A LIVE BROADCAST OF
NPR'S TALK OF THE NATION (listen to the recorded broadcast)
School reform and high-stakes testing (the linking of high school graduation with passing an exam) continue to be the subject of serious national debate. In the past decade, almost every state implemented new standards that are linked to high-stakes tests—and President Bush's education plan centers on the same concepts. States are now dealing with fallout of the standards movement: high failure rates on tests, increasing numbers of dropouts (some say because of the test), backlash from parents—particularly in suburban communities—and the mass exodus of teachers out of grade levels where exams are administered.
 Neal Conan, Host of NPR's Talk of the Nation |
On Thursday, March 21, 2002, NPR, the Harvard Graduate
School of Education, and WGBH/Frontline sponsored a live broadcast
of 
NPR's Talk of the Nation from the HGSE campus, focused on testing and assessment and what it takes to improve our schools.
Program Schedule/Participants Lists/Interviews with HGSE Faculty Guests for the Talk of the Nation Broadcast Hour One Hour Two
Also featured was an early screening of 
Frontline's "Testing Our Schools," scheduled to air on PBS on March 28. Massachusetts—one of the states featured in "Testing Our Schools"—is considered a "battleground" state and provides a particularly fiery and dramatic landscape for the show. The state has one of the most well-conceived education reform packages in the country; it had broad-based, grassroots support when it was passed in 1993; the test—MCAS—is well-designed and considered a national model because of its use of open-ended questions that require students to illustrate their facility with concepts and language.
Yet MCAS and the other high-stakes tests remain the subject of much debate, and parents and experts continue to ask whether tests drive improvement in low-performing schools or encourage failing students to drop out?