High Stakes Testing Kills Education

I know you’re probably thinking that I take a pretty hard line on a lot of issues, but this is the beautiful thing about FiboThinks; opinions can be shared and ideas for solutions can be posed. I sincerely believe that the future of education is up to those of us who are willing to go out on a limb and challenge the usual educational game and say that we want change!

So… I think that high stakes testing is killing education.

The Problem: For some reason, the government has seen fit to demand that public education focus less on learning and more on creating a more business-like system. Learning gets pushed to the side and schools are made to act as businesses do in the global market. Yes, I know that the American education system isn’t “measuring” up to the standards of the world, but that is a whole new post.

We all know that education is a system which has no financial gains. A school system is provided with a budget and the goals of the school system have never included to create profit. Until now. With high stakes testing now in full force the system now measures various indicators (primarily test scores on CRT’s [criterion reference test] and EOI’s [end of instruction]) and determines a school’s Academic Performance Index (API). If schools show adequate improvements, the state says that they make “Safe Harbor.” We have systematically changed the focus of public education from students to numbers. Education doesn’t make profit, but now we deal with a different currency, statistics. This means that your neighborhood school might not show adequate “profit” (increase in API scores) and they are guaranteed, at some level, to “cut the fat.” Now they are a business. Mission statements of the schools have all been rewritten, implicitly or explicitly, to now say that the school will make a profit.

I haven’t even started in on the inconsistencies of the instruments which determine “success” of a school/business. Briefly, scores are compared each year according to the success of students taking a certain test. Of course the scores must show gain or someone gets it! And somehow we think that checking a ninth grade class this year against the ninth grade class of last year is a legitimate evaluation of improvement, or lack there of. Year to year, the composition of the ninth grade class will change. And we continue to suggest that regardless of those changes that teachers should be able to make improvements in test scores! Hence, teachers teach to the test, and not to the student.

Can you tell this gets me wound up?

A Solution: I will never suggest that I know “the” solution. But, I do believe that this form of consideration, deliberation, and debate will be the method by which “the” solution is found. What do we do to change the dismal future that high stakes testing is creating for education? I believe that we remove it. These are tests that essentially test knowledge in one way. Multiple choice, timed tests are not valid any more. Is logic, reading comprehension, and problem solving skills important? Yes! But, we cannot expect to demonstrate the level of knowledge of the entire country by giving them multiple choice tests. Are we trying to benefit the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas? Do any of those areas require the ability to solve multiple choice questions in their field? No!

Don’t compare tests from grade to grade. Look at a grade and then ask if that group of students improves over time.

Give the country another way to gauge the success of schools other than test scores. Graduation rates, student likelihood to continue education, the impression the school makes on its community.

Provide students a reason to care about school other than passing tests. This is not relevant. It is a made up motivation that only works for the people who either have a job or don’t based on the results of tests. Students don’t care about test scores!

Give students the opportunity to be gauged like you are gauged in the real world. Give them courses which are more like the real world.

I will come back and hit these ideas later and would love to hear what your thoughts are about testing. I hope that this post wasn’t too cynical.