Public not sold on testing

The standardized tests that the state and No Child Left Behind require Utah students to take are supposed to make schools better.

But the public isn't so sure that's what's happening.

People do, however, agree that the state and federal report cards affect schools' image.

A Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV survey, conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, found 71 percent of respondents think the No Child Left Behind and U-PASS report cards impact a school's image. Nineteen percent don't think they make much of a difference, and 11 percent don't know.

But there's little consensus on whether the report cards accurately reflect a school's achievement, or help make schools better.

Forty-three percent think the report cards are a very or somewhat accurate portrayal of a school's achievement. But 31 percent say they're not. And 26 percent don't know.

Thirty-eight percent said the reports will improve the quality of education in a school; 49 percent said they probably or definitely won't. Two percent said it depends, and 10 percent didn't know.

The poll of 417 residents in Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Weber, Tooele and Wasatch counties was conducted Oct. 10-12 and has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin.

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper and sponsor of the 2000 law creating the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students, says it's hard to say what the poll results mean. The survey didn't ask if people even know what U-PASS is, he said, critical to understanding the public response.

"My sense is many people don't (understand it)," Stephenson said. If they did, more would agree the state report cards do improve educational quality and accurately measure school performance, he said.

State Office of Education spokesman Mark Peterson says the poll results are reminiscent of those in a Phi Delta Kappa report on No Child Left Behind.

"Rightly or wrongly, people are not convinced that standardized test scores give a fully accurate reflection of learning at an individual school," Peterson said.

"The standardized testing we do in Utah ... is something our teachers have used to inform instruction for years now, and as a tool to do that, we think they're invaluable," he said. "Our focus has to be the children. Politics may have a different point of view."