Landing the Plane
Increasingly, teacher preparation and professional development have focused on standardized testing. This myopic view has pushed the true meaning of assessment aside. Assessment is about revealing what students know and can do and responding to gaps in learning. Standardized tests are one snapshot in the broader panorama. The lack of data on their long term effectiveness, coupled with an imperative to equip students with 21st century college and career skills, drives the need to incorporate other measures of learning.
Now, more than ever, students need opportunities for authentic demonstrations, applied actions, creation of products, and visible processes of learning. These activities require higher level thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, technology, and self direction: Skills that will enable our students to be productive citizens in a complex global economy. No doctor or pilot takes a multiple choice test to see how well they can perform surgery or land an airplane. Why should students?
posted by Assessment Network @ 5:41 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
I agree that in my teacher preparation program we have spent considerable amount of time discussing the pros and cons of standardized testing and multiple choice high-stakes testing. While the 21st century requires students to by dynamic and creative thinkers who can problem solve - too often do we see assessments that requires simple regurgitation of information.
Like I said, we have spent time in my classes discussing the pros and the cons. Certainly I can see the argument for the use of standardized testing, and agree that knowledge of facts and concepts is a critical component of education. I feel that our students today are over-standardized tested, and that perhaps including this form of assessment is important, but should be done less frequently. Perhaps once at each academic level (elementary, middle, high school). Including performance and authentic assessments into the mix of evaluating students in place of some of the typical standardized testing intervals throughout their academic careers.
I agree that we would not allow a doctor to operate on us after they had only taken a multiple choice test - of course years of interning in hospitals and opportunities to practice their skills is very important as well. However, a doctor who has not first demonstrated a solid foundation of medical knowledge through the use of multiple choice standardized-testing (like the medical Board exams that medical students must take) would also not be a good surgical candidate.
I think the overall important factor to remember regarding assessment is that a diverse assortment of assessments should be used to test all types students to gain a better understanding of student's ability to achieve under different settings.
The growing importance of standardized tests concerns me greatly. I think that the foundation of American public education is being torn in two. On one hand, working teachers and teacher candidates are being told to focus on every student as an individual. We are to differentiated, learn about and incorporate individual student interests, be conscious of student differences and needs, meet students we ever they are an attempt to pull them up as far as we can, to value actual learning of numerical performance. I agree with these sentiments and hope to accomplish them in my own classroom.
However, the people ultimately in control of public education; the local, state, and federal elected officials that develop and control funding and budgets as well potential industry changing legislation and standardized tests have a very different agenda. The motives of these individuals, who are for the most part not education veterans or experts, seem to be based on a very different set of values. These people wish to treat every student exactly the same, to set a bar and demand every student reach it no matter their particular skills or abilities, to easily and quickly quantify the achievement of our students into digestible and “stump”-able sets of numbers and, to place performance above actual learning in terms of importance.
We spend a lot of time talking about the achievement gap and the technology gap. I believe we need to spend more time closing the gap between educators and politicians. A building of the finest quality, the most beautiful construction and, the most eloquent details will collapse to the ground like a tin shanty in a hurricane if its foundation crumbles.
I absolutely agree that it is “imperative to equip students with 21st century college and career skills . . . that now, more than ever, students need opportunities for authentic demonstrations, applied actions, creation of products, and visible processes of learning.” Some of these kids are great test takers, but we honestly have no idea if they are capable of higher-level thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, technology, and self-direction. Standardized tests can’t measure this. We have to overhaul content and curriculum and find better ways to measure authentic learning.
Given our current ranking among modern nations across the world – we are ranked #25 overall (up from last year’s #26) - it is once again clear that our public school system is failing to prepare students for success in a competitive, global economy. There is an adage that defines “crazy” as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That said, our approach to education is crazy. Not only is it crazy, it’s inequitable and becoming more so every day. If we know that we aren’t preparing students to be productive citizens in a complex, global economy, how can we in good conscience continue to do so?
I am saddened by the prospect that as a new teacher I will be forced to follow an outdated curriculum and then use a standardized test to measure the outcome. I hope to affect some change, even in some small way to get my students ready for the world.
I agree with Aidan...
In my opinion, the system of “Scientific management” that has been used to influence present day educational practices is flawed. To incorporate ruthless business tactics in order to improve upon educational cost and efficiency is insensitive and imprudent. This cost effective process produces an unbeneficial student-teacher ratio, while negatively affecting other Administrative Progressive ideas such as differentiation.
With differentiation and standardized tests, there is a mixed message that is clearly being sent. An advocate of differentiation would say, “Make proper adjustments based on each individual’s needs.” While “Scientific” progressives that promote standardized tests would say, “Students must understand a, b, and c. And if they don’t, they fail.”
The ridiculous part is that both factions fall under the same branch of educational theory, the Administrative branch. Conclusively, many students that receive differentiation struggle with standardized process. It makes no sense to systematically evaluate students as “products” in a cost-effective, efficient process. Overall, I see a confused message as to what policy makers are asking for. I believe that educational philosophy is superior to standardized evaluation. Ultimately, I believe that these tests are not a respectable representation of all students’ abilities.
I completely agree that students should not be solely assessed based on results of multiple choice testing. I do not completely disagree with standardized testing, but I do disagree with how it is effecting our schools. Teachers are taking so much time away from other more creative authentic teaching and assessing to drill their students with CMT questions, that they are losing sight of what it truly takes to "land a plane." Where would our society be without citizens that can think critically? I would hate to see what will happen to our country in the future if our youth continues to be neglected in this way.
I agree that students should not just be assessed by standardized tests. In reality it does not matter how well our students can answer multiple choice questions. What really matters is how they apply the knowledge they have gained in school into the real world. In today’s world students need to know how to collaborate with others and use higher level thinking skills. If they do not get the opportunity to do this in the classroom teachers are not giving students the skills they need to succeed in life.
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