From November 11-15, the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is holding it's annual conference in Louisville, KY. Yesterday afternoon I flew in to Louisville with my best friend, Todd. Todd is Director for Advanced Academics for a large school district outside of Dallas, TX. Todd is an influential administrator and participates on lots of committees here at NAGC. Getting his take on the administrative end of education is often informative -- if infuriating. Apparently, the newest trend for school districts is to commit to something called benchmark testing. You can get a general description of benchmark testing from a recent Education Leadership article, but, in general, benchmark testing involves district-wide testing of kids progress every nine weeks or so with district-wide, district-developed assessments.

I want to say up front that we are making a big leap to assume that the central office staff in most school districts is qualified to develop the benchmark tests being used. But, even given this leap, benchmark testing is a mistake.

Todd says that benchmark testing is like weighing in at a Weight Watcher's meeting. It tells you how you are doing. I think Todd's analogy is false. It's more like going to a Weight Watcher's meeting and spending two days standing on the scales. Benchmark testing, if nothing else, wastes a lot of instructional time.

More importantly, most people attending Weight Watcher's just want to lose weight -- weight is their only measure of progress. It's simple. Education is much more complex. In a truly differentiated classroom, kids are learning a variety of things in a variety of ways. Qualified teachers are both artists and scientists as they build learning communities that support and challenge every child in their classroom. Some kids need more time to learn objectives, some kids will need to be accelerated on to more advanced material because they've already mastered an objective, some kids will need some direct instruction, other will want to work independently. The classroom that really differentiates for the variety of learners present needs a lot more breathing space and flexibility than can be measured by a nine-week benchmark test.

What I suspect we will find out with such tests is that slower learners aren't doing as well with the benchmarks and the gifted children have already mastered them. Something a qualified teacher could have told you in the first place. We've just taken millions of dollars in staff time and instructional time to develop, administer, score, and report information that any qualified teacher knew to begin with. (Oh, and don't think there aren't a lot of educational consulting firms and test development companies salivating over the potential school dollars that will flow to them once districts buy into this idea).

I suspect there is actually another issue in play here. Giving benchmark tests every nine weeks forces teachers to drill and practice students on a narrowly defined set of objectives (i.e., the "benchmarks"). It's a big stick held over the teacher's heads with the administration saying if you don't teach these narrowly defined set of objectives, we'll know it every nine weeks. It's really just a way that administrators, worked into a lather over all of the testing forced down their throats by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), can control what teachers are doing in their classrooms. The vision of these administrators isn't on creating exciting learning environments were every child can be challenged and succeed -- it's on drilling and practicing on a narrowly defined set of objectives so that every child in the room will reach a minimum level of achievement as measured by NCLB approved tests.

Groups that advocate benchmark tests speak out of both sides of their mouth. On the one hand, they say we can serve a variety of learners in truly differentiated classes, and on the other, they call for teachers to drill and practices on basic skills so schools will perform well on NCLB assessments. These groups can't have it both ways, and kids, classrooms, and teachers are being marginalized by their rhetoric.