In a news article, titled “Student Progress can be tied to teacher’s school,” Donna Gordon Blankinship (Associated Press, October 15, 2011) reported “the academic progress of public school students can be traced, in part, to where their teachers went to college.” That unto itself is not earth shattering. Good colleges have good professors and attract good students. But here is the real kicker of this report: Blankinship states, “Washington state schools are among the first to see which teacher training programs seem to result in the best student test scores.”
In my new book, DUH! The American Educational Disaster, I am adamant about the lack of value of standardized testing. It has very little value other than providing bragging rights for school systems whose students did well. Peter Sacks in Standardized Minds (De Capo Press, 2001) called this obsession with testing “meritocracy”. And it is an obsession with somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000,000 standardized tests taken annually. (Reported by Reed Business Information, Inc., 2000).
We are so wrapped up in statistical trivia we have lost sight of the reason for testing. Actually, I prefer student evaluation. Today, we know that a worker in this country will change jobs three to five times during his or her lifetime. We know the average height of an American male is 5′ 10″, and the average height of a female is just under 5′ 5″. Americans eat 21 pounds of salt per year and consume 100 pounds of sugar per year, and that we eat 62.4 pounds of beef per year. The average family consists of two kids. And all of this is important. Just as student scores on standardized tests are important. Important? Important for what purpose? I won’t mention the mass of sports trivia we have accumulated.
What do these tests tell us about the kind of student we are training? What do they tell us about the kind of citizen the student is or will be? Do these tests tell us anything about the dreams, hopes, and aspirations of the students taking them? Do they indicate the students’ ability to make rational and intelligent choices? No, they do not! They are trivia like the number of alcoholic beverages a person drinks per week, or how many career home runs The Babe made, or the average income of Americans. What a crock!
How long and at what price will the educational leadership realize there is so much more that is important in the academic life of a student than a standardized test score. Are we going to take the next leap and label ourselves numerically? Maybe Ayn Rand’s Anthem has arrived.
Nearly 40,000 high school students in Washington took the Scholastic Aptitude Test at a cost of $67.00 to each student. In today’s world, passing the SAT does not guarantee a slot in the college or university of choice. Nor does it guarantee anything else. So, why bother? We do because achievement tests are required by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and by No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and schools received Federal funding based on these test scores. And all that does is breed scandals such as the recent one in Atlanta where one of the superintendents was charged with falsifying test scores. Do you think, maybe, it’s time to change the laws?
For those who are interested in reading further about this topic the following two books are recommended:
Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us by Daniel Koretz (Harvard Press, 2009)
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Diane Ravitch (Basic Books, 2010.
