I support standardized testing and so do you even if you don’t know it or want to admit it. What you don’t support is standardized testing in its current form or for that use that has become synonymous with the term.
Imagine if standardized testing was not mentioned in the same sentence as the “No Child Left Behind Act”. Imagine if standardized testing was utilized in a capacity that was designed to improve students’ ability to think critically and grow as individuals while providing educators with insight as to how we could best help each individual child. The problem with standardized testing as it currently exists is that educators cannot disconnect the term from the system currently in place. My bet is that all educators would support standardized testing if we followed a couple of key points and began to care more about child development and cognition rather than efficiency and saving money. If the government aligned their standardized tests to National Standards that were based on critical thinking and cognitive development then such exams are possible.
My vision of the purpose and make-up of standardized testing differs significantly to that of our current system. In completing these standardized assessments, students should be working on skills that speak to “The Big Three”: critical thinking, interdisciplinary thought, and transfer of knowledge, as well as the most important content knowledge that they deal with throughout the course of the year. Collaboration between students would be encouraged with the understanding that all students should maintain a level of autonomy. Teachers would facilitate the student work and would be encouraged to assist them in working through barriers and developing deeper levels of understanding. Districts would have a menu of potential topics to choose from and given varying levels of structure depending on their grade level. It isn’t only the actual test that I support, but it is also the way in which we utilize the data and student output.
I believe that rather than utilize standardized testing to categorize students into levels of proficiency, we should be using their scores to assess areas that are in need of improvement. Students and parents should absolutely know how they perform on these assessments, but it should be done in such a way that they receive their scores during a consultation session with a teacher so that they are aware of the areas they must focus on throughout the course of the year and given strategies to prompt this growth outside of school that work jointly with what kids do in school. In fact, I would argue that these types of “standardized tests” should be administered three times throughout the course of the year and that students should receive grades based on improvement. Students would take these exams in September, January, and June and software would graph their progress in a number of categories throughout the course of their K-12 education.
- September: Would provide teachers and students with an indication of what types of critical thinking skills and cognitive development should be focused on over the course of the first half of the year as well as compare how much advancement has been made throughout grade levels.
- January: Provide an indication of what areas students have improved on as well as further assess areas of needed development and emphasis for the second half of the year.
- June: Allow for reflection of student growth and give students some areas to work on over the summer as they continue to progress as lifelong learners.
My point is that we need to start to look at revamping what we are currently doing to make it more effective and conducive to student learning. The reality is that standardized testing is not going away. Rather than complain about the practice, we need to reevaluate what we are doing and compare that to the purposes and goals of education as well as what science is telling us about how the mind works. The reason the current model of standardized testing exists is because it is the cheapest and most efficient model; not because it proves anything about student learning or cognitive development.
I see a lot of teachers complaining about standardized testing and articulating how unfair it is and how it doesn’t prove anything or meet the needs of students. I firmly believe that if people (not just in education) feel as though they have a right to complain about a practice then they also have the responsibility to put forward something better.
My plan is above. Where’s yours?
I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with most of what you have here, Aaron.
Here’s why:
1) You assume standardized test scores mean ANYTHING.
2) You assume we are just mismanaging the data when in fact the data IS the problem.
3) “The reality is standardized testing is not going away.” That is defeatist talk and I won’t stand for it
but seriously, I can’t believe you are saying this. Only death and taxes are certainties – everything else is up for debate. Would you say that racism is here to stay so we should just come to terms with it? Would you say that bullying is here to stay so we should just come to terms with it? I hope not.
Standardized testing is wrong. Period. We can’t give in to some sort of bastardized compromise.
4) Even if the tests were based on “The Big Three”, if these tests are still high-stakes in any way, Campbell’s Law will trump all. For more on this, check out my blog post on Campbell’s Law:
http://joe-bower.blogspot.com/2010/02/high-stake-testings-kryptonite.html
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:50 amQuote
I’m currently reading Atul Gawande’s THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO. He makes a related point: “…We don’t study routine failures in teaching, in law, in government programs, in the financial industry, or elsewhere. We don’t look for patterns of our recurrent mistakes or devise and refine potential solutions for them. But we could, and that is the ultimate point…” (p. 185). Seems like we could potentially identify patterns in standardized test scores that could guide our improvement efforts.
However, as you explain, problems persist with the instruments used to collect this data. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent reforming or even developing new instruments that are more in line with what we’d like to measure than in fighting against standardized testing in general.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:59 amQuote
@Joe Bower
Joe,
We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I think you are falling into the category I describe in my first paragraph of associating testing with the model that we currently have in place. I like to believe that the model I describe above is a rapid departure from our current model of thinking. Either way, a couple of points (my numbers below do not coincide exactly with your comments above):
1. Regardless of what people want to think, standardized test scores do tell us something. It may not be what you or I want to know or think is relevant, but they always tell us something. Even if they tell us that the scores mean nothing at all. The question is how can we make these scores meaningful, which I attempted to address above.
2. I don’t believe the data is the problem and here is why. I advocate for us assessing student achievement. I am one of the only people, I have met, who firmly advocates for scores being broken into sub-groups and analyzing different types of students for academic success and equity. I think it is a crime that it took us 56 years (Brown v. BOE) to come up with some type of barometer for all subgroups to ensure equity in schools. Do I think this has been implemented in the proper way? Absolutely not, but I think that if we continue to talk about decreasing achievement gaps, advancing literacy, and improving education then just saying “let’s do this” doesn’t make enough of an impact as if we implement specific measures to do so. The problem is that we are attempting to assess the WRONG knowledge and punishing kids for not meeting our cookie-cutter ideas (see next point).
3. You are also making an assumption that I think these test scores should be used to punish students in some way, shape, or form. The goal of this type of testing is to facilitate the learning process by generating clear goals and objectives for students; not to punish or wave a finger. Hence the reason why students would be graded on improvement rather than achievement. One of the biggest problems in education (my opinion) is that we do a terrible job of defining purpose, relevance, and goals for students to understand. Providing students with an “Understanding by Design” type mentality of how to progress in schools is critical to students reaching their potential and understanding why active involvement in their education is important.
4. Is standardized testing bad? I find the question inherently irrelevant. Teachers are consistently providing menial tasks and not looking critically at how students perform but are just entering grades into a grade book anyway. I applaud you, as well as every other educator, if you look at your grades and try to assess where students are in need of growth, but the reality is that a majority of educators don’t do this. Do I have statistical data to prove this claim? No, but do you really think I am wrong with that statement? My point is that if nothing else, some kind of metric to assess student cognitive development and place an emphasis on specific areas that students can improve is a noble (and necessary) measure for the advancement of critical thinking skills in ALL students.
5. I loved your post on Campbell’s Law, and I suggest that everyone take the time to read it. I was vaguely familiar with the concept and your post filled in some gaps as well as forced me to do some further research. There is, however, one point with Campbell’s Law that is important to point out: “…achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence.” I must confess this originally came from Wikipedia, but you may also read this part of the paper on pages 51-52 here: http://www.wmich.edu/evalctr/pubs/ops/ops08.pdf. What I am saying is maybe we need to evaluate the quality of the process we are using to assess kids while simultaneously analyzing the product. The process I outline in my post would give us much of an authentic situation to analyze student outputs as noted by the, “Teachers would facilitate the student work and would be encouraged to assist them in working through barriers and developing deeper levels of understanding.” Rather than having students sit in rows and fill in bubbles, they would be actively engaged in an assignment with the aid of peers and instructors just like what you and I do on a daily basis in the “real world”.
I have to thank you for forcing me to think deeper about these topics. I applaud your passion for eradicating standardized assessment. I wouldn’t consider my view “defeatist” since my goal is to advocate for testing the way I want it and the way I know it will help kids instead of the current attempts for education to manufacture “widgets”.
Disagreement is NEVER a bad thing especially when it is in the interest of students.
Thanks!
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:47 pmQuote
I admire that you are taking a stand on this issue when it is so tempting to be complacent. That is the nature of our school system. It promotes collectivism and compromise. We all teach it in our classes. So the expectation is that when change needs to be made, we do it collectively, or that someone takes the innitiative and leads others by persuasion.
Your conclusion calls out to teachers to take such an initiative. But to “put something out” is to await the approval of others. Teaches should try to find a solution that works for them and not worry of this approach will suit others. That way, when it works they shall lead by example and not by persuasion.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:43 pmQuote
I think that there needs to be some sort of testing by which students in our classes can compare the level of their achievement with that of a state or even national population. If we want to call that ’standardized testing’ then that will have to do for now. What I would like to see happen, though, is that we change the format (at least) and perhaps even the content being assessed on some of these tests so that they more closely reflect the kinds of real-life tasks that we expect our students to be able to do. I am sadly lacking in ideas of how to pull that off on a state or national level, but I’m sure we can figure out some assessments that are more appropriate than what we have now, many of which are produced by giant corporations distant from what goes on in our classrooms.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:56 pmQuote
I support standardized tests. I love the driving test and MCAT! I welcome rigor on these two exams.
I am satisfied with the ACT, SAT, GRE… etc. These tests demonstrate achievement using a number and can be used to quickly assess strengths and weaknesses.
For a more thorough assessment, tests must be given in smaller increments, more often, and be repeatable. When these are accomplished, STUDENTS should be held accountable for their learning.
Most importantly, these once-per-year tests are not a complete picture of any student or person’s ability. Standardized tests for students also do little to effectively evaluate teachers. They are even less able to evaluate administration.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:54 pmQuote
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February 4th, 2010 at 5:23 amQuote
Standardized testing of students has led to the standardization of teaching. Teaching styles are being homogenized to make all classes the same. Your argument for standardized testing is at it’s core an argument to teach the same thing to each kid, at the same time, see if they all learn it at the same time, and then if they don’t they are falling through the cracks so we “teach” them again. Standardized teaching needs standardized testing to find the kids that don’t learn in the standardized system…unfortunately we take kids who do poorly on one section and apply a standardized remedial program designed for all kids who do poorly on a particular section. Which then means we have to give them another standardized test at the end to see if what kids did not learn with the standardized teaching method.
If we stopped teaching in a standardized one size fits all method and employed more methods such as PBL, or UDL, it would allow more individual success. We are moving into a world in which there will be no standardization of knowledge, skills, or even the meaning of success. Standardized testing will only fit into schools or classrooms that wish to control student growth and learning. Schools that start seeking to empower and give their students responsibility for learning will create environments which lead to non-standardized of learning on various timetables–they simply can’t use standardized tests…to do so would be a death blow to student creativity, achievement, and passion.
I can’t be the only one who can tell what my kids weaknesses are without slapping standardized test on them…am I?
February 4th, 2010 at 7:01 amQuote
Paul,
The entire crux of my plan is based around Problem-Based Learning. I also don’t think it is homogonizing teaching if we are offering students specific areas that they can grow in critical thinking capacity. In addition, this type of assessment mirrors the world that you are describing by requiring transfer of knowledge across disciplines. In fact, this type of testing would probably be the most authentic experience that students have throughout their years of schooling. I also don’t see how this type of loosely-structured assessment would be “a death blow to student creativity, achievement, and passion.” The reality is that developing these types of critical thinking skills and solving problems in a creative way would have to be front and center in order for this model to work.
You aren’t the only one who can tell what your kids weaknesses are without slapping standardized tests on them. In fact, I think you are one of the individuals I talk about in my first paragraph who can’t seperate the model of current standardized testing with that of what I articulate throughout my post. Otherwise, you would see how many of your comments above align directly to my proposition.
The educational world can continue to fight some form of standardized assessment all they want, but the reality is, until we bring solutions to the table, political pundits will continue to get their way and believe that the current model of testing truly says something about student learning.
Thanks for your comment.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:20 amQuote
Hello, Aaron – thought-provoking as usual.
I am not in favor of continuing with standardized testing. Right now in education there is a critical lack of student input. Outside of outlier inquiry and PBL classrooms (thank you students and educators making these models work) students do not have a voice in education. The compromises we make as adults to align our work – not with standards or expectations – but with testing an testing windows – impair us from every recreating school as a customizable experience that asks the student, “What do you want to do?” I’m not suggesting we put all of the responsibility for teaching and learning on students who are not ready for it, but I’m arguing that we’ll never have students ready to learn on their own or to set and meet their own goals so long as we do that for them and think of a standardized curriculum, data set, or student as our end product. Students are customers, not products.
Standardized tests are an obstacle to creating relevance for students. The tests and their results determine the allocation of our resources, further taking away from our capacity to customize learning. They can go and we can benchmark student progress against personally meaningful goals beginning with caching kids to set goals and self-assess by asking, “Did your work get you what you wanted?”
Disconnect the term “standardized testing” from the system currently in place, and I’m still not sold.
I’ll continue to compromise with testing so I can continue to work on solutions to it and to serve students, but I won’t be sorry to see standardized testing go. We can improve standardized assessments and gather all the data we want, but the fundamental problem remains our insistence that all students, teachers, and schools must learn the same things and be judged the same way to be citizens of a democracy.
Cui bono? Not students; not us. A standardized electorate does not a democracy make. A standardized education does not an information-age skilled-worker, innovator, or entrepreneur make. Standardization favors replication over innovation. So here we are in a Toyota world. How long before the accelerators and brakes of the standards movement fail? What will be the cost to our students, ourselves, and our country then? The more we insist on kids being the same or being judged the same way, the more blind we become to problems AND opportunities outside the scope of our standardized window of attention. As difficult as it is to recall and fix thousands and thousands of cars, it’s more difficult to recall and re-educate thousands and thousands of people to retrain them for the jobs and lives for which a standardized education did not prepare them
I’m not saying let’s water-down standards or expectations. I’m saying let’s set high expectations according to what it is students want to do with their lives. Let’s help students use the skills you rightly champion to set courses for their lives that they value.
This will be hard work. It will require a redesign of schools and classrooms and ratios and roles. This will be hard work. It will ask us to value students as never before and cede our control of teaching to their control of learning. This will be hard work. It will not have standardized solutions or help us “manage” students better. This will be hard work, but I would argue for it.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:22 pmQuote
Aaron,
I applaud you for continuing to be a lightning rod of great discussions. I also appreciate the way your mind works, creatively trying to improve things, no matter how poor the soil you start with is.
Without re-reading Chad’s reply (leaving myself room to discover something later), I agree with him. Standardized testing needs to go. I have found that when there is a healthy mentor relationship in place (aka teacher-student) that there is enough information to create the feedback loop you want to get out of this revised testing system.
As human beings grow we have a strong sense of what is that we need to learn next. As our visions of ourselves evolve, we have some sense of what the knowledge and skills are that we need to gain to become who we see ourselves as. When we have the mirror of a skilled mentor, not only can we aptly identify those things for ourselves, but s/he can help us connect what we already know and what we might not be aware of that we need to learn. And as Chad said, the important measure becomes did the student get what s/he wanted from the learning experience.
I can not imagine being able to make use of a test score that is supposed to inform me of how well I am critically thinking or transferring knowledge. I just don’t think any scan-tron or rubric can provide that feedback. I think it puts an unnecessary task in between the important relationship that needs to be had between teacher and students. I think using a test in this manner says, “I don’t trust myself.”
In the end, I am not complaining. My alternative here is to “opt-out.” There are more accurate and useful ways to accomplish what your aims are for me, and I think that is the relationship you speak of, the consultation that occurs with the student and family. If you have some method of demonstrating how a student is or isn’t critically thinking, connecting or transferring knowledge that resembles a test, then you use it. But that’s not how I am going to do it, and that’s why it shouldn’t be standardized. That would be a part of your style of relationship and feedback. I have a conversational and relational style that works for me.
Thanks again for holding the space for these conversations, Aaron.
-Adam
February 4th, 2010 at 10:49 pmQuote
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February 11th, 2010 at 4:05 amQuote