Everyone hates them, students and teachers alike. They are boring, they are frustrating, they are demanding of time... they ASK you to hate them. They happen every year in every school across the nation: state tests.
Damn those state tests!! Or wait... are they really so bad?
The standards provide a goal towards which teachers must work and a curriculum guide by which they can follow. Everyone seems to think that they have the answers for how and what to teach high school students today. Unfortunately, everyone has a different answer. So who gets to write the curriculum? Who gets to decide what goes into a "proper" high school education?? Although standardized state tests have largely been seen as a draw back and a hinderance, they are actually quite telling and useful for research in what works and what doesn't work in education.
I am a huge supporter of education reform. The system needs to change from the top all the way down to the bottom. I am frustrated that so many people are giving off-hand solutions that will inevitably solve the problems we face with education today: performance-based pay for teachers, give more money to the schools, bus kids between urban and suburban sites, etc. These may be short-term, even helpful solutions, but in isolation, these are not the answers.
So what is the answer? What will make our students better writers, speakers, citizens, thinkers, and voters? What exactly needs to change?? What will keep good teachers in and bad teachers out of the classrooms??? What about our curriculum and instruction needs improvement???? How do we do all of this?????
Accountability from the top down. From the national to the state to the district to the site, all the way down to teachers, and on down to students. Accountability. The reason things aren't changing is because the farther you go up the line, the less they know about what is really going on in there - the frightening place that administration dares not step into, the sacred ground of the educator, that property which is his or hers alone - the classroom... especially during instruction! The best way they've ever figured is through standardized tests, which only happens once a year. But why not keep teachers and students and principals, etc. accountable all year long? Keep the tests - it gives us a guide for what needs to be taught from year to year. Really, teachers should never be left alone!
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Standardized tests don't check to see if everything is being taught that should be. Sorry, but I don't remember seeing any biology or American history when I took my state's version.
...we should ban them altogether?
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kariskoett
Although standardized tests have given transparency to an already obvious problem they are not the solution to improving education. What is happening in the classroom today is a travesty at best. You make some good points and your questions in your fifth paragraph are great questions that all need answers. Unfortunately, standardized state tests do not answer them very well. I completely, 100% agree that accountability needs to be present in education but is a multiple-choice test the way to measure accountability? I think not. It has simply created a situation where teachers are pressured to and MUST teach to the test. Their job is on the line if their students do not perform and the students could really care less about their teachers job. (Of course there are always a few that do care). So teachers teach what will be on the test and do not encourage creativity until after testing is completed. Creativity in the classroom is dying due to the pressures of this one, all powerful test.
You ask also should we do away with the tests. I do not think they need to be eliminated but they can NOT remain the only means of measurement of pass or fail for a school or a district. The reasons are numerous but the most mentioned in research are the following. Not all students do well on tests but they do know the information if you ASK them about it. Memorization is a great thing but it is not knowledge as when you memorize things there is no guarentee that you have learned to apply that information and use it appropriately. Tests are suspect to numerous outside sources of bias and validity issues, especially state tests which tend to be written by middle-class, suburban white males who have very different life experiences than working-class, urban, black youth. These are but a couple of the problems associated with state testing. I could get you more as my professor at Kansas is the Kansas State Director of Assessment and is responsible for writing and updating the Kansas Assessments every year.
Robert Dobbertin, Jr.
MSEd Candidate - Foundations of Education
University of Kansas
You are right that state tests are not the only way knowledge should be assessed, and I agree that the information isn't always peretinent to the lives of the particular students taking the test. There are, however, innumerable ways to be creative in teaching and still teach what needs to be taught. The test is based on the standards, and the standards are based on the common curriculum that has to exist across the state. Although the same book need not be taught in every classroom, the same concepts need to be addressed. Although the order of history may be different, or the year in which chemistry and biology are taught may vary, or even the way in which math is taught, it still all needs to be taught. There is so much psychology involved in that I couldn't even get into it all. The point is, although there are problems with the way the state test is sometimes implemented, the results of teaching to a common curriculum, which is then commonly assessed, is across-the-board positive. I agree that they should not be the only way in which schools are assessed for success, either, but regardless of what we know and don't know about urban schools, or even just poor schools in general, there are ways to be successful with those students regardless of economic status, and that has been proven over and over again. They can learn, they can do well on state tests, they can succeed - and although it isn't because of the state tests, those underfunded schools did have to take the same assessments as the suburban schools, and, shockingly, they did as well or better because there are good teachers. A good teacher isn't just out to ask good questions and have fun and be liked. A good teacher can do that and get results. I'm not a fan of multiple choice either, but I think that we have created a school culture in which testing is the enemy, and this is part of the reason why it becomes so daunting. If students practice taking these sorts of tests, and if it is presented in a less threatening way, such as, "Well, these weren't written by your parents, so you'll probably not do as well," or, "Gosh, multiple choice, we haven't done these all year! Welp, good luck!" then perhaps students wouldn't be so tentative about taking them and teachers wouldn't be so tentative about giving them. I really am aware of the problems associated with these assessments. Instead of just complaining about them, however, since they don't seem to be going away, I find it best to work with them, and implement education reform in ways that can be changed.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kariskoett
I've never been a good test taker if the test was composed of multiple choice questions. I failed my Critical Care class in nursing school and had to retake it because 100% of the class grade was based on multiple choice exams. When I retook it, I didn't learn anything new because I already knew the information. I did good at my clinicals in the intensive care unit. I just don't test well.
But when I retook it, I did a lot better (my grade went from a 75% the first time to an 86% the second time) because I changed my study habits. I know it doesn't work this way with standardized testing, but our exams were based off of the nursing license exam--there were often 4 answers to choose from and 3 or 4 of them were "correct" answers, we just needed to choose the best one. I knew I knew the infomation, so I started studying, instead, testing strategies. Knowing how to look at 4 right answers and eliminate the wrong ones.
I agree that standardized testing shouldn't be the only way to measure progress in the classroom, but it is a good determining factor to see, in general, how students are doing. Not individual students, though, and I don't believe students should have to retake a grade because they didn't pass the standardized test.
I'm wondering if basic study skills and test taking strategies are taught in the classroom? They were never taught to me in grade school, which is unfortunate, because I really think it would improve test scores.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/sawaboof
"...There is a crushing guilt that comes with being a Catholic. Whether things are good or bad or you're simply... eating tacos in the park, there is always the crushing guilt."
-30 Rock-
Pennsylvania has a standardized test that students take in 11th grade and have to pass to graduate. In it, there are two sections - Math and Writing. The Math is the typical multiple guess type tests, but the Writing is exactly that - writing.
The writing section, as of the year I took it (four years ago), had three sub-sections - narrative, persuasive, and informative. For each, we were given a prompt ("describe your first day at a new job" for example) and 2-3 hours to write on it (technically the time was unlimited, but they were started after lunch, effectively giving us a limited amount of time). After that year, they took out the narrative section. The egotistical part of me says that we made them do it, since we were given the prompt "describe your first day at a new job," and I know I wasn't the only one that took the line between on topic and off topic and bent it so far it made a pretzel look straight, instead of doing the usual "what I did on summer vacation" type of essay (it was the last day of testing for our school and we were all sick of it).
For at least a month before that, though, that was all we did. We studied the test, instead of studying actual material. What was likely to be on it, what would be on it, what wouldn't be on it, what it was going to look like. We had three or four different old tests that we looked at and went through so we could see exactly what it was like. That was all we did. Before that, it still got integrated into the class. Once a week, then for part of the class time, we would go over the old tests and material that was likely to be on the test.
The reason things aren't changing is because the farther you go up the line, the less they know about what is really going on in there
Sadly, you'll find that in every institution. The higher up you go, the less you need to know about the actual workings at the line level.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
"Sadly, you'll find that in every institution. The higher up you go, the less you need to know about the actual workings at the line level."
I agree - you will find that everywhere you go. Unfortunately, it is not something that should happen when it comes to education. My administration should know what's going on in my classroom if they are going to evaluate and help me effectively. And I'm not just talking about a 25 minute observation once a semester, or worse, once a year. The district office and state should know what's going on in the schools if they are to effectively evaluate improvement, performance, and curriculum and instruction. They know less, but they NEED to know more. There is so little communication, and I realize that this happens everywhere, but if we are going to fix our schools, then we have to fix the entire system. Just because it happens doesn't mean it's okay, or that it should happen.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kariskoett