More Trouble with Testing

This article was a really exciting find for me, as I’ve been looking for blogs or articles written by actual English teachers who can provide insight into the standardized testing debate. The article is prefaced with the following editor’s note:

[Editor's note: This is the first of The Teacher Diaries, a new occasional series in The Tyee. B.C. teachers will share what it's like to do their jobs, what they consider the most pressing issues facing their students, and where they see solutions.]

How great! This is exactly the kind of article I’ve been searching for. This article written by Nick Smith, English teacher from Vancouver, is fairly lengthy and discusses many differences centered about the way boys and girls learn differently in the classroom. Very interesting—but not related to my topic. However, he does discuss his personal beliefs about testing that are worth considering in my blog.

Boy Trouble?
by Nick Smith, English teacher, Vancouver, B.C.
The Tyee, online news website
February 27, 2007

When I studied education before becoming a teacher in the early 90s, my professors were dead set against lecturing, worksheets and memorizing facts for the test, but those were still the methods they employed, and the ones I saw in use during my practicum. We as teachers know that education must be engaging and relevant to be effective, and that the learner must be actively involved in the construction of knowledge for anything to stick. I know of no study that shows standardized testing to increase student learning. What I know is that there is no multiple-choice question that can measure the kind of learning that really changes people.

Let me give you an example. My students choose scenes to play from Macbeth as we wrap up our study of Shakespeare’s play. An El Salvadoran boy, who still struggles with English, selects a role with few words. After a few periods of rehearsal, he faces down Macbeth with a meter stick in front of the class, spitting “My voice is in my sword” with intense passion. He clearly understands the play and the character. His classmates burst into applause. This same student, however, when writing the test on Macbeth, draws a blank when asked to remember the norms of Elizabethan drama. Statistically, the girls in his class might ace the test that he bombs, but it does not follow that tests are good for girls. And it does not follow that he understands little about the play.

view complete article

Although Mr. Smith’s article primarily refers to basic recall testing in the classroom, the bigger picture suggests something about the way we expect students to perform on statewide and national standardized tests. Like the Macbeth example given, different students learn and remember information in many different ways. To expect all students to be able to retain and “spit-back” quality information on a standardized test is ridiculous. Either the teacher would have to be “superwoman/man” and teach to all the various types of learning styles and intelligences—or—the students would have to be direct “learning clones” that all learned in the exact same styles. We know that neither of these are possible in the real world of teaching. So why make students like the El Salvadorian boy mentioned above fail tests and become labeled as “below grade level” or “learning disabled”? How do we know that the methods we’re using to test students are actually measuring how much the students know? Of course these are age-old questions, and I know from taking educational psychology and cultural psychology this semester that the answers to these questions are very complex and controversial.

I think again, this comes back to the point where you as the teacher have to make the decision as to what’s in the best interest of your students, given the curriculum and state standards. I am somewhat scared to have to make these decisions, and I hope that through continuing to educate myself about the issues surrounding standardized testing, I will eventually feel confident in the decision I make.

The great thing about this article I found is that, because it’s an online newspaper so to speak, it has a place for readers to post comments to the article. Although most of the articles dealt with the main issue of the article (sex differences in learning and leadership abilities), some of the comments reveal the tension that surrounds testing and the quality of education worldwide. The example below shows how “results-based-assessment” as RainGirl calls it makes people feel torn between appreciating our educational systems and hating them.

Raingirl (Feb. 27, 2007): A rigid assessment-based education short-changes all students – male, female, kinetic learners, visual learners, whatever. Some students, especially those who through ethnic or gender-based societal pressure are raised to be more conforming and less questioning of authority, may perform well under this system but that hardly means they are receiving a quality education. Interestingly, the recent push towards results-based assessment is mainly coming from conservative societal sectors (insert Fraser Institute here if you like) … an area not usually dominated by mobs of liberal females. Are the old male bastions of conservative society perhaps out to undercut the potential usurpers of their power? Interesting “pride” dynamics!

And then, with many comments from other readers after her first post, RainGirl write this next post where her frustration clearly surfaces about the other comments about the article.

Raingirl (Feb. 28, 2007): So, I’ll listen all right … but I’ll be listening to those who have positive constructive solutions to the educational challenges in our schools and not just those playing the blame game.

Again, I’m left questioning myself: where do I stand? I don’t think I’m going to be able to ever fully answer this question, but I do think there has to be a better solution to testing than the current standardized national and state tests. If only I could conceptualize some sort of “better plan”…maybe I wouldn’t need to be an English teacher after all…