Testing: A Tool for Closing the Achievement Gap
by Rod Paige, U.S.
Secretary of Education

While there are pockets of excellence all around America, due in great part to the hard work of dedicated teachers, there are still children in America who are being left behind. Fewer than a third of our fourth graders can read proficiently at grade level. Based on National Assessment of Educational Progress data, nearly 70 percent of inner-city and rural fourth graders cannot read at even a basic level. Nearly a third of our college freshmen must take remedial courses.

The achievement gap between our disadvantaged and minority students and their more advantaged peers is real. And as the numbers illustrate, it is persistent. It is those students who are being left behind by our system.

President Bush has made closing the achievement gap his goal. A key component to our success in closing the achievement gap in Texas was testing. But I know testing is a very broad term; it means different things to different people. There are good tests and bad tests; there are also many uses for tests. We are talking about achievement tests that are aligned with standards, objectives and curriculum and that are used to measure and understand progress toward mastery of those standards. These tests are the best tools we have for discovering which schools, and which methods, are succeeding, and also for doing the same for each child.

At the community level, tests of student achievement help us to define success in terms of student performance—not spending—to focus on the outputs of our system, not the inputs. At the classroom level, testing also helps teachers, and at the level of the child, test results also give parents information and control over their children’s education. Some parents do not even know their children’s schools are failing. Some parents do not even know their children are failing. Tests help us give each child an academic identity.

The president’s plan calls specifically for disaggregation of state test data, and requires states to measure progress in closing the achievement gap as one of the criteria for statewide success. I will have a big role in following up with states. I will ensure that their testing and accountability plans will measure every student against high standards, and we will hold schools accountable for the results.

For decades, we have determined success based on dollars, not scores. If money alone were our answer, our problems would have been solved 20 years ago. If more money were the answer, children of all races would be reading and doing math at or above grade level.

Excerpted from a speech delivered to the Education Writers Association. Reprinted with permission from U.S. Department of Education, “Community Update,” June/July 2001.