|
As another school year begins, and I survey my
clients around the country with regard to testing,
the results are pretty much the same as they were
last year: teachers and students are down in the
dumps, parents and pols are up in arms. Only one
thing seems certain: if you have a pulse, you have
an opinion about testing in schools. And while the
discussion seems desultory if not daunting, at
least people are talking about results, a subject
we seem to have studied cursorily at best — and
responded to only once, really, when we found
ourselves Sputniked into the Space Race and, in a
typically paranoiac response, decided that
teaching a little more math and science would make
us all sleep better at night.
For the first time in the history of our republic,
we are engaged in a substantive national dialog
about the quality of teaching and learning;
education matters from sea to whining sea. And
while it’s certainly too early to know for sure,
there is evidence in the data that some schools
are making some gains, at least at the elementary
level. Middle and high schools seem to be making
less progress but there are glimmers here and
there, too. What we don't know yet is whether
these gains represent real learning or if they’re
just the result of test familiarity due to
increased test preparation. Only more time — and
more testing — will tell.
Don’t Fight It, Invite It
Testing has been a part of our education system
since the early 1900s. It's just part of school.
So I say don't fight it, invite it. The best way
to challenge the testing system is to beat it.
Most of the schools I work with pick up 20-40
points on their scores over two to three years. If
every kid gets the same high score, the test
becomes less important and the testing system less
necessary.
If everyone works together, and we do what makes
sense, it's not hard to raise scores. My hope is
that once scores get high enough — up into the 80s
and 90s — we really won't need so much testing. At
that point, we could, for example, use statistical
sampling and test only one out of every 20 kids,
(at fewer grade levels and subjects, too) thus
reducing the national testing budget by billions
of dollars each year, dollars that could be put
into training to help teachers teach more
effectively. But at the moment, millions of kids
really aren't doing as well as they could, and
testing is the only approach our education system
is familiar with. It might be another generation
or two before our country warms up to more
effective, more efficient, and less costly
approaches to assessing the quality of teaching
and learning.
A Matter of Give and Take
The other thing I try to keep in mind is that the
tests themselves are not the issue, we are. It
matters less which tests we give, much more how we
choose to take them. If teachers teach to the
tests and not to their students, this is a
problem. If schools deny educational opportunities
to kids on the basis of test scores, this is a
problem. If parents impose reward-punishment
systems on their children based on test scores,
this is a problem. If politicians use test scores
to make social policy, this is a problem. If we
all promote feelings of anxiety and animosity
around testing to our peers and to our students,
this is a huge problem because it unhinges our
good judgment and undermines our collective
effectiveness.
Whenever I feel myself getting upset about
testing, I try to take the accountable position:
I'm a part of the system, too. I have a
responsibility to act, in a constructive way, on
behalf of the students and teachers I serve. It
doesn't help anyone — especially myself — if I
just sit back and complain about things.
Don’t Blame It on the Rain
Personally, I do not oppose testing. To me, that's
sort of like opposing the weather. I live in
Seattle; it's always cloudy. Does that mean I
spend every day pining for the sun? We've always
had tests and we always will; testing is just part
of our culture. The powers that be certainly have
the right to impose testing (after all, we elected
them), and those of us who choose to participate
in the system really do need to go along and
administer the tests to our students. Kids need to
take the tests and do their best on them; parents
need to send their kids to school to be tested or
pay to send their kids to private schools; states
need to report results and pay for the testing
systems; schools need to analyze those results,
draw reasonable conclusions from them, and take
responsible, appropriate action to make
improvements. Everyone must participate fully. You
don't go back to bed in the morning just because
it looks a little cloudy, right?
Though I am troubled at times by the current
climate, I remain optimistic that its positive
aspects will endure long after the negatives have
been discovered and discarded. And there are some
positive aspects. After all, we are at least
attempting to look at the connection between
quality teaching and quality learning. We may not
be looking at it as accurately as I would like,
but we are looking nonetheless. For once it really
does matter how well someone teaches and how much
their students learn. Only good can come of this
kind of shift in our attitudes. I also think there
will be important changes in administrative and
teacher professionalism as well because the drive
for better results will force educators to adopt
more professional attitudes and use some of the
same approaches to quality and performance that
have long been used in the business world.
Raise Scores, Raise Expectations, Raise Awareness
As an education consultant, I try to do three
things to help my clients with testing. First of
all, I develop highly effective test preparation
workshops and materials. These resources help kids
get higher scores regardless of their ability
levels. (All standardized tests have weaknesses
and, in general, the newer a test is, the more
those weaknesses can be exploited.) If I can help
a school raise its scores by 10 or 20 points with
just a couple weeks of test prep, teachers can
have the rest of the year to make real
improvements in the quality of their teaching. My
goal with test preparation is simply to help
teachers take off some of the pressure. Nobody
does their best work under constant pressure.
The second thing I concentrate on is raising
expectations for both teacher and student
performance. Sadly, we are a nation of chronic
under performers. But it isn’t for lack of trying.
Teachers put in long hours struggling with large
classes and little support for effective practice;
kids just hang in as best they can hoping for a
break in the same old same old. And the same old
same old is just what we get: bad teaching that
leads to bad learning. For my part, I concentrate
on providing focused, high quality training that
gets immediate results, dramatic results that
change attitudes about how teachers can teach and
what students can learn. After all, how can we
expect to educate 21st century students with 19th
century approaches? When attitudes change in the
face of measurable improvement, expectations rise
all around, and schools sustain long term gains.
The third thing I try to do is explain to people
how the tests are created, how they're scored, how
the results are used, what they really measure,
etc. I feel that the best way to change the
testing system for the better is simply to tell
people about how it works and then let them decide
for themselves whether it's any good. I have great
faith in human nature. I think most of the
negative impressions people have about schools
result simply from a lack of complete and accurate
information.
Dollars and Sense
Most people don't like tests; that's normal.
Teachers, in general, oppose testing for their own
certification. I don't see administrators and
school board members lining up to take tests for
their jobs. Parents would surely oppose testing
for the right to bear and raise children (as would
any sane person). Business leaders and politicians
would oppose testing themselves, seeking instead
more authentic measures of ability like profits or
votes. (I suspect that the only people who truly
like tests are the ones who gain advantage by
giving them.) Eventually, I think we will all come
to see that there are better ways of making
improvements in our education system than
widespread testing. Until then, testing is
something we clearly have to go through.
By the year 2010 — or even sooner perhaps — I
think our testing system will be in the throes of
yet another great change because the current
approach will be shown to have limited value
relative to its cost. Knowing that one child got a
45 while another got a 54 doesn't give a teacher
the specific information she needs to help either
of them improve. Knowing that a school's reading
scores went down by 4% or up by 9% over a
three-year period provides only the vaguest notion
of what might be going on in classrooms and how
that might be changed for the better. It's not
that this kind of data isn't helpful, it's that it
isn't helpful enough. A different kind of
assessment is required, one that supplies us with
more direct and more practical information about
students and teachers than the reductive,
inauthentic standardized approaches of the past.
The best evaluation I have heard is that our
current approach to testing is neither bad nor
good, it simply costs more than it's worth.
Everyone knows that the best way to improve
learning is to improve teaching. And the best way
to do that is to provide teachers with high
quality training and the support they need to put
that training into practice in their classrooms.
Every dollar spent to test a child is a dollar
lost for teaching a child. Fortunately, Americans
are very sensitive to this kind of
bang-for-the-buck analysis. I like to think of it
as a simple “dollars and sense” argument: it just
doesn't make sense to spend dollars on testing
when we could be spending dollars on teaching and
learning.
|
