Standardized Testing: Take Two

What are the goals of “public education,” and does public education lead to a different notion of citizenship than parochial or private schooling?

Whenever I think about standardized testing, I think about the Keystones, which are mandated Pennsylvania standardized tests that a student must pass before he or she is allowed to graduate from a high school in Pennsylvania. The Keystone exams are fairly new in my school district, and they were a replacement for the PSSA’s. I remember how excited everyone was when it was announced that the PSSA’s were no longer going to be a part of our curriculum. This was a short-lived excitement, once we found out that the replacement exam would be lengthier than the PSSA’s and go beyond math and reading to cover science as well. We had to take several practice Keystone exams, and the students who did not reach proficiency were forced into tutoring, that took away from their study halls, lunches, and some after school activities. When it came time to take the real exam, entire hallways were shut down. Complete silence took over, alongside a threatening atmosphere where we were told that if we did not perform well we would not be allowed to leave the high school and move on to college. The administration, the teachers and the students were all stressed, and after the first round of exams, more students had to face tutoring to do better on the next round of Keystone tests. These students who did not reach proficiency faced laughter from their peers and grimaces from their teachers. All in all, it was a stressful and at times, humiliating experience, and up until last week’s blog post, I did not understand why we students were subjected to such torture.

Last week, I mentioned that I would use this week to exam the negatives of standardized testing. They are pretty clear. Standardized testing takes away from the curriculum. As students are taught to a test, there is more drill-like, rote memorization classroom developed. The administration, the teachers, the students and the parents all feel the strain, and rather than a focus on learning and development of critical thinking and social skills, students are taught to perform well on one test given over a span of several days, of a 200 days school year, just to meet standards and earn funding for a district. Furthermore, with the test itself, many argue that it is not objective, particularly when essay questions are part of the grading. At times, the tests can be discriminatory to non-native English speakers, as well as students with disabilities. As for the business side of the testing, “the billion dollar testing industry is notorious for making costly and time-consuming scoring errors. NCS Pearson, which has a $254 million contract to administer Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test, delivered the 2010 results more than a month late and their accuracy was challenged by over half the state’s superintendents (Standardized Tests).”

However, upon further examples of the negatives that I have just listed, they are simply opposites of the positives that I listed last week. In the end, there are statistics to back every angle and side of the arguments for and against standardized testing. So where does that leave us? What is the biggest problem here, and how do we resolve it?

In this debate on standardized testing, many tend to focus on the high school setting, at least in the discussions that I have attended. I am at fault for this as well. However, I think that the greatest dilemma is actually found in the elementary schools, where standardized tests are first introduced. Some would argue that the stakes are lesser because the children are still incredibly young, but that is not the case.

Lelac Almagor, of The Boston Review, describes her observations in the elementary school setting, and her ideas are eye-opening and insightful. In Almagor’s first year working in an enrichment office, a concerned mother met with her, questioning why her daughter, with good grades, attendance and participation was scoring in the 14^th percentile? The school district was not very elite, and until standardized testing arose, the parent had no idea that in comparison to other children her age, her daughter was actually very far behind. Everything is relative, and Almagor is right in stating that this parent was a “beneficicary” of the standardized test, and had the right to no longer be in the dark about the slower pace of her daughter’s education compared to the more rigorous, high-ranking schools, with the coveted funding.

Just like many bloggers before her, Almagor discusses the impracticalities of standardized testing.

“And then there is the challenge of obtaining the theoretical benefits in spite of practical obstacles. The problem is that measuring how well a younger student reads is close to impossible, at least through any standardized approach. If you really want to know, you’ve got to sit down and listen to the child read and then ask him or her to explain the story. The process takes about twenty minutes per child, plus the sensitivity that comes of experience. Some children read fluently but make no coherent meaning from the words. Some stumble over pronunciation but can understand and analyze in depth. Some know more than they can readily express. And sometimes the process makes a child too nervous to think clearly, and we have to try again on another day or in a less evaluative setting.”

A standardized test can be reliable and valid and follow of the appropriate statistics, but at the end of the day, it is one test meant to assess several years of learning and that I just not feasible.

“But we are a public school and we rely on public funding, so there is no way around it. Pass they must. We practice strategies for staying focused, for encouraging yourself, for being brave even when you have to figure out what to do all by yourself. We work on managing boredom. We praise and celebrate the virtue of stamina. We take more practice tests.”

It is so true that when it comes to standardized testing, all focus turns to the one test. Also, instead of just teaching the material, strategies must be taught, and that consumes even more instructional time, as well as denies academic and social growth to the individual student.

“As a teacher, I’ll take that kind of meaning over meaninglessness. Given that the test is mandatory, I’d rather it feel like a grand mountain we climbed together. But there is something heartbreakingly unfair about asking our kids to invest the best of their academic passion in a poorly designed standardized test rather than in a science fair project or a school play or an actual mountain to climb.”

Furthermore, many would like to argue that standardized testing is responsible for the socioeconomic gaps in America because they are what lead to funding in schools. However, Almagor provides an interesting twist to that logic.

“Testing doesn’t produce the staggering gaps in performance between privileged and unprivileged students; historical, generational, systemic inequality does. Testing only seeks to tell the truth about those gaps, and the truth is that the complex tasks of the Common Core are a better representation of what our students need to and ought to be able to do.”

Once again there are pros and cons to the testing. There is a lot of effort made to make the tests fair and to have them provide statistical evidence of academic achievement in every differing public school setting. The biggest problem that arises, are when children, whose minds are still developing at a rapid pace, are being used as pawns in a big business.

“If we could give these harder tests internally and get back detailed results—share them only with parents, and use them only to improve our own planning—many more teachers would embrace them. Liberated from the testing tricks and stamina lessons, we would embrace more honest feedback about where our students are and how they still need to grow.”

“Most important, by testing kids individually, we would reframe testing as a source of information rather than evaluation. We’d reduce the incentive to cheat or prep and instead put the emphasis back where it belongs—on what students need and on how can we help them truly learn.”

I think using standardized testing as an accessory to teaching and learning would be incredibly invaluable and reduce the stigmas while still providing the government with the statistics that they need. There would be less stress on every party involved, and the main goal of student learning would be more successfully addressed.

Could this truly be the answer to the standardized testing issue? What are your thoughts?

“The Good in Standardized Testing.” The Good in Standardized Testing. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

“Standardized Tests – ProCon.org.” ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.