Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Pleasures Of 'Teaching To the Test'

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579374651890320212
The Pleasures Of 'Teaching To the Test'
By JAMES SAMUELSON
Wall Street Journal
February 12, 2014

Is standardized testing anti-student? Many educators and commentators believe so, vehemently. No more "drill and kill," some detractors demand. Kids are not robots goes another refrain. Others argue that standardized testing is a soul-sapping exercise in rote learning that devalues critical thinking and favors students of higher-income parents who can afford test-prep classes or private tutors.

On the contrary: Testing is good for the intellectual health of students. It is also an excellent way for teachers to better understand the particular academic challenges their students face.

First, standardized tests are a critical thinker's dream. Multiple-choice questions often ask students to evaluate evidence and make inferences. Consider a sample multiple-choice question for the New York State English Language Arts test, which is administered in the public schools. It asks students to identify the tone of a paragraph excerpted from Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" (1889).

Students must closely read the author's choice of words and phrases so as not to choose plausible but incorrect suggested answers such as "humble," and instead zero in on the correct response, "confident." The ability to do so takes intense focus, stamina and, perhaps most importantly, practice.

Questions such as these are not based on a test-taker's ability to memorize facts—a major criticism invoked by test-taking opponents—but a student's analytical prowess. Close reading to determine the connotation of words and phrases is not merely a test-taking skill. It is a skill needed for a fulfilling, literate life. And it's a skill that students can learn, if teachers are willing to teach them.

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I think much of the criticism of standardized tests on this forum, especially of the multiple choice variety, is overdone.

I don't see the validity of this point. MC tests ask students to pick from four predetermined choices. They don't require him to figure out the answer for himself by putting ideas together (my definition of critical thinking). Rarely in life are we presented with four answer choices, one of which is correct.

Asking a student to pick from a few choices about the tone of a paragraph is a far cry from asking him to write a meaningful essay about it.

Indeed, Val. I think the author needs to become a better critical thinker before mistaking such a question as a "critical thinker's dream." For one thing, the author describes this as "evaluating evidence," but where's the part where the reader is encouraged to say, "this passage presents bad evidence, because _________."

And this only scratches the surface of the real issues with standardized testing, which relate to how well they measure what they purport to measure, and how the results are misused to evaluate teachers (because, news flash, all students are not alike).

If all of this multiple choice testing is so "good" for intellectual development, then why has the SAT needed recentering with ever-increasing frequency?

It isn't because scores have RISEN over time.


`Recentered' Scores Just Another Step Toward Mediocrity

Average SAT scores by year since 1952

Average Scores Slip on SAT - NYTimes, 2011


National Center for Ed Statistics-- SAT score data

So when SHOULD we start to see this strategic shift toward testing and "critical thinking" (the new definition above, I mean) paying off?


I mean, if it WORKED... then shouldn't the scores of students who were high school juniors and seniors in, say, 2011-- having been the beneficiaries of a full K through 12 education aligned toward this (IMO dubious) mission be demonstrating a huge JUMP in scores?? Yet that seems to emphatically NOT be the case. If anything, the only real result seems to be in writing, where scores have declined. Big surprise.

Like a lot of other untested "great ideas" in education, this one is actually kind of an epic... failure... when one examines the DATA to see how well it actually works.

Sort of like math instruction via computer. The longer students spend without real instruction, the worse they do. Not a popular result, btw, and therefore one that those pushing technology and automation into classrooms have studiously IGNORED.
Executive Summary:Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products

I think the changes in SAT scores are mostly driven by the larger number of kids taking them and going to college. The SAT scores of the top 60% of HS kids is bound to be very different than the SAT scores of the top 20-30% of HS kids that used to take the test.

Hear, hear!

We've already taught DD10 the extremely useful but (IMO) not especially "analytical" skill of "If you aren't sure, cross out the obviously stupid answers and pick from the remaining ones." And the "backwards plug-in" (in math, plug the answers you have left after crossing out the dumb ones into the problem and see if they look like they work). These are test-taking hacks. One could argue they are applicable to other things in life, but they aren't demostrating mastery of the material.

Would someone like John Nash emerge from standardized testing or advocate for its use? I vehemently think not!

If we require kids to perform well on a test, then we better teach them how to do so.

It infuriates me when kids are expected to perform well and educators state "we don't teach to the test".
I agree that teaching should be more than teaching to the test, however, teaching to do well on the test needs to be included. Otherwise, we are teaching about oranges, testing about apples, and then complaining that we got oranges.

Maybe a better idea is to teach authentically and then assess based on what is being taught in classrooms.

In other words, I think that fundamentally, we're already asking all the wrong questions to begin with the instant that we start "teaching TO the test."

We should TEST to the TEACHING.

Yes to curriculum-based assessment and teachers should be using it to assess the quality of their teaching.