I’ve come across a few news articles reporting on the anti-standardized testing movement sweeping through the U.S recently. In New York, there are an estimated 300,000 kids “refusing” (i.e. being forced by their parents) not to take the state standardized test ?this year.
Here in Indiana, the state’s Superintendent of the Year Rocky Killion has gone on record criticizing ISTEP, our standardized test, stating, “I would prefer all of my students’ parents withdraw and become home-schooled during ISTEP, and then we can re-enroll them.”
This backlash to state standardized tests stems largely from the idea that because of high-stakes testing, teachers are forced to “teach to the test.”
In other words, they must teach only what the standards dictate. In Indiana, Republican-led legislation tied teachers’ raises to their students’ performance and improvement on ISTEP, which could substantiate these claims.
This legislation disproportionately affects those in poorly performing schools, but it could motivate teachers to focus their lessons on the standardized test rather than allowing them freedom to teach other topics in the classroom. It might also discourage teachers from experimenting with their teaching style for fear of losing their raise.
There are some major issues with arguments like these, however. Standardized tests provide a largely objective voice on an individual student’s progress or level of comprehension of presented materials. If there were not any standardized tests, what would we as a society use to evaluate students?
While these tests are fallible, so are teachers in their assessment of students. The tests can also show trends for individual classrooms. So teachers can, to some ?extent, be measured by these tests.
Schools that perform poorly on standardized tests obviously need some reform or assistance. So why, then, does the idea that teachers “teach to the test” somehow imply that there is nothing of value in these examinations?
One issue that might arise is these tests are “high-stakes,” meaning that they affect students’ futures in some way or another. This can lead to a few fallacies, however.
Tests such as ISTEP aren’t necessarily connected with whether or not a child will be held back. Obviously, if the New York standardized test was necessary to take to go up in grade level, parents wouldn’t be boycotting it.
Generally, these test scores are somehow tied to a public school’s state funding.
In Indiana, the A-F system was established only a few years ago to measure school performance.
This put certain sanctions, some potentially economic, on schools that do not consistently improve scores or maintain high scores. Another issue is length; ISTEP this year, before changes were made to the test, would have been 12 hours. Lengthy tests like these overburden classrooms and are ?incredibly inefficient.
Ultimately, I think there is a failure on the part of many parents to see the value in standardized testing. Though it was one of my least favorite parts of my school experience, testing can help schools and teachers understand their students’ weaknesses, as well as their own.
When tests become high-stakes, however, they become less of a reflection of students’ general knowledge and more about test-taking skills, which have little value in the real world.
mccinkos@indiana.edu
