School Tests | featured news

Admissions testing for gifted and talented programs has become a fraught process, where administrators seeking authentic measures of intelligence are barely able to keep ahead of test-prep companies.

A new report by the Washington-based Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution calculates states spend a combined $1.7 billion annually on standardized testing.

With school in full swing across the United States, the littlest students are getting used to the blocks table and the dress-up corner - and that staple of American public education, the standardized test.

Students paid test-takers up to $3,600 to boost scores and their chances of getting into a top college, New York prosecutors said.

A Pennsylvania mother has decided she does not want her two children to take the two-week-long standardized tests given by her state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Only one or two out of 100 displayed a mastery of science on nationwide tests, the Department of Education said.

Through a federal grant, California will join 43 other states in replacing oft-maligned standardized exams. “This is going to change the way children are taught,” US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said about the new nationwide tests.