the other side, a study comparing the FCAT to a low stakes SAT-9 test showed a high correlation between subjects tested and improvement over time.  In other words, teaching to the FCAT “contributed to student performance on broader measures of student learning” (Greene, 2003). So, by this account, teaching to the test is useful in terms of providing students with the skills they need outside the classroom.

Hmmm….

What troubles many researchers and educators about high stakes exams like the FCAT is that a student’s life chances and education opportunities are based on a single instance of a test. If a student is having a bad day and he or she scores poorly on the test, they have little chance of redeeming themselves. It’s also fair to question whether a single test score reflects a student’s true ability or proficiency.There are additional concerns about whether or not a test is aligned with the curriculum. How can we validate this? By standardizing curriculum (oh dear!)? Is that really any guarantee educators are adequately teaching the curriculum? Do students really learn more when they are taught how to take the test?

There are also a number of questions concerning remediation opportunities, language differences among students, students with disabilities, reliability of test usage concerns, as well as other unintended consequences of high stakes tests.

A New Story

High stakes tests probably will not be going away anytime soon. They account for a narrowing of instruction, which could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, depending on the educator and his or her context.

Do rewards work?

Alfie Kohn (1993) suggests that

The answer depends on what we mean by "work." Research suggests that, by and large, rewards succeed at securing one thing only: temporary compliance. When it comes to producing lasting change in attitudes and behavior, however, rewards, like punishment, are strikingly ineffective. Once the rewards run out, people revert to their old behaviors.

Educational reform needs to focus on the underlying issues of school performance. Some of these issues are socioeconomic in nature; others have to do with educators, educator preparation, school resources and conditions, etc. Focusing on test scores alone is a mere finger in the dike; policy makers, principals, and teachers should know better.

So what can we do?

To change the system, we need to approach school reform from all angles and involve all stakeholders (i.e., parents, teachers, principals, AND students). There is no magic bullet, no one-size-fits-all solution. Accountability needs to exist yet so does flexibility. Several guidelines do seem apparent:

• Recognition that school reform is needed -- this requires both vision and leadership
  
  
• Identify all hidden assumptions about schooling and school culture, i.e., determine which structural elements are responsible for current conditions
  
  
• Communicate goals and report progress openly, i.e., all cards on the table face up at all times
  
  
• Initiatives should start from the bottom and be supported from the top, i.e., foster emergence
  
  
• Open the budgeting process up to full disclosure, i.e., show everybody where the money goes
  
  
• Recognize that every decision has a political impact

To a large degree, schooling and school reform are about issues of power and control. An important question to consider might be: who has the power and control and what are they doing with it. Schooling, like politics, is about relationships. It is important then to recognize that the reform process is about building positive relationships between all stakeholders. It also goes back to the notion of fostering community in a society that spends more time relaxing in front of a television set than checking out books from the local library.

Organization and leadership also seem like critical factors in school reform. Can schools do it from within or do they need an external driver to make change happen? Can a group of savvy parents create enough tension? Obviously, the solution is complex and needs buy in from the bottom up and the top down.

If you are aware of any communities who “took back” their schools, I’d love to hear about it. We need more stories like that to help us make meaningful reform a reality.


Offline reference:

Kohn, A. (1993). Why incentive plans cannot work. Harvard Business Review, 71(5).

Photo credit:

Doug Finger/Gainesville Sun