Test Scores Quotes

• Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don't tell you where a student could end up.

  Carol S. Dweck

  Wise, Achievement, Growth

  Carol S. Dweck (2006). “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, p.66, Random House

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• Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.

  Stephen Covey

  Children, School, Identity

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• Never compare one student's test score to another's. Always measure a child's progress against her past performance. There will always be a better reader, mathematician, or baseball player. Our goal is to help each student become as special as she can be as an individual--not to be more special than the kid sitting next to her.

  Rafe Esquith

  Baseball, Children, Kids

  Rafe Esquith (2007). “Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56”, p.80, Penguin

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• Test scores aren't perfect, but having a test score for math or reading or other things that we can objectively measure is a meaningful component that makes a lot of sense.

  Bill Gates

  Meaningful, Reading, Math

  "Bill Gates Seeks Formula for Better Teachers". Interview with Stephanie Banchero, www.wsj.com. March 22, 2011.

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• We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.

  Raj Chetty

  Adults, Care, Outcomes

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• There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Motivation, Balance, Trying

  "Videotaped remarks shed light on Sotomayor" by Charlie Savage, www.sfgate.com. June 11, 2009.

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• The world is a bell curve. Classroom test scores, employee performance in a company or how many people really, really like you. No matter the population you're studying, they always fit neatly across the standard deviations of the famous bell curve.

  Simon Sinek

  Curves, People, Population

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• With my academic achievement in high school I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that - there are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action to try to balance out those effects.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Motivation, School, Yale

  "Videotaped remarks shed light on Sotomayor" by Charlie Savage, www.sfgate.com. June 11, 2009.

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• The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless. SAT scores do measure both specific knowledge and valuable thinking skills.

  Virginia Postrel

  Smart, Thinking, Skills

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• Massachusetts children cannot only lead the nation in test scores, they can be competitive with the best in the world. And the gap in achievement among races can virtually disappear.

  Mitt Romney

  Children, Race, Achievement

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• If you improve education by teaching for competence, eliminating schooling, and connecting with students, the test scores will improve.

  William Glasser

  Teaching, Tests, Students

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• Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.

  Thad Cochran

  Art, Jobs, Math

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• I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Baby, Yale, Perfect

  "Sotomayor Praises Affirmative Action". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. June 12, 2009.

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• You have to remember, we may be the only nation, the only one I know of, that uses test scores not to assess kids, but to assess teachers. I think we're unique in doing that.

  John Merrow

  Teacher, Kids, Unique

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• When teachers are forced to teach to the test, students get bored and genuine education ceases, no matter what the test scores may say… The examination as a test of the past is of no value for increased learning ability. Like all external motivators, it can produce a short term effect, but examinations for the purpose of grading the past do not hook a student on learning for life.

  Myron Tribus

  Teacher, Past, Bored

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• I think [testing] has had a profoundly problematic impact on student learning. It must seem to students that their worth as individuals is equivalent to their test score. The stress the high stakes culture has on teachers is also highly negative and must surely impact students in a negative way. It also de-professionalizes teachers because it encourages them to be script readers, followers of rigid schedules, and to disregard the needs of the people they teach in favor of the scripts and schedules.

  Carol Ann Tomlinson

  Teacher, Stress, Thinking

  Source: blogs.edweek.org

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• G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. We found that they don’t predict anything.

  Laszlo Bock

  Tests, Criteria, Found

  "In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal". Interview with Adam Bryant, www.nytimes.com. June 19, 2013.

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• When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.

  Alfie Kohn

  School, Sacrifice, What Matters

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• Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called "permissiveness" but is really neglect.

  C. Sommerville

  Teacher, Children, School

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• All we know is that the school achievement, IQ test score, and emotional and social development of working mothers' children are every bit as good as that of children whose mothers do not work.

  Sandra Scarr

  Mother, Children, School

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• According to research, test scores improved by 17.3% for students regularly engaged in chess classes, compared with only 4.6% for children participating in other forms of enriched activities.

  Susan Polgar

  Children, Class, Research

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• The widespread belief among politicians and pundits is that high test scores are everything. I strongly disagree. What matters most is character. Working hard, treating others with respect and honesty-those are the keys to success.

  Hal Urban

  Honesty, Character, What Matters

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• Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Jobs, School, Giving

  "Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Memetic Hazards in Videogames - Less Wrong". lesswrong.com. September 10, 2010.

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• A top-quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class - based on test scores - by over 10 percent in a single year. ... That means that if the entire U.S., for two years, had top-quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would go away.

  Bill Gates

  Teacher, Motivation, Inspiration

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• What do teachers and curriculum directors mean by 'value' reading? A look at the practice of most schools suggests that when a school 'values' reading what it really means is that the school intensely focuses on raising state-mandated reading test scores- the kind of reading our students will rarely, if ever, do in adulthood.

  Kelly Gallagher

  Teacher, Reading, Mean

  Kelly Gallagher, Richard L. Allington (2009). “Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and what You Can Do about it”, p.7, Stenhouse Publishers

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