Blogging Ottinger (tim)More Standardized Testing
Okay, I guess I’m just dense. Whenever the politicians and newspeople start talking about the decline in some academically-taught lifeskill (math, english, physics, chemistry, home economics, etc) they start talking about fixing the problem with more standardized testing. Increase the testing?
Okay, lets say I am a student in high school (pretend I’m much younger) and I can’t do math, and you test me six times per year. Judging by my scores, I apparently can’t pass one math test per two months.
If you think that my math test ability is cyclical, you might increase the sampling rate, hoping to catch the peaks as well as the valleys. Of course, it’s not cyclical and you find that I’m unable to do math 12 times a year or 52 times a year, just like I’m unable to do it six times a year.
Alternatively, maybe there is a suspicion that my math skills are not the issue, but my test-taking skill. Maybe the call for more testing is intended to hone my test-taking skills through increased practice. That’s possible. With this theoretical underpinning, I could see that we could increase my skills this way. If that is the case, then this is a good answer. However, I doubt that this is the problem.
Finally, if I take the same test over and over, and the teacher tells me that I should have chosen answer “d” for question #44 each time, I may memorize that answer. Eventually, I may pass the test through rote memorization, without actually learning to do math.
If I’m not getting any smarter by failing two standardized tests per week, and it sure seems that all the testing and grading is going to seriously cut into the time that might be spent improving my skill. My secret suspicion is that my inability to pass the test is likely to be because I lack the math skills, not the test-taking skills, nor because my math biorhythm is low on test day. Maybe there is instead some reasonable rhythm of teach/practice/test that each student needs. Maybe some more attention from teachers and tutors (meaning smaller classes or remedial training) would help. Maybe I need to be taught in a different way (less standardized, more personalized).
Whatever the need, I fear that increasing the amount of testing and the amount of standardization at the expense of more and more varied training is a mistake. I admit that I’m not an education expert, and I’ve not read the studies. Hopefully someone can point me to the double-blind study that shows that testing is more effective than teaching, and I can drink the kool-aid, but right now it seems pretty darned silly to me.
Indeed, testing by itself does not help the students at all. However normally all standardized testing plans also require the schools to provide remediation for those students who fail the test. (Which the schools would otherwise NOT provide.)
That is significant because many people, myself included, skated through school without correcting some serious deficiencies in our basic skills. (Like spelling and grammar usage.)
That was possible simply because there was no one holding the schools accountable. Granted, it would have been much more painful for me in high school if I couldn’t have just muddled my way through English without actually learning anything. But perhaps if we had been required to take objective, standardized tests I wouldn’t have needed 3 semesters of remedial English in college.
(Indiana University taught me high school English, the hard way.)
By comparison, my daughter failed the math portion of her ISTEP test last year, and the school had no choice but to provide summer school classes for her in math. She had to take a math class that lasted for four hours a day, five days a week, for six weeks. But in the end she learned the material and is now better at Algebra than her older brother who managed to just get past the test.
It is the remediation that makes testing plans work, not the test itself. I didn’t used to believe that. Now I do.
Comment by Walter Moore — 2006-December-16 @ 01:01
See, this is one of the good things about blogging personal opinions and frustration. I might never have learned this otherwise. If standard testing includes remediation, then I see the value.
Of course, remediating with summerschool only requires *some* standardized testing. I don’t know that testing many times per grading period would help, but I now see how it helps to have standardized testing.
Thanks, wally!
Comment by Tim — 2006-December-17 @ 11:38