I am attending the Riverside Leadership Conference in Chicago this week. Riverside is the company that produces and grades the Iowa Test, the standardized testing system that we use in California Catholic schools. State standardized tests that are used in public schools are not available for use in private schools, so most use tests from Riverside or other companies to measure student achievement and growth.
Now, let me be careful here. Unlike many other education critics, I don't completely discard standardized testing as a valuable part of a comprehensive program. Some skills can be measured in objective, standardized testing, and charting student growth in these areas can supply information about a school program or an individual student (though I don't disagree with those who claim that standardized testing is the best predictor of the income level of the student's zip code).
However, the obsession with standardized test scores that drives the public (and to a great extent private) education is an enemy of true education. I understand why these scores have become sacrosanct; within the fuzzy world of assessing students' abilities, these tests provide a numerical certainty. I know that my child is a 79, that my child is stronger this year than last, that my child is smarter than your child. What is lost is that this testing is only one part (and not the largest part) of an entire student profile. Other parts can be measured through performance and other assessments, but despite efforts of standardization through rubrics, there is an unavoidable subjectivity and not a simple, easy-to-grasp number. Public discourse in our polemical society abhors subjectivity and needs the black and white, thus the small portion of student profile assessed well through standardized test has become the sum of education. Incentives, funds, and, most tragically, time are shifted to this portion of the picture, neglecting the rest of the student development.
The skills assessed in standardized testing are not the most essential life skills. The reliance on objective multiple choice questions, rules out significant critical thinking. Performing objective operations in a limited time frame is not a life skill, it is a testing skill. I have yet to come to work only to be handed a #2 pencil and a bubble sheet, and the majority of the issues I face do not have one solution. Again, I am not ruling out this type of testing nor am I discounting the importance of developing base skills that operate below the surface in the more complex operations of my life. However, my overall success in life is based on more complex operations that I never saw on an Iowa test (I scored very well on testing through school, so this is not an opinion based on sour grapes).
So attention to the tires is driving the school bus.
As always, I welcome your comments.
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I think I would put more faith into the AP scores in the courses where critical thinking and essay-writing are required. I am thinking of AP Lit, AP Euro, and APUSH here. Perhaps we will grope our way, ,if standardized results remain important, towards a better way of measuring critical thinking skills? I write “perhaps” because I don’t think that we are there yet – certainly not with the SAT essay.