The Freakonomics Blog (hosted by the New York Times) held a quorum on standardized testing and posted the contributions yesterday. The questions were:
Should there be less standardized testing in the current school system, or more? Should all schools, including colleges, institute exit exams?
Of the five responses, W. James Popham and Thomas Toch had the more interesting ones. Gaston Caperton, of the College Board, offered what amounts to a plug for the SAT, and Monty Neill sounded like a remix of the various anti-testing statements issued by the teachers’ unions.
Popham thinks tests are necessary and can be good things, if prepared correctly:
… we definitely do need more standardized tests that are sufficiently sensitive to instructional quality, so we can accurately tell which schools are truly successful and which ones aren’t. Standardized tests can be written that accurately measure a school’s instructional effectiveness, yet also stimulate teachers to do a better job of teaching.
Toch also thinks testing is good, provided the tests are testing for what we claim to value:
… the majority of today’s state-level standardized tests are multiple-choice measures of mostly low-level skills … they largely sidestep higher-level skills … This presents a problem, because when tests are high-stakes events, as they are under NCLB … educators have a strong incentive to “teach to the test.” In this case, that means teaching low level skills at the expense of the more demanding material that everyone says students need to master in today’s complicated world.
Toch takes for granted that, once a “high-stakes” test is in place, the majority of teachers will inevitably “teach to it.” I would agree. Which is reason enough to make sure that those tests are worthy measures of what we value in education.
I’d also suggest that teachers should teach to tests, if the tests have been designed as the best possible method for measuring success and mastery for a given discipline or skill set. To design curriculum without a clear goal in mind and a clear sense of how to assess whether or not that goal has been achieved is to lead blindly.
This might raise objections: Should teachers really be “leading”? Shouldn’t teachers allow student interest to guide what happens in the classroom? Shouldn’t teachers be “facilitators” of learning, not “dictators”?
For me, this is another false dichotomy. There’s room (and lots of it) for student interest to guide instruction, but I don’t think that means that teachers should therefore abdicate their responsibility to lead and instruct.
As I often say: I think it’s about balance.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Eric,
I think Toch’s view is the more important one to consider. Most of the “reasons” for schooling that politicos and policywonks can get behind these days are actually economic reasons for schooling. Even if we ignore what many teachers’ reasons for schooling are (life long learning, social competence, etc.) we are still missing the boat by testing low level skills instead of high level thinking, creativity, and logic. all the skills cited by the new commission on the skills of the american workforce as considered important.
Thanks for the great post.
John H. VA-Forum/TLN
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:40 am
I agree with you, John, though I am also concerned about how we balance the unquestionable need for higher-level skills with the pervasive dearth of basic skills among low socio-economic groups. That’s the problem with any one-size-fits-all solution, and why education was traditionally a local concern.
This is also where a lot of the NCLB controversy seems to have its roots. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea to say: let’s require every school to teach at least the basic skills, so that all children have at least that much, and let’s test the schools to make sure they’re doing that and hold them accountable if they don’t.
Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the result of that good idea is that schools are teaching, and testing for, only those basic skills. I think restoring a sense of local control and community-based practice, while still meeting the basic national standards, is a solution, but until the current national-standards mania settles, I’m not sure if that will be possible in practice.
What other solutions that you’ve heard of (apart from a secession from the public schools) seem viable, or what groups seem to be collecting and evaluating alternatives?