Public Schools and the New Billion Dollar Accountability

High-stakes testing costs up to $50 billion per annum, has no impact on student achievement, and has changed the focus of American public schools. This article analyzes the benefits and costs of the accountability movement, as well as discusses its roots in the eugenics movements of the early 20th century. Once upon a time, the dirty little secret of standardized testing was that the tests might be culturally biased. These days, the biggest drawback may be the exorbitant costs to develop, maintain, administer, prepare, and publish them. The rise of expansive bureaucracies within state governments whose sole purpose is to keep up with student testing has forever altered the budgets of public schools. In 1967, 80 percent of a school’s budget was devoted to regular instruction. By the late 1990s, the percentage of funds devoted to regular instruction had dwindled to about 50 percent (Rothstein and Miles 1996). To meet the prohibitive costs of testing, cash-strapped schools, particularly those in urban and rural areas, have paid for testing from funds originally designated for hiring teachers, fixing leaking roofs, and buying new books. One unanticipated problem with high-stakes testing is that administrative costs have been not one-time debits, but continuous expenses. To keep up with the paperwork, state governments have created bureaucracies within bureaucracies—Offices of Educa-tional Accountability, Offices of Test Administration and Reporting, Offices of Standards and Measurement—while simultaneously reducing other staff, including teachers, to stay within budget. The annual cost of high-stakes testing rivals the gross national products of some small countries, somewhere between $20 and $50 billion, or 5.5–14 percent of every dol