Someone is paying attention to these things–that is someone has figured out that before a certain age, the cost/risk of the test outweighs the cost/risk of the condition. In the end, there is a combination of tests that generally works out to an expedient rate of identification and treatment. The tests, of course, don’t cure anything. On the other hand, without the tests, there might be no treatment until there were symptoms so obvious and annoying that I knew something wasn’t right and sought help.

By the same token–if I was screened and a health problem identified, then lost my insurance and couldn’t access the cure or treatment (or recoiled from the possibility and never followed up), then the test would be futile.

The point is, folks, the tests alone don’t matter. The tests plus the will and ability to respond appropriately to the results can and do. They are necessary but not sufficient. NECESSARY. But not sufficient.

After we interviewed PISA guru Andreas Schleicher two months ago, Stanford mathematician Jim Milgram sent us a long critique of PISA–http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/node/2125#comments. He implies that Finland’s stellar showing on PISA says at least as much about PISA’s shortcomings as about Finland’s success. He believes TIMSS is the stronger test.

I don’t have a horse in this particular race, but the dissonance between the two assessments serves as another reminder that we should be careful in interpreting international assessments.

NCLB fundamentally changed the way we do testing. Yes some states did testing before then, but a) the eighth-graders taking TIMSS in 1995 or 2003 very likely didn’t take annual end-of-course tests every year preceding, like this year’s cohort did (who are much more children of standards-based testing), and b) few states even in ‘03 had particularly robust standards/testing regimes. So if you want to look at testing, there has I think been more changes from 2003 to now, than from 1995 to 2003.

I think TIMSS is interesting more as a measure of where we sit in relation to everyone else, not how we have increased or decreased (we have other measures like NAEP focusing more specifically on that).

No! No! No!.

It’s never that simple. Sure early adopters of numerous reforms have a pattern of doing better. For instance, Chicago had greater increases in the 90s before stakes were attached to testing.

But look at the big picture. When the economy grows, test scores go up. When recession hits, learning goes down. The economy is the biggest factor, but it’s not the whole story.

Also, rich states like Massachushetts have the resources to make holistic reforms.

Standardized testing, I suspect, was more destructive since 2003 because of the panic created by NCLB. Under pressure, people make worse decisions.

Many states began standardized testing in the 1990s. Indeed, NCLB only codified for all states what many states had undertaken.

Massachusetts, for example, launched MCAS in 1998.

If Ravitch believes the 12-point 1995-2003 gain is legit, then she can either they happened in spite of millions of American kids taking state standardized tests for the first time, or that those gains happened in part *because* of the testing regime.