School Testing a Mixed Bag, Study Says

This story originally appeared in The Harvard Gazette.

The efforts to put pressure on Texas schools during the 1990s to raise test scores improved some students’ life chances and but hindered those of others. According to a new study that probed students’ long-term outcomes, school accountability efforts in Texas proved to be a mixed bag.

On the one hand, disadvantaged students who attended schools that had been at risk of failing experienced long-term gains. They were more likely to finish high school, attend and graduate from a four-year college, and have higher earnings than their peers going to schools that didn’t face accountability pressure. The research found that, in this case, students were better off because these schools pushed students to raise their test scores by adding more math courses and increasing staffing and instructional time...

Read more.