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Why I Oppose High-Stakes Standardized Tests
In 1949, I was a self-employed trucker, buying and hauling timber for shoring up the roofs of coal mines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
A very long United Mine Workers strike put me out of the trucking business. Not having exhausted all the GI Bill benefits due me from a stint in the U.S. Navy, I went back to college, jumped through the necessary certification hoops, and started teaching in 1952 at the high school level.
A few days ago, I went to a reunion of the surviving members of a class that picked up their diplomas 50 years ago, in 1961. They were a smart bunch of kids. The work of a couple of them would be familiar to millions of Americans.
Not surprisingly, a few became teachers. Without exception, those who talked to me at the reunion had no regrets. But also without exception, none of them would now encourage anyone to enter the field. Reason Number One: Standardized, machine-scored, high-stakes tests.
If that comes as a surprise, credit corporate America’s successful promotion of the idea that test scores say something important. Opposition to the present orgy of testing is now wrongly interpreted as unwillingness to be held accountable.
For those who buy that fiction, a list of some of the real reasons for educator opposition may be helpful.
Teachers (at least the ones the public should hope their taxes are supporting) oppose the tests because they focus so narrowly on reading and math that the young are learning to hate reading, math, and school; because they measure only “low level” thinking processes; because they put the wrong people — test manufacturers — in charge of American education; because they allow pass-fail rates to be manipulated by officials for political purposes; because test items simplify and trivialize learning.
Teachers oppose the tests because they provide minimal to no useful feedback; are keyed to a deeply flawed curriculum adopted in 1893; lead to neglect of physical conditioning, music, art, and other, non-verbal ways of learning; unfairly advantage those who can afford test prep; hide problems created by margin-of-error computations in scoring; penalize test-takers who think in non-standard ways.
Teachers oppose the tests because they radically limit their ability to adapt to learner differences; encourage use of threats, bribes, and other extrinsic motivators; wrongly assume that what the young will need to know in the future is already known; emphasize minimum achievement to the neglect of maximum performance; create unreasonable pressures to cheat.
Teachers oppose the tests because they reduce teacher creativity and the appeal of teaching as a profession; are culturally biased; have no “success in life” predictive power; lead to the neglect of the best and worst students as resources are channeled to lift marginal kids above pass-fail “cut lines;” are open to massive scoring errors with life-changing consequences.
Teachers oppose the tests because they’re at odds with deep-seated American values about individual differences and worth; undermine a fundamental democratic principle that those closest to and therefore most knowledgeable about problems are best positioned to deal with them; dump major public money into corporate coffers instead of classrooms.
I, a retired teacher beyond the reach of today’s “reformers,” oppose the tests for those reasons, and for the psychological damage they do to kids not yet able to cope. But my particular, personal beef is that the tests (and the Common Core State Standards on which they’re based) are blocking policymaker consideration of what I believe to be the most promising educational innovation in the last century — the use of general systems theory as it developed during World War II as a tool for reshaping and radically simplifying the “core curriculum.”
If you think that even a couple of those 25 reasons why educators oppose standardized tests are valid, consider getting behind what ought to be an option for every child’s parent or guardian — the right to say, without being pressured or penalized by state or local authority, “Do not subject my child to any test that doesn’t provide useful, same-day or next-day information about performance.”
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Show AllRight-on insights, Marion Brady. I would also add that this standardized model is also being applied to:
1. The criminal justice system, particularly where sentencing guidelines relative to recreational drug use are concerned. Here, too, the hands of experts (the life-seasoned judges) are tied, and these professionals must go by "the book."
2. Agriculture: So many food "products" are forced to grow in neat linear rows, while entire lush plant-based communities are mowed down. The natural world is by turns poisoned and/or tamed to render "industrial food" the new, denatured norm.
3. The raising of livestock: Again, it's a uniformity model that crowds animals into narrow spaces where they are frequently force-fed, and given anti-biotics so that the unnatural circumstances of their imprisoned lives will not allow sickness to move through the "herd."
4. media & the manufacturing of consent, while efforts are made to marginalize dissent: Protests are limited to specific zones, "free" speech is monitored, while whistle-blowers are punished, etc.
Other examples exist, but I wished to point out that the linear, uniformity models are being applied to many areas and elements of our lives, and the net result is deadening for the body, mind, and spirit.
Standardized testing should be applied to politicians and corporations, even though I doubt there'd be any left afterwards.
Here's all you need to know about good teaching, imho:
http://open.salon.com//blog/joan_h/2011/10/04/grasshopper
Meanwhile, as a 20 veteran educator, I wrote two articles on this topic a while back, that may be of interest to some:
http://open.salon.com/blog/daniel_geery/2011/01/24/no_childs_behind_left_part_1_of_2
http://open.salon.com/blog/daniel_geery/2011/01/24/no_childs_behind_left_part_2_of_2
Excellent article. One addition: standardized test don't take into account individual student variation of incomes, cultures, language, family, and other barriers that make each student a separate and unique challenge and opportunity for educators.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
True. By definition, individual differences are inimical to the fundamental concept of "standardization".
Standardization is all about developing and imposing the broadest top-down norms possible, to serve mechanistic mass social values like conformity, regularity, and interchangeability.
Its proponents don't want to know about, much less accommodate, the myriad individual details that affect performance and congruity with their scrupulously established standards.
All those messy little details just gum up the works and are a drag on the noble, grand scheme or mission.
Evil things happen when teacher grading goes haywire.
Million dollar lifetime careers go up for sale in a dozen ways, with the perfectly illegal test answer stealing business, or having a doppleganger take the test for you, or passing signals in Morse code with vibrating cell phones, or bribing the scorer. Then there's the legal but corrupting test prep business. Name a test, there's someone who can crack the code and get you cheap points on it.
The worst teachers that I ever met were those that slammed kids' heads against the lockers. Bruises don't show under the hair, but kids really remember the concussions. The test won't weed these teachers out.
A number of test questions are really trivia questions for nincompoops. The Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts was asked a MCAS trivia question, and she couldn't get it. Who in their right minds decides what questions to ask the teachers?
When you are being graded on how good a teacher you are, you try to be a good teacher. When you're only being graded on a test, you put thousands of bucks into studying and you ignore the kiddos.
In any case, teacher jobs are linked to student testing. In Texas where testing is the rule, the dumber teachers coach students during tests. The smarter teachers talk principals into giving them the smart students in the first place. The smart principals never promote anyone dumb into tenth grade regardless of subject competency, because Texas only tests tenth graders. Kids take the ninth grade four years in a row. That's edyucashion, with the word "cash" embedded.
They don't teach citizenship. They don't train moral leaders. They don't raise inventors. They don't educate lower caste people to be the bosses.
This is a good article—thank you, CD, for publishing. But I am more thankful for being introduced to the author. I’ve been looking at Marion Brady’s articles on his site-- http://www.marionbrady.com/ --which you can access by clicking his name next to his photo. Quite exciting stuff! He’s going far beyond decrying standardized testing, but suggesting a holistic approach to teaching that would eradicate the whole retched system we’ve had, as he says, since 1893. I particularly was struck by “Megafailure”-- http://www.marionbrady.com/articles/journal/1995-OpinionNAASPNov.pdf --and the radically different way of learning Brady suggests: instead of filling children’s heads full of apparently unrelated facts, have them investigate what is going on around them--what is exactly going on around them, in their immediate place and time. My, what an idea!
Of course the Obamas and Gateses will never go for such a thing, nor the Department of Education, because the PTB have no intention of having kids ask what’s actually going on around them. Asking is something teachers say they want their students do, but usually they mean that they want their students to ask for the right answer. I don’t think this is what Brady is getting at.
So I will continue to look into Brady’s most interesting work.
We teachers are idealists by nature. We must persevere in staying true to our ideals in these dark days. Mr. Brady is indeed a light in the darkness. Thank you. Keep speaking truth to power.
Standardized tests are an abomination. Along with the rest of the corporate culture, feeding off the education system, of this country. For one, not all people are of the same intellectual, social, economic, or familial level. Each has it's own set of attributes and detractions that have to be taken into connsideration. I never finished college, but have about 21/2 years of credits. The one thing I do have, is the ability to read and the desire to learn. That, I attribute to a few teachers, who inspired and nutured my insaitable curiosity. Reading is not even taught as a subject anymore. It's ridiculous.
I got a letter in the mail the other day, it seems my daughter's school doesn't meet the Standardized test for math. I have the option to transfer her to a school that does. How strange a concept that is. This doesn't take into account that my child's school has a disproportionate amount of special needs children (my daughter being one of them). But it strikes me as odd that so little value is placed on anything else. This is my child's community, her loyalty is there. These are the people who have kept her predominantly mainstreamed for her elementary years. Every month the school gives out "Star Student" awards for achievements in ideas like "Friendship", "Tolerance", "Perseverance" etc. These are immeasurable skills that matter as much as math and reading. My child won't be going anywhere else.....
Marion Brady, Thank You! Please extend your comments to include testing against other nations. In China if you show no aptitude, you are diverted to an IPad assembly line. You don't "drop out" you are diverted. In Japan kids are committing seppuku behind bad test scores because they will be denied an education and have no future if they don't achieve.
In America, all the kids are in the same class - mentally challenged, scholastically challenged, kids who would have been learning a trade are now lumped in with the SATs (thanks to 'No Child Left Behind' which was contrived to marginalize public education to allow conservatives to offer 'Vouchers') Of course we can't stack up to other nations cause here everyone gets an education.
That's part of what makes us so successful. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped out of college cause they had an idea. Why does the US create such fabulous outliers - because we are not afraid to fail. Failure is acceptable. Try Try again. Look at The Donald - declared bankruptcy 3 times. Our minds are open and that's the way we teach because that's the way we live.
Look how much money China has put into R&D and got NOTHING out because they have been taught NOT TO THINK. They have to steal our innovations. The most important thing we should be teaching WE ARE TEACHING not to be afraid of trying a good idea.
Some more American outliers; Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, Nikola Tesla, James T. Russell (CD), Martin Cooper (cell phone) Gordon Gould LASER, Vinton Cerf & Bob Kahn (fathers internet) and the Wright Brothers.