by cmsellers » Mon Mar 09, 2015 4:51 pm
@Pov and Tess
I feel like you two might be arguing past one another to some degree. Tess supports standardized testing. Pov hates high-stakes testing. I agree with both points.
I always do really well on standardized tests; I overperform the grades I get in school (and I get pretty good grades in school) because I don't have to budget my time, don't have to deal with classmates, and don't have to interpret vague instructions.
Also, from middle school onwards I got special accomodations, namely use of a computer for writing sections, and I extra time. However I don't need the extra time most of the time (the only time I actually used it was on the essay portion of the SAT), and computers are becoming standard in standardized testing (I'm so glad that computers were normal when I took the GRE, because it meant I didn't have to request special accommodations for that, which would have been a pain).
Any rate, when standardized testing is testing things like reading and math skills, I think it's a good thing. It would be nice to have an independent assessment of writing skills, it's far harder to design a standardized test for writing skills. The current system is to have students write an essay in a limited amount of time, have two reviewers rate it according to pre-defined set of criteria, and a third reviewer resolve any large discrepencies. The problem is that you're writing one essay in 50 minutes of a high-stress environment, which I'm not sure is representative of student's writing ability.
I'd rather have those same reviewers review several essays by a student on a teacher-assigned topic. The problem with that solution is that A. it would cost more (essay portions are by far the most expensive parts of standardized tests to grade) and B. it would make it far to easy for students to cheat. At a minimum though, I think that essay portions should allow more time, and there should be more of them.
As for Pov's points, I absolutely agree that standardized tests should not be as high-stakes as they are now. Though the SAT/ACT and GRE are declining in importance for college/grad school admissions, using standardized tests as high-stakes tests in public schools is increasingly popular, especially with NCLB.
Using them as a teacher assessment is obviously wrong. Even when you account for the ability of students prior to going into a teacher's class, you'd still have the problem that students on the lower end of the curve are harder to teach than students on the higher end. Even if you account for that, you're still encouraging teachers to teach to the test when their job, salary, and/or school district's funding depends on it.
One complaint that teachers often have about standardized tests is "teaching to the test." I used to have sympathy for this complaint, but I've come to realize that at least in Massachusetts, the subjects which are tested on standardized tests are those which could stand to be more standardized. Math, reading, and writing are the subjects tested in my state, and the teachers who complain most about teaching to the test are English teachers, who feel that they're losing control of their curriculum.
My solution to both the "teaching to the test" complaint and the high-stakes nature of the tests would be to make certain courses in those test-prep courses. Call the math and writing courses "practical mathematics" and "clear writing," and then have several reading courses with different books (Shakespeare, science fiction, American lit) but the same sorts of questions.
Rather than one high-stakes standardized test a year, teachers of these classes would have standardized curriculum for these courses (reading, writing, math, and again, I'd add civics), and the only tests administered would be centrally-produced standardized tests. The results of these tests would determine most of a student's grade on those courses, but have no effect on the school or its curriculum outside those classes.
David Wong wrote:7. "But this is the last non-terrible forum on the internet! The rest are full of trolls and Nazis!"
That's just not true at all.