Educators are barraged with a range of test scores from K-12 schools that are often confusing and seem to conflict with each other.   Some show students improving. Others show the opposite. 

 Listen to Linda Darling-Hammond and Pedro Noguera, two of the nation's premier education scholars and advocates, make the case for why we need tests --- not as weapons to label and stigmatize students and schools, but as tools to improve learning.   

Darling-Hammond, founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Learning Policy Institute, and chair of the California State Board of Education, points to latest test results showing improvements in California, as well as in districts who are beating the odds like Los Angeles and Compton Unified. An overemphasis on tests, she says, has meant less emphasis on higher-level thinking in our schools.  Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, argues that we should pay more attention to learning itself and how to get kids engaged and motivated. 

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