On May 11 (“Maine lawmakers urged to undo educational reforms”), your paper reported on the controversy growing around Smarter Balanced testing.

The whole idea of tests being used to evaluate the success or failure of teachers and schools should be tested against its own standards. Has No Child Left Behind testing worked to improve our students’ performance? Has making teachers and schools accountable for students’ performance made for better performance?

Presidents Bush and Obama and Congress have told us this will work. We have paid a lot of money and invested a lot of time in trying it. What is the result of all this money and effort?

Test scores all across the nation and in all subjects have drifted down.

It is time to hold the test itself accountable. The theory did not work in practice. Making schools and teachers accountable for student performance has resulted in worse performance. That is what we’ve discovered by trying it all across America.

Though this testing has failed in the U.S., has it been done better elsewhere? Have other countries gotten better performance from their students this way? No.

The countries with the highest scores do not place great emphasis on the tests. They emphasize teacher training, raise teacher status and pay, ask the teachers what they need.

We have put the test to the test, and it has failed.

Ted Arnold

Portland

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