Many years ago, tests were administered mostly to decide placement of students in their classes, or to ascertain which students needed additional help. Today, test scores are quoted by newspapers; they are used as the primary criteria for judging the success or failure of students, teachers, and school.
In this statement, it looks like the author is attacking the ways in which standardized tests are used and not the tests themselves, even seeming to suggest that there's something positive in them. Nice litte bait and switch.
They are used by public officials to impose their will upon the educational system.
Politicians are, and will be, politicians. It takes intelligent public debate to steer the political debate. Alfie Kohn and his Merry men don't provide any wisdom here.
From an international perspective, our situation must seem entirely unusual. Few countries administer exams to children so young, or with such a frequency as we do.
For a group that advocates an individual learning program for each and every child this call for conformity is odd.
Our children are tested to an extent that is unmatched in the history of our society.
Perhaps this is true. Americans eat too much, yet no one is calling for a complete end to food.
There is no more discussion of learning or of new educational methods.
That's because a lot of "new" methods are the same old crap with a new name, e.g., "new-new-math".
Kohn states that the educational discourse in our nation has been...
I didn't realize that the Prophet Mohammed also went by the name "Alfie Kohn". Kohn's followers quote him just as unquestioningly.
...limited to the following statement: "Test scores are too low. Make them go up."
Kohn's like a weight-loss guru who never wants you to get on a scale, try on an old pair of jeans, or count how many miles you can now walk.
Over the past few decades, testing has increasingly become a decidedly political issue. Testing allows politicians to display their concern for the school system. Test scores offer a simple means of gratification. Demanding increased test scores fits nicely with political buzzwords such as 'accountability' and 'tougher standards'. Some people might argue that such accountability is necessary and that we need an objective means of measuring students' achievements. But do standardized tests truly provide an objective measure of achievement, and if not, then what do they measure? Kohn argues that they do not, making the following points:
• First and foremost, we must ask ourselves if we are truly measuring something that is important.
Here's another bait and switch. It's like a guy telling you the oscilloscope is mis-callibrated before then telling you that he wants all oscilloscopes at the bottom of the river.
Are we measuring intelligence and practical ability, or are we simply measuring test-taking ability?
Here's a thought. There's a guy in Poland by the name of Mariusz Pudzianowski who's bench pressed 627 lbs, squatted 702 lbs, and dead-lifted 902 lbs. Is he strong? Of course not! He's just good at bench-pressing, squatting, and dead-lifting (among some other "standardized" events). In fact, I'm sure his devotion to training in a gym has actually rendered him rather weak. A guy like Kohn, on the other hand, who doesn't look like he's been to a gym lately, is undoubtedly stronger because he's had the opportunity to "really" strength train.
I think there should be a UFC-style showdown arranged between Pudzianowski and Kohn. I'm sure the odds makers in Vegas will stack the deck in favor of Pudzianowski because they don't know all about the negatives of standardized testing (like doing bench-presses). We can clean up betting on Kohn.
We now come to one of the most absurd statements you will find on the internet:
• Though standardized testing may seem to be something of a scientific nature, they are nothing at all similar to, for example, the process of measuring the size and weight of an object.
The author seems to have forgotten (or never learned) that "meter", "foot", "pound", and "kilogram" are all human inventions.
Though they are objective, in the sense that they are sometimes scored by machines, they are decidedly subjective, in that they are created by human beings.
So if a calculator divides 27 by 3 the answer is "objective", while if a human being does it it's "subjective". Check.
People write the questions, which may be confusing, biased, or even stupid.
Is the author implying that he/she is a machine, therefore claiming immunity from being confused, biased, or stupid?
Furthermore, people decided which questions to include, and which ones to exclude. Many proponents of standardized testing argue that it is not 'realistic' to think that we could
This implication here is that there should be no testing of anyone or anything, ever, until such time, presumably, that some mythical "objective" machine comes along.
eliminate such exams. People who are worried about reality and the 'real-world' ought to realize that artificial exercises such as standardized tests are unrealistic,
Countless engineers learned subjects like thermodynamics and fluid dynamics by grinding through countless problems at the ends of chapters and checking the answers at the end of the book. Some of these engineers ended up designing medical diagnostic equipment, jetliners, and stuff that made it outside of our solar system and with which we still communicate. What were they thinking?
A doctor may have to look at a EKG and decide (within minutes) whether a) EKG is normal b) send to cardiologist c) send to emergency room. Board examinations (Gasp! a standardized test) have questions similar to this.
What are they thinking?
and do nothing whatsoever toward preparing students for life outside of the classroom.
Of course. The Prophet Kohn said so.
• Test results don't necessarily indicate achievement, but rather, tend to be much more accurate indicators of the size of a student's house or the income of the student's parents. Research has indicated that the amount of poverty found in a community, and other factors that have absolutely nothing to do with what happens in the classroom, account for the great majority of differences in test scores from one area to another.
Results on the Snellen visual acuity test (Gasp! a standardized test!) don't necessarily indicate that you can or cannot see, but rather whether you are Asian or not. That's right, the prevalence of myopia is about 80% in Asian countries and only about 15% in Africa, so that's the only thing this test is good for. So the next time you're at the optometrist's, and he's trying to get you "pass" this hideous standardized test as swaps lenses before your eyes, you make sure you say: "Doctor, I happen to know that what you're doing has nothing with my eyes, my creativity, or my interests, but rather with whether I'm Asian."
• Rather than providing the opportunity for students to demonstrate a higher level of reasoning ability, or carry out any form of extended analysis, standardized tests stress a more superficial level of reasoning, and are most typically extensive exercises in short term memory.
The author's opinion notwithstanding, nearly every "standardized" physics test question I've seen requires reasoning, the level depending on whether it's an AP Physics test question, a Regents Physics test question, or a GRE Physics test question. When I choose a -- GASP! -- multiple choice question from a test bank I cannot myself mindlessly "pick" the right answer without drawing a free-body diagram, applying the physical law involved, and performing the calculation correctly. I can do this faster than they can, and more consistently, but the idea that it's an "extensive exercise in short term memory" is utter crap.
This is typical of the propaganda that such people spew.
Though Kohn finds most standardized tests to be objectionable, he comments that some tests are even worse than others; proving even more damaging to the development of the student's mind, and measuring even less. The most damaging testing programs can be characterized by certain readily identifiable features:
• Multiple choice examinations. Quoting Roger Farr, a professor of education
I just love "experts" in education. There are "experts" that tell us that kids no longer need to learn long division, yet there are Nobel Prize winners in physics who dispute this because THEY see kids in college who need remedial math classes. Who do we believe?
at Indiana University, "I don't think there's any way to build a multiple-choice question that allows students to show what they can do with what they know."
If I devise a question to test whether kids can convert from cubic inches to liters, that's what I'm interested in. They either do it correctly, choose the answer that matches, or do it correctly and leave it. There's nothing else for them to "do".
The benefit of multiple choice is that you can do item analysis on hundreds of questions and identify misconceptions. If everyone misses a particular question ("guessing" should give you around 25%) this really suggests a strong misconception. Try to do this without multiple choice.
When kids practice with multiple choice, and they get answers that don't match the choices, they go back to the drawing board and re-do the problem. For open-ended problems, they'll leave dozens of different wrong answers without trying the problem again.
• Even standardized tests that include some amount of open ended or free-response questions are equally ineffective measures of achievement. The
Here we get to the heart of the matter. No tests period.
essays written on these tests are frequently not scored by educators, but by temp workers, who are paid minimum wage, and who generally spend no more than
Notice that these folks crow about spending more money on "skilled" (read: those who agree with us) teachers, yet they can't envision hiring people to do more accurate grading.
two minutes on each exam. According to one former scorer, "There were times
Yet, if you keep reading, these folks suggest portfolio assessment as some sort of replacement, as though we'll be able to find people to peruse those thoroughly.
I'd be reading a paper every ten seconds. I know this sounds very bizarre, but you could put a number on these things without actually reading the paper." Furthermore, the scorer added that he and his coworkers were offered a "two hundred dollar bonus that kicked in after eight thousand papers."
• Timed exams. The ability to work quickly, and perform under extreme pressure, is valued above all else.
No, it's not valued "above all else". Life is not just one big poetry recital where we can all take our time. Many tasks require a timely -- and correct -- response. Does an airline pilot have infinity in which to identify which engine died and which prop has to be feathered?
• Tests are given far too frequently, and at every grade level. This is simply
Possibly. But Kohn and his Merry Men are not limiting themselves to this aspect.
a manifestation of the school system's obsession with speed. Grade specific standards are simply another way of measuring how fast children can learn. The
Since we've brought up other countries, there are folks that will tell you that kids in their country routinely solve math problems too difficult for most of our college freshmen to track. Are we supposed to give them till retirement?
only difference is that, rather than minutes and hours, the time is measured in years.
• We must be weary of norm-referenced tests. Unlike tests that are "criterion-referenced," meaning that they compare the scores of each student to a given standard,
But wait! Aren't standards "human inventions", therefore "subjective?"
norm-referenced tests compare the performance of the students to each other.
Nearly everything we do in life is "norm-referenced". Our conceptions of short, tall, friendly, rude, clean, dirty, etc., are all based upon some perception of a norm. If you're forming a volleyball team, and you're looking for a tall player, you would welcome a 6'3" player as tall. Why? Because the average height is somewhere around 5'9". If the average height was 6'8", then your prospective player would appear short, and you'd say "the team can do better".
A medical school will accept the best students that accept them. If all the candidates meet some "criterion-referenced" criteria, the school will need to find the better subset. Hence, we're back to norm-referencing.
No matter how well or how poorly students do on norm-referenced tests, there will always be a top 10% and a bottom 10%; there will always be 50% of the students who have test scores that fall below the median. This is not an indication that our schools are performing poorly or failing, this is simply a necessary product of the definition of "median." Norm-referenced tests don't tell us how much a student has learned, but rather, how much more or less than other students he has learned. Perhaps everyone - even those who had scores below the median - did reasonably well. Unfortunately, we will never know.
Sports leagues are "norm-referenced". There are beer leagues and big leagues, but within each league teams and players struggle play better, hone skills, and get some exercise.
• Norm-referenced tests do not assess how well children are learning, but rather, are used to compute who is better than whom. Such tests are used to create a sharp division between the winners and the losers.
So let's put everyone in one big room and have them watch Sesame Street.
Why is that we could never accept a system in which everyone could succeed? Why is it that our society so deeply values this selection process, in which some students are labeled smart, and others are labeled stupid?
Gee, why can't we accept a "system" where the blind get to be airline pilots, those who suck at math get to be engineers monitoring nuclear reactors, those who suck at biology get to be brains surgeons, and those who are tone-deaf get to play in the philharmonic.
The psychological damage caused by such a system is simply ignored by those who support standardized testing.
The physical damage caused an ignorant physician, who could have been filtered out by the sequence of SAT, MCAT, 3 steps of USMLE, and Board Examinations is ignored by this guy. The dropout rate at medical schools was about 50% prior to the introduction of the MCAT and in single digits afterward. This means that prior to its introduction people unprepared for medical school were being selected and some who were prepared were being excluded.
Standardized tests work.
• Tests are most damaging when given to younger students. Increasingly, students in primary school are being frequently subjected to timed examinations.
Possibly, but Kohn and crew aren't stopping there.
• According to educator Bill Ayers, standardized tests ignore the most important characteristics of being a good learner or a good person. "What they
Here we go.
can measure and count," he says, "are isolated skills, specific facts and
Yes, of course. Life is just a big poetry recital, and it doesn't matter that someone can't convert from pounds to kilograms. Tell that to a friend of mine who took her 50 lb son to the emergency room and almost watched someone attempt to deliver a dosage meant for a 110 Kg linebacker. Fortunately, my friend is a physics teacher and very quickly caught this. Many people wouldn't. Most students -- some of whom will be entering the health professions -- can't do this operation to save their lives. I'd like to see how Ayers would react if his kid ended up in a coma because of this lack of an "isolated" skill.
functions, the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning." Knowing a lot of facts does not necessarily equate with being intelligent or possessing any practical knowledge. Additionally, teamwork, consulting with
Being an education professor does not necessarily equate with being intelligent or possessing any practical knowledge. I paid a lot of money (not well spent except that it was necessary to get a job) to these jokers in the process of getting a "masters" degree.
classmates, or any other form of cooperative learning, is explicitly forbidden during the completion of standardized tests. Doesn't our society - and for that matter, the vision statement of every corporation - express the notion that the ability to work as part of a team is a desirable quality?
Teamwork, as understood by "educators" is dramtically different from "teamwork" as practiced in the real world. I worked as a software developer in "teams", meaning we'd meet to divide up our project into manageable chunks, to decide on interfaces to which our individual pieces would conform, and to discuss problems and debate strategies. Much of our time was spent in working on our individual pieces meaning we had to be good programmers INDIVIDUALLY. Same for many walks of life. The idea that everyone will always be working "in groups", unable to perform any task without someone else is ridiculous.
As we move away from the classroom, and through the various levels of educational bureaucracy - first principals, then progressing to administrators, school board members, state board members, state legislators, and governors - support for standardized testing grows. For the politicians who
Speak for yourself. All my science teacher colleagues are pro-standardized-tests. I asked the chemistry teacher here whether the presence of a standardized in chemistry (there is none in physics here) test keeps kids from slacking off. He said absolutely. I myself did my student teaching in a state where there is a test for physics and the students were far more advanced in their physics knowledge than the students here, because here students specifically take physics to slack off.
use classroom visits as occasional photo opportunities, supporting standardized testing and other means of producing 'accountability' make it appear as though they hold the future of our children in the highest priority. It couldn't be further from the truth. Most politicians don't care about real education, they care about reelection. We are fooled into believing the argument that, if we
I don't think people in education schools care about education either, they just want to promote their little pet "theories".
truly cared about the education of our children, we would 'raise the bar' and make testing an even more aspect of the curriculum. This has given rise to the implementation of what Kohn terms "high stakes testing". This method is advocated by government officials as a means of forcing students and teachers! to care about testing. The author describes it as follows:
Ah. "High Stakes Testing". The implication here is that it's the tests themselves that create the high stakes. If it wasn't for the pesky tests, then our lives would be filled with nothing but peace and love and tranquility and Woodstock and an endless ride on a Magic Multicolored bus. We'd all be brain surgeons, or artists, or fashion designers, or test pilots or whateve our gentle litte hearts desired. There'd be no limit to the "cool" jobs because there'd be no standardized tests to do poorly on. If half the country applied to medical school we'd hear "Come on down, the more the merrier, it's not like there's an MCAT anymore to reduce the number of y'all!"
• High stakes testing often involves the use of bribery and coercion. Sometimes teachers and schools can receive bonuses for increased test scores. Students might receive food, tickets to theme parks or sporting events, and other such perks. Threats may include loss of funding or accreditation for schools, or failure of a grade and even denial of a high school diploma for students.
Bribery existed long before standardized tests existed.
• The idea of high stakes testing goes hand in hand with the idea of 'accountability.' But can teachers and schools be fairly held accountable for the scores of their students? Low scores are often, to a large extent, due to social and economic factors over which even the best teachers and the best schools have no control. These factors include the amount of resources available to a given school and the affluence of the community. But even to the extent that scores do reflect classroom experiences, those experiences are hardly limited to the current year. It seems unjust to hold a fourth-grade teacher accountable for her students' poor test scores when those scores reflect not only what has happened in her classroom, but also what the children have learned (or failed to learn) in their prior years schooling.
Again, confusing (deliberately?) standardized tests with the way they are used.
• No test is perfect, and there is always the possibility that errors may be present on the physical test, or that errors may occur in the grading process. Every so often, the big test publishers make some major mistake in the correction of their exams. In one such episode, New York City officials ordered nearly 9,000 students to attends remedial summer school on the basis of a scoring error.
And mistakes don't, and can't, occur in non-standardized tests?
A mistake in a "standardized" test is far more likely to be noticed -- which is probably why this guy makes a big deal out of it without undestanding why -- and rectified than countless mistakes made by countless individual teachers throughout a 300 million citizen nation.
• The idea of giving people an incentive - or threatening them to improve, is a flawed one. In order to produce temporary compliance, the proponents of
One of those unrealistic idealists, I see.
standardized testing often advocate - through their actions - the creation of a climate of fear, in which people only cooperate to avoid being punished. The
Tell me, what's it feel like to go to work without a paycheck?
system of punishments and rewards (external motivations) serves to strip children of their innate desire to learn (internal motivation).
Congradulations on maintaining your kindergarten view of learning. There are many "systems" in life that require tedious practice of vital components before the "system" can function well. Very few will have the "internal motivation" to continue the required practice for long. You could be a promising piano student, but you still need to practice scales, finger exercises, and specific techniques in isolation before you can learn to play well. In physics, people need to do unit conversions and carry them through all calculations. "Internal motivation" will result in no one doing this. What works is giving zeros for no units until the message penetrates the skull. No one's going to learn any physics by building bridges and skyskrapers out of popsicle sticks and just "having fun".
High stakes testing has resulted in the following:
• Exaggerated reports of success. In Texas, many proponents of standardized testing argue that the high stakes movement along with other means of holding people and schools accountable has been an integral part the state's improvement in test scores. Others will argue that any improvement in the Texas educational system is not the result of high stakes testing, but rather, a product of smaller class sizes, overall increases in educational spending, and a court ordered equalization of resources between schools that serve the rich and schools that serve the poor.
I'll tell you a story about "Exaggerated reports of success". I did some of my observation at a school which is the living embodiment of Kohn and Co's philosophy. It's called "School Without Walls", and its cheerleaders, including the principal and some of the teachers waxed enthusiastic about how "deeply" students were learning everything compared to regular school. These folks fought to keep their kids from taking Regents test claiming, however, that their kids would do better on them if they were actually to take them.
The school had all its students do a senior "project" on whatever topic they please. The claim was this was deeper learning than kids studying for Regents finals. I got to see these projects in this grand display they had in a huge room and out in the halls for a couple of days.
One kid "taught himself" to play cards.
One girl took belly dancing lessons.
One girl learned to give haircuts. (When I was a kid people went to "BOCES" for that kind of thing)
One kid got into some Japanese comic book.
One girl learned to play the penny whistle.
One guy immersed himself in some radical islamic group and his project was little more than displaying all the anti-Israel literature he collected.
One of the more impressive presentations was a kid who took apart a motorcycle transmission and laid out the parts on a table. (At the school where I teach this is called "shop").
Does any of this sound really, really impressive?
At every school there are all sorts of kids who pursue all sorts of hobbies and artistic pursuits. The difference is that SWW claimed credit for "teaching" kids something that they would have learned completely on their own (and did), and claiming also that "real" learning is precluded by studying, say, chemistry for a standardized test.
I did get a chance to observe a chemistry class there. I saw chemistry that you normally see in the third grade using some goofy kit. No measurement, no calculation, no prediction, and a lot of aimless gossip. Most classes in this school were like that.
There were some very bright kids there who learned a lot of things on their own. But this begs the question as to why we then need schools.
I later observed, and student taught, at a middle school where I saw 7th graders who knew more, and could do more, than the high school students at SWW.
...to be continued...
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