Voices of Dissent 5: Interview With FairTest's Monty Neill

In this interview, Dr. Monty Neill, Executive Director of FairTest, begins by discussing the recent flap over the SAT. According to this NY Times report from 3/10/06, "The mistakes, which the company, Pearson Educational Measurement, acknowledged yesterday, raised fresh questions about the reliability of the kinds of high-stakes tests that increasingly dominate education at all levels. Neither Pearson, which handles state testing across the country, nor the College Board detected the scoring problems until two students came forward with complaints."

I asked Dr. Neill why, despite all the evidence that standardized tests are flawed, we still rely on them so heavily.

He replied, "Certainly some people believe there’s a general mystification of the role of numbers, that numbers somehow mean more than the data that backs them up, what goes into the numbers, which of course cannot be true. So if what goes into the numbers is flawed, the numbers are flawed. But they have this veneer of science and technical accuracy that is often very incorrect and misplaced. The test makers have sold a bill of goods that tests help produce a level the playing field. But . . . for students with disabilities, whose first language isn’t English, for African-Americans, Latinos, these tests have a harmful effect on their capacity to compete fairly, as it does poor people in general who . . . can’t afford all the coaching programs."

He added, "This old story has been used to argue that by holding everybody to the same standard, we will assist people who have been denied a high-quality education. That argument fails because it requires a little more than standardized tests to produce equity. Equity begins with equitable access to things that kids need and that’s clearly not being provided. . .You can’t begin to pretend you’re going to get equity in one thing when the rest of society is so drastically inequitable."