I entitled this part of my talk: "Standardized Testing--Helpful or Harmful" but I think the title should really be taken from the movie--What's It All About Alfie?"
After years in the public school system as a teacher at elementary and college level, as an administrator, as a school psychologist but mainly as a mother of three sons who successfully negotiated the public school system--I learned a great deal and hope to be able to share with you some of my insights.
I believe that most adults understand and have learned how to communicate with and to deal with the health care system better than they understand the school system. They know what questions to ask the doctor. If he prescribes a medicine they know to ask about side effects. They ask what would happen if their child did not take the medicine. They might even get out a medical book and learn about the disease or at least what the symptoms mean. They might even ask for a second opinion. They need to be helped to do the same with the school system. Our schools have a great deal to offer if parents know how to use them well.
What's It All About Alfie? perhaps should be the first question they should ask the school system. Let's try a quick survey now. Turn to the person next to you and after a brief introduction, give your answer to the question: What is the purpose of school?
Other answers I have gotten are:
- To produce responsible citizens
- To produce thinkers
- To develop lifelong learners
- To protect the dreams of children
- To develop all aspects of the child
- To teach problem-solving techniques
- To baby-sit children and keep them off the streets
- To produce workers
- To help students pass examinations
- To adapt to change
Another answer to the question, what is the purpose of school-- is: To get ready for something else. Schools are in the business of readiness. The kindergarten program makes students ready for the elementary school program. The high school program makes them ready to take the SATs and to fill out college application forms. On these application forms students must be ready to indicate that they have participated in a sport, been in some community activity, been on the student council, worked at a job, taken all the Advanced Placement courses and in general been super-students. In its turn the higher education system makes students ready for a career. As the saying goes: Life is what happens while you are planning ahead.
According to a recent survey of college freshmen, the purpose of education is not to expand minds but to increase income. As one professor put it: "Schooling has become more about training and less about transformation. " The students surveyed said they were bored with school. As another professor pointed out -- going to school for training is boring but being educated is not.
Somewhere along the line, we have lost the sense that schooling and learning is good in itself and should be an ongoing, joyful, spontaneous, creative experience. Sometimes all of our tests and rules and regulations tend to make it a painful and unproductive one.
If the school, on the basis of group end-of-year achievement tests, tells you that your child's performance is deficient in some way, you should ask a number of questions.
As one kindergartner said to me: "Okay I did what you wanted me to do. I learned to read. Now can I go home." She probably never will open another book--but that's another topic--The use and misuse made of kindergarten programs.
What is it all about, Alfie? Is it about helping our children become life-long learners and creative thinkers or is it about producing good test-takers who know how to fill-in-the-blanks with that one correct answer?
We probably cannot control whether our children will become lifelong learners since that is a personal decision. We can be careful, however, and take appropriate steps to prevent them from becoming permanently conditioned against learning.
Which gets us to the topic: Standardized Testing Schools need to accent intellectual goals over academic goals. Academic goals are concerned with achievement and getting good grades. Intellectual goals are concerned with learning and being an inquirer. One way to emphasize the difference is to 73 say to your child when he comes home from school: "Did you ask any questions today?" rather then, "Did you get an A on the test today?"
Remember tests are neutral Tools. How these tools are used is what makes the difference in whether they are useful or damaging to the educational process.
Schools develop curricula and programs for children to follow usually in a sequential way. Tests are helpful to both teachers, students, and administrators to determine if, in fact, the program is working and the students are learning. In order to take the next step in a sequential program, a teacher devises a test or uses the book publisher's test to determine if the individual student is ready to take the next step ---or does he need more time --or does he need to relearn something he has misunderstood. With this knowledge the teacher can readjust the program to fit the student's needs. This information is useful to the teacher and the student. The student needs to know how he is doing and what he must do in the future so that he can take the next step. The teacher can teach the best program in the world but it is the student's decision about whether he will learn or not. He should be part of the process.
In this scenario, testing need not be a cause of alarm or anxiety to the student. The test is a necessary tool and is not being used to trick the student. It is merely data, along with other data, that allows the student, the teacher and school to plan ahead.
Standardized tests, however, are usually given for other reasons. These tests are standardized on groups of students and are useful and were meant to compare groups, not individual students. When used correctly, the results help school systems to evaluate their programs.
Each school system is unique and should have unique goals. Results from achievement tests help schools to determine, if, in fact, they are achieving those goals. If the test scores in math at the second grade, for example, indicate that the students are not doing well, then the faculty should look at their program and take appropriate steps to improve it.
Achievement tests were not standardized to determine an individual child's progress. If they are used this way, they should only be viewed as screening devices because there are too few questions to determine if there is a learning problem or if there is a problem, what the problem is.
For the parents in the audience, if your child, for example, shows a drop in reading comprehension score, you should ask if the school is going to give him a diagnostic test to determine if there is a real problem. Sometimes the problem is merely that a different test was used. He may have taken the elementary form of the test last year, and this year he took the intermediate form because he advanced a grade. The two tests are not comparable. Diagnostic tests and perhaps tests of hearing and vision give more data and help to pinpoint specific areas of difficulty.
If the school, on the basis of group end-of-year achievement tests, tells you that your child's performance is deficient in some way, you should ask a number of questions. "What further testing will be done to verify and pinpoint the problem?" "What program do you plan for my child in order to help him to learn better and possibly to improve his scores?" In other words, insist that the test scores be used as tools for planning your child's program and not merely as a statement that he is deficient in some way.
Since standardized test taking is a fact of life, it behooves children to become good at it. This is especially true if the paper and pencil test purports to measure a child's intelligence. I am assuming that no school system represented here would use a paper and pencil test to measure IQ and include these scores in the cumulative folder.
Some children automatically figure out the rules of the game--others need to be taught. They need to know such things as using their time wisely. Answer the easy questions first. Put a check next to the questions they do not answer so they can go back to them easily. Answer all questions. Leave time to fill in all of the blanks even if they do not have time to read the question. Cross out the obvious wrong answers so they have a better chance if they have to guess.
In math, it sometimes helps to plug in the answers and solve the problem backwards. If they are easily distracted, they should request or be assigned the first seat in the last row, near the window and away from the door.
All students anticipating taking the SATs should either take a course on how to take the test or read a book like "The Princeton Review" from cover to cover. After all, they are not being evaluated on what they know, they are being evaluated on how well they answer that particular group of questions in relation to how other students answer them. That is what the bell shape curve is all about. Somebody has to be at each end of the curve. The top end is sometimes only distinguished by one question.
If that survey reported in the NY Times is any indication of how we are doing, we are not doing very well and maybe now is time to reconsider our priorities. The whole community needs to be involved in this. The full responsibility should not be on the administrators. It is the responsibility of everybody in the educational community. That includes teachers. parents, and students.
Schools are made up of a community of people. Every school community must decide what it is all about and what it wants to accomplish for its members. It needs to be a group decision because each member is important for the successes of the others and each member has to take some responsibility for the failures.
If, for example, from test results, a school discovers that its students are not doing well in math, there are several options. One is to send home a report card indicating failure on the student's part thus making it no longer the school's problem but the parent's problem. Another option is to blame the family, which could include but not be limited to single parenting, poverty, illiteracy, dysfunctional and so forth-- thus, from the school's point of view, making it impossible for the students to learn math.
A better option is for the district to take a problem solving approach and come up with possible solutions without placing blame.
Since the teachers are the backbone of any school system and make the biggest difference in whether the children learn or not, one solution might be to have the staff honestly assess its strengths and weaknesses. Any group of people has individual strengths and weaknesses. In a safe environment, it would be okay for teachers to say what they do well and what they do not do well. In most cases, members of the school community already know which teachers are strong in certain areas and which are not.
Some weak teachers compensate by rigorously following the textbook and limiting classroom discussions. In most cases, this does not produce good math students or good students in general.
There are options to solve most problems if the school community honestly looks for them. Just to mention a few in the case of poor teaching: Teachers could team teach with one taking over the math and science and the other the liberal arts. Teachers who want to improve their math skills could be encouraged to visit classrooms of superior math teachers. Staff development opportunities could be made available for teachers to visit other schools with outstanding programs and report back to their colleagues. Time and money could be allocated for teachers to take courses to learn from highly recommended math programs. In other words, all teachers would be helped to succeed in this educational enterprise called school.
All citizens of the school community need to share some responsibility for what happens there. This includes the students. Children are not in a classroom to be individuals interacting one-to-one with the teacher. They are part of a group brought together to help each other to learn and to grow. If this were not the purpose and a class were merely a group of people assigned to the same room in order to acquire information individually so that they can give it back correctly on tests, then a much more efficient way to go about it, in this day and age, would be to put each child in front of a computer---thus eliminating schools. -- and this talk.
Parents are an essential component in the school's success and, when not acting responsibly, may be the cause for some of its failures. Parents can delegate the responsibility for their children's education to the school but they cannot abdicate it. That requires them to monitor and to supplement the program when necessary. Some parents might need help to learn how to do this well.
Other parents promise their children a Rose Garden and then try to manipulate the world in order to get it for them. A much better approach would be for them to help their children 73 to become problem solvers. The more successful children are at solving their own problems, the better able they are to accept the fact that, although they live in an imperfect world, they can handle it and can even experience moments of joy. I wish all of you joy in your great adventure.
I have a program here for you to look at that I recommend for teachers. It is called "I Am A Good Teacher" by Elizabeth Murphy It explores the concepts of temperament and learning styles.
To educate means to draw-out, to lead. It does not mean to change a person into something he is not but rather to accept him as he is with his individual inclinations, strengths and preferences. Each teacher and student is unique and should be treated uniquely. When we accept and rejoice in each other's different personalities, temperaments, and learning styles true learning begins. Diversity is to be encouraged not stifled or nullified.
In closing, I would like to read to you a list of things that I have found to be true. Please feel free to add to the list.
First published in 2000
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