Testing, 1, 2, 3 . . .

SCHOOL may be out for the summer, but across the country - from Atlanta to D.C., and now Philadelphia - policymakers and the press have focused on student achievement. In these school districts, alleged widespread test-score irregularities are calling assessment results into question. In D.C. - the focus of particular attention, given the high profile of ex-school chancellor Michelle Rhee - the irregularities threaten to undercut the district's heralded gains as well as major elements of its ambitious reform plan.

Here in Pennsylvania, the state Education Department has directed 40 districts and nine charter schools to probe statistical anomalies and high rates of wrong-to-right erasures on the 2009 state PSSA exams - irregularities documented in a 2009 report from Data Recognition Corp., the state's large-scale testing vendor. The secretary of education has now taken the additional step of ordering statewide analyses of the 2010 and 2011 PSSA results.

The secretary's call is an important step in restoring public confidence and sharpening test security. But this investigation is just the beginning. Cheating, if it occurred, is the most tangible evidence of the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing - a reality acknowledged even by the DRC forensics report.

Since the introduction of No Child Left Behind more than a decade ago, reaction to high-stakes testing has been all over the map.

Proponents hold that NCLB has exposed persistent achievement gaps and forced school districts to address them; they can no longer simply hide behind averages and estimates. This has been a banner accomplishment of the reform.

Detractors, on the other hand, make the case that shifting scarce resources away from vital (though untested) subjects like art, history and music, and toward tested subjects like reading, math and science, forces teachers to "teach to the test," narrowing the curriculum even further. The recently released results of the Nation's Report Card showing huge gaps in geography knowledge is an example of such unintended consequences.