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I can’t imagine being a student in today’s learning environment. Nor can I fathom the pressures teachers face with countless state and federal regulations that hamper their ability to set curriculum.
This week, the Express features the second piece in a series on testing in public schools in our area. While test scores are an important consideration in evaluating students’ performance and teacher competency, they are only one tool among many.
I saw a cartoon recently that sums up one of the biggest problems with today’s testing environment. As near as I can tell, it first appeared in the 1990s in New Zealand, but it applies as much today in the U.S. as it did then. Pictured are seven animals: a blackbird, an elephant, a penguin, a monkey, a goldfish, a seal and a dog. The test proctor gestures to a nearby tree and says, “For a fair selection, everybody has to take the same exam: please climb that tree.”
Growing up, I was an excellent test-taker. By seventh grade, I had become so well-versed in guessing the answer on multiple choice questions, that I was outperforming high school seniors on the ACT exam. My highest score was in trigonometry, yet I had no idea what a sine or cosine were and I hadn’t even completed pre-algebra.
Standardized tests focus primarily on reading skills and areas of impirical knowledge: science, math and history. But they measure little more.
Fifteen years ago, a group of British education experts began looking at alternative ways to test students. According to one researcher’s report of the study appearing in The Independent in 1996, among other types of testing, they looked at open-book evaluations that tested students’ ability to find information, rather than their ability to regurgitate facts and figures from memory. That’s a skill many professionals use every day. We don’t expect a doctor to know the complete text of all of their several desk references. Rather, we expect them to know where to find the information they need, when they need it. In my own career, we journalists use a 417-page guide, the “Associated Press Stylebook,” with instructions on how to report everything from business to sports and religion to science. It containes several pages on punctuation and a brief overview of media law. I know by heart several entries of the book that I use on a regular basis, but just this week, I found myself thumbing through the volume to ensure I used the proper titles for Roman Catholic priests and formatted soccer box scores correctly.
I can’t imagine being a student in today’s learning environment. Nor can I fathom the pressures teachers face with countless state and federal regulations that hamper their ability to set curriculum.
This week, the Express features the second piece in a series on testing in public schools in our area. While test scores are an important consideration in evaluating students’ performance and teacher competency, they are only one tool among many.
I saw a cartoon recently that sums up one of the biggest problems with today’s testing environment. As near as I can tell, it first appeared in the 1990s in New Zealand, but it applies as much today in the U.S. as it did then. Pictured are seven animals: a blackbird, an elephant, a penguin, a monkey, a goldfish, a seal and a dog. The test proctor gestures to a nearby tree and says, “For a fair selection, everybody has to take the same exam: please climb that tree.”
Growing up, I was an excellent test-taker. By seventh grade, I had become so well-versed in guessing the answer on multiple choice questions, that I was outperforming high school seniors on the ACT exam. My highest score was in trigonometry, yet I had no idea what a sine or cosine were and I hadn’t even completed pre-algebra.
Standardized tests focus primarily on reading skills and areas of impirical knowledge: science, math and history. But they measure little more.
Fifteen years ago, a group of British education experts began looking at alternative ways to test students. According to one researcher’s report of the study appearing in The Independent in 1996, among other types of testing, they looked at open-book evaluations that tested students’ ability to find information, rather than their ability to regurgitate facts and figures from memory. That’s a skill many professionals use every day. We don’t expect a doctor to know the complete text of all of their several desk references. Rather, we expect them to know where to find the information they need, when they need it. In my own career, we journalists use a 417-page guide, the “Associated Press Stylebook,” with instructions on how to report everything from business to sports and religion to science. It containes several pages on punctuation and a brief overview of media law. I know by heart several entries of the book that I use on a regular basis, but just this week, I found myself thumbing through the volume to ensure I used the proper titles for Roman Catholic priests and formatted soccer box scores correctly.
I had an insightful professer in college who understood that career journalists use the Stylebook in this manner and when it came time to take our final exam in our writing and reporting course, she allowed us to have two references on our desks: a dictionary and the Stylebook.
That concept holds true more today than it did 12 years ago when I took that exam. Technology and innovation are moving so quickly that one of the most important skills students can gain before graduation it the ability to find, analyze and implement new information. This is the case in careers across the board, from journalists and doctors, to mechanics, nurses, teachers, police officers and beyond.
But we don’t test for that on exams. Rather, we are looking for rote memorization. We don’t ask our students to learn to think; we ask them to adsorb a uniform set of facts and figures. What’s more, tests change so frequently that by the time a student repeats an exam, changes in administration, legislative requirements or budget shortfalls, the test bears little resemblance to the previous version, rendering it meaningless.
It’s time to rethink education in our society. Standards at the state and federal level are great, but the decision on how to educate students and the determination for what will help them excel, both before and after education, needs to be left to local school boards and teachers in the classroom.
