The problem with teaching to pass the standardized test is that it means they are NOT teaching some of the more basic, and important skills.
Not always, standardized tests usually centre on critical thought and the application of basic, important skills, but this is not what I was saying. I don’t think we should standardize tests, so I don’t think we should teach to a standardized test. Every kid is different, and so every kid should have the opportunity to prove their learning in a fashion appropriate for them.
If we spend all our time making the child memorize 2 + 2 = 4 so that he can write the answer on the test, we are NOT teaching problem solving and critical thinking… Teaching the child how to figure out how to arrive at that answer is MORE important.
We, in Canada, are doing this. We spend most of our time on mental math strategies that help kids solve problems, not regurgitate memorized answers.
AND we have a nasty habit of keeping a year or so behind the educational theory in the US of A, so if we are doing this I would be surprised if your teachers were NOT already supposed to be focusing on this as well.
And, usually, a standardized test would require critical thought. They can’t test on specifics because they don’t know what specifics were taught to each individual child in each individual class in each individual school in each individual socio-economic context in each etc. And if you look at the curriculum documents you realize that the education boards don’t overly care either. They are more focused on skills like critical thought and problem solving. The 2+2 is just a way to get to that.
The problem with a standardized test is not the content being tested, but the way it is being tested. If you have an SAT analogy that asks about the shape of your yacht’s sail you are going to disadvantage the 300 million+ Americans that have likely never set foot on a yacht. Standardized tests are constructed with certain racial, social, political, and economic biases in them that automatically disadvantage the students just by how they were written.
Also, we are not teaching children to be aware of their surroundings and their community…. but the testing, IMO, seems to be testing for the wrong things.
I mean no disrespect, but just out of curiosity, How did this subject come up? How are you being exposed to the way your schools are testing their students? How much of a view do you have into the assessment structures you are talking about?
I am only asking because I want to know why you believe they are NOT doing this?
Wolfensolo:
The test has been set up to make the grading easy and speedy. It ahs nothing to do with the actual checking of the student’s true knowledge.
I am gonna disagree with you here because that is just a simple fallacy of logic. A does not necessarily lead to B, and the speed/ease at which a test is marked does not necessarily effect the validity of that test. You could make a test of nothing but long essay questions that did not test what it was supposed to be testing.
Imagine a high school biology test that takes a full 75 minute period for the student to write. You need a quick and easy way to mark that because the teacher will often have to mark somewhere in the neighbourhood of 90 tests. That could take a heck of a long time.
The validity of the test doesn’t come so much from how it is marked as from how the questions are constructed. If you understand what ideas or abilities or skills you want to test (here we call them “specific curriculum outcomes”) you should be able to make a question that adequately represents a student’s knowledge or ability by only skimming for a few buzz words.
An example of the converse of this would be multiple choice questions. Those have traditionally been designed to trick students more than test what they know. They will have 3 or 4 or 5 possible answers that look almost exactly alike, except for maybe a small variation. At this point you are testing the student’s ability to read, not their knowledge of biology.
It means to teach your subject but also teach them how to grow their minds to think, question, and explain them selves as best as they can.
This is the ideal, and this is also what I was talking about with my previous post. The problem is that this statement assumes that all students come into a classroom as eager-beavers ready to meet new horizons. This is just simply not the case at all. So my response to Rhade’s fear that content seems to be slipping was that, yes, in many cases content IS slipping. But one of the biggest reasons is because a teacher’s primary job is not to teach the content.
You can’t teach math if every kid in the room is throwing junk. The school as a whole needs to teach them basic social skills and proper ways to deal when they don’t get their way. Sometimes teachers will do a whole month of community building exercises before they even touch the curriculum. If they didn’t they would never have the kids on their side, and the kids would never want to learn anything, and therefore never learn.
So my response was that life would be so much easier for everyone if kids did not come to school thinking that acting out in abusive, hateful, or destructive ways was a proper use of their time. If they show up with a good attitude (thanks to their home life) then they will be in school with a good attitude, and then everyone can get a lot further.
The problem with the standardized tests is more than the rote memorization, you got that right. Kids memorize the info, fill in the little dots on the answer sheets, and if they do remember the stuff, they don’t know the WHY of it.
That has nothing to do with standardized tests, that is just because the kid was forced to take a class they had no interest in.
Just so we are all on the same page:
A standardized test is not just a regular sheet of paper test in front of the student where they have so many multiple choice, so many short answer and then an essay question.
A standardized test is something that has been built by a central authority, like a school board or a state/provincial department of education. A standardized test says that all of our students/graduates will need to be able to do [x] so we are going to test all of them on [x].
Because of this goal, they make up ONLY ONE test for everyone. Hence, the name “standardized.” Every student in the given area has to write the exact same test with the exact same resources so they can all be plotted on the same graph.
The problem with this is that all students are different. If you subscribe to Howard Gardener’s theory of multiple intelligences there are at least 8 or 9 categories of students out there who learn in 8 or 9 different ways (examples being kinaesthetic intelligences, logical/mathematical intelligences, linguistic intelligences, intrapersonal intelligences, etc)
We also have different learning modalities. Some students are kinaesthetic learners who really need to get up, touch things, and learn by doing, while others are visual or auditory learners who can get all they need by observing.
Most in the field of educational theory believe these are all capacities. We are all a bit kinaesthetic, and a bit logical mathematical, and a bit everything else, and we just tend to favour one or a few modes of learning.
A standardized test ignores all of this and assumes everyone is the same with everything. It does not give options and it does not leave ANY room for a teacher to use their own professional judgement and discretion when marking. Normally if a student is mostly there, or didn’t quite use the right words, but we know they have the concept down we will give them some points for it.
Standardized tests look for VERY specific things and have no mercy for you if you get something slightly wrong.
Also, I will say that this is what they are telling teachers to understand and work with. This does not mean that all teachers are doing this. JBug’s story illustrates perfectly that there are some people in the system who should not be in the system. They teach for all the wrong reasons and do not care about their students. This is another problem of the education systems in our neck of the woods. One more of MANY problems.
I am not giving all teachers a blank cheque and a pat on the back here. I have met some pretty useless people in my short time in the system. I’m just telling you how things are likely set up. The pawns have a mind of their own.