The costs of state assessments

Stateline.org has an interesting story about cost of state assessments -- and some of the problems that have reared their ugly heads since the dramatic increase in testing (and concomitant increase in corporate profits) following the passage of NCLB in 2001. Here's an excerpt:

On the whole, however, state spending on testing has shot up since George W. Bush’s education plan became the law of the land. In early 2001, a year before No Child Left Behind was enacted, states collectively spent almost $423 million on standardized tests, according to a Stateline.org report. During the 2007- 08 school year, states will spend almost $1.1 billion on these tests, according to Eduventures Inc., an education industry research firm.

The costs have been driven up by the sheer volume of testing required by the law. In 2005-06, when states had to have math and reading tests in place for all the required grades for the first time, about 45 million tests were administered throughout the country, 11.4 million more than the previous year. This year, states are required to add a science test, which is expected to add another 11 million tests to the total.

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Probably the biggest impact of the No Child Left Behind law has been on the kind of tests states are giving, which has changed dramatically. The law, which imposed so much federal intrusion into local classrooms, passed only with a compromise: States would be allowed to create the tests.

The result was states switched from standardized tests that compare how their students stack up against students across the country — the Stanford Achievement Test is a prominent example — to those based on each state’s specific standards. But this system allows the difficulty of the tests to vary widely from state to state, resulting in some states producing easier tests that measure lower-level skills.

We recommend the entire article, which is part of Stateline's annual State of the States report. The entire report can be accessed here.