As my freshman year of college continues to move along faster than I can process it, I think back to high school and what I would be doing now. I’d be finishing up basketball and looking forward to track, I would be helping student council plan the spring dance, and I would be getting ready to take the Keystones. For those of you reading this who are not from PA and don’t know what the Keystones are a standardized test that access high school students ability in reading math and science. It is required by the state of Pennsylvania that all students receive a proficient or higher in order to graduate high school. Schools were given monetary compensation for the percentage of advanced scores on the test. It is for this reason I had to take the math Keystone 3 times in one year. The first time I was one point away from proficient. The second time I got proficient, but was told that I needed to take it again despite passing. So in one day I took both the science and math Keystone, and received a below basic on the math. I was told to take it a fourth time but luckily for me I was not the only kid told to take the test again despite having passed. The school was told to stop this but it did not make up for the stress that my classmates and I felt for four straight years of high school. I was fortunate and was able to pass all the tests but many of my friends had to take remedial classes in order to graduate. Many of these friends were AP honors students. Standardized testing is not just a Western PA problem, it is a national problem.
It all starts in 1999 when tests results for a global standardized test were released. To this point America was under the impression that our education system was number one. They were in for a rude awakening when out of the 40 countries tested, the U.S. ranked 28th. Shortly after President Bush implemented the “No Child Left Behind” policy in 2001. This was in an effort to improve the lowering standardized test scores. It implemented the incentive that if children showed improvement throughout the year on standardized tests the teacher was given a raise. On the surface this seems like a good idea but it was only problematic. An example of this happened in Florida. One teacher had a student projected to score higher than the test’s max score. When the test came the student scored perfectly, but because her projection was higher than that allowed the teacher received a negative rating in his evaluation despite having a student score 100%. One of the reasons this happened is because the algorithm used by the state of Florida is the same that is used when mass breeding cattle. What does that say about our United States educational system when the algorithm to make sure cattle production is tip-top is used to evaluate a students intelligence. Another problem with it is it forces teachers to take time away from teaching valuable life skills to teach test taking skills. I’m probably not the only one who had to sit through a lecture and have the teacher say at the end this really dose not matter for this course but it is on the test so I have to teach it. That is ridiculous! Wasting valuable class time to teach some information just because it is on a test.
“No Child left Behind” also increased the number of standardized tests taken by a student from 6 to 17. It is my opinion that the way to evaluate intelligence is not by bombarding students with useless questions that often don’t make sense. I get the policy was implemented to help bridge the gap between schools that face racial and economic inequalities. I agree that any attempt is nice to help that divide, but treating students like cattle is the wrong way to do it. I am fortunate now to not have to take anymore standardized tests but if our government continues to promote teaching tests rather than material then I have some serious concerns for America moving forward.
In your blog post you mentioned that schools are given monetary compensation for the percentage of advanced scores on the test. I am curious about how much compensation schools received and if it made a significant difference in the way they implemented Keystone testing. My school made me take the Keystone’s but once you passed you no longer had to take it. I would be interested in delving into why your district required everyone to take the Keystone’s multiple times once you have passed the exam at least once.
Also, you mention that standardized testing was intended to bridge the gap for schools which face economic inequalities. I would argue that poorer schools which have to adhere to specific testing standards face greater challenges with standardized testing than suburban students who are forced to take the standardized tests by their school districts.
In 2014, an article was published in the Atlantic which brought up reasons why standardized testing is unfair and detrimental to impoverished urban schools. The author argues that schools which can afford to purchase textbooks do significantly better on the standardized tests. That’s because the McGraw Hill provides the material which mirrors the material present on standardized tests. And many poor schools can’t afford to spend that much money on textbooks putting them at a significant disadvantage compared to wealthy suburban schools. For example, The Elements of Literature costs $114.75 but Tilden middle school in Philadelphia only allows $30.30 per student to purchase books. How is a student supposed to adequately receive the proper textbooks to prepare for mandatory standardized testing?
I hated standardized testing. It was horrible. But now that I’m in college I realize how lucky I am that I had a high school which prepared me for a rigorous college curriculum. And I think the bigger problem isn’t how standardized testing is hurting suburban kids from receiving a stellar education but how it makes it harder for poorer school districts to reach certain marks when they can’t even afford to buy textbooks.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/why-poor-schools-cant-win-at-standardized-testing/374287/
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I’m also from PA, so when you talk about how awful the Keystones are, I completely agree with you. I remember the tests being extremely stressful, especially the days when we were required to take more than one in a day. I was lucky enough to only have to take them once, but I remember thinking that the tests were unfair, as there were many people I knew who had to take a test more than once. They also seemed kind of pointless, as it had no effect on our grades and didn’t help us academically. On the other hand, it didn’t seem fair because there were students who didn’t do well on it even if they did really well in school. Out of curiosity, I looked up how well my high school did in terms of the Keystones. In general, though, my high school had relatively high scores (65 out of 675). https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2017/10/11/what-are-the-top-100-high-schools-in-the-state-on.html I remember my high school making a huge deal about taking the tests and having a few days of class dedicated just to preparing for Keystones. It makes me wonder how much my classes freshman and sophomore year were spent just teaching us material for the test rather than on things that are actually important to learn. I feel like my high school focused a lot on doing well on standardized tests, but the downside was that it kind of made everyone think in exactly the same way. Also, in my opinion, there wasn’t much room for creativity at my school. Between PSSA’s in elementary and middle school, SATs and ACTs, schools seem to be preparing us for lots of standardized tests, and less for creative thinking other and other materials that don’t fit into that category. While I can see the appeal of using standardized tests to track a school’s academics, I think that we take too many of them, and that they aren’t as effective as they’re supposed to be.
It always bothered me that our standardized test questions were so confusing. I feel that there should be some way to assess how all of the students are doing so that there can be a baseline that can be used to assess student achievement. I don’t know the right way to do that though. I remember countless times that teachers would tell us, “The meanies in Richmond are trying to trick you with these dumb questions, but you have to beat them.” Richmond is Virginia’s state capital where they would write the exams. Like you said, it’s sad how much classes now revolve around tests.
Something else that bothers me about multiple choice exams in general is that they make some students feel outright dumb. I’ve had friends who could not do well on an exam to save their life no matter how many classes they took, how many tutors they hired, or how many practice exams they took. These people are not dumb at all, but testing is not how they can express their knowledge. I hated how defeated they were because they couldn’t get past a C or B on an exam. I feel like some people are naturally good at taking exams, some people can study, but for some people, the classic exam style is not the way that their brain works. I hope that more research is done in the coming years into how to more uniquely assess student ability…I hope that the new methods of assessment reflect the wide diversity of people that go to school. https://standardizedtests.procon.org/