Opinion
Education Letter to the Editor

Feeding the Testing-Industrial Complex

January 23, 2013 1 min read
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To the Editor:

“Testing Group Selects Exam to Gauge ‘College Readiness’” (Jan. 9, 2013) announces yet another test to add to the staggering pile of tests our students must take.

When will this end? Because there is no evidence that adding more tests helps students, and plenty of evidence that increased testing will be very profitable for those who sell the tests and supply the infrastructure for the required online testing, the obvious answer is that testing fever will end only when the greed of the standardized-testing-industrial complex is satisfied.

In other words, never.

Stephen Krashen

Professor Emeritus of Education

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, Calif.

A version of this article appeared in the January 23, 2013 edition of Education Week as Feeding the Testing-Industrial Complex

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