Why are teachers unions so opposed to standardized testing?

Question

In Massachusetts, we saw a lot of opposition to the MCAS when it was first proposed.

Are American teachers lazier than their counterparts in Europe?

Is this the reason high schools in the U.S. are seen as being inferior to ones in Europe?

Answer 1

Because it is not always fair.  In most states, the state issued tests are given to compare schools/districttts. The better your school/distric does, the more funding the state gives you.  On the flip side, if your school/distric does a poor job, your school does not receive as much funding.  Teachers don't like this because the funding helps to provide a better education, so if your school is already doing poorly, they will continue to do so because of these tests.

Answer 2

With standardize testing, you end up teaching to answer the tests - as these will be used for judgements about funding, etc. - rather than just teaching.  They aren't being lazy, they are being concerned for genuine educational standards.

Answer 3

The reason for the opposition is that testing does not tell you the whole story. I have three daughter's with learning disabilites, two of them with serious problems that enabled them to leave the public school system the other one was left to struggle with testing that wasn't fair because this was a time that didn't work well to helping children with disabilites.  Even with the Federal law that says that kids with LDs should get the help and services that they need to succeed in school they don't.  A lot of children also do very well with testing what about the kids that don't???? What about the thousands of kids that develop test anxiety so that even if they know the work they freeze up on the tests????  What about the millions of kids with LD's who aren't diagnosed so that they aren't getting the help that they need???? Did you know that 1 in 5 children has an UNdiganosed learning disability??? I'm talking about kids will perfectly normal IQ's but who for what ever reason learn differently then their peers!!!!  They don't test well becuase they aren't getting the services that they need to learn the way that their brain operates.   What about them???? 95% of the kids that drop out of high school do so because they have LD's that were never dealt with and they either got so frustrated at their inability to learn or they dropped out because they'd fallen so far behind their peers that they didn't feel that they could ever catch up.  Do you have any idea of how hopeless and helpless those thousands of kids feel????  Did you know that most criminals have a lD that's was never dealt with  so they dropped out of school????  These are just some of the reasons that most teachers don't want to just give tests to base a students progress on.   There are more important ways of proving that the student knows the material.  Also if you have to rely on standardize tests the teachers spend most of the year teaching how to pass the test not the material that's on the test.