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The Worst Tests
Review by Jonathan Pollard
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 |
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testing programs can be characterized by
certain readily identifiable features:
•
Multiple choice examinations. Quoting Roger Farr, a
professor of education 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."
• Even standardized tests that
include some amount of open ended or
free-response questions are equally
ineffective measures of achievement. The 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 two minutes on each exam. According to one former scorer,
"There were times 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."
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•
Timed exams. The ability
to work quickly, and perform under extreme pressure, is valued above all
else.
•
Tests are given far too frequently,
and at every grade level. This is simply 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 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, norm-referenced tests compare the
performance of the students to each other. 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.
• 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. 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?
The psychological damage caused by such a system is simply ignored by
those who support standardized testing.
• Tests are most damaging when given to younger students.
Increasingly, students in primary school are being frequently
subjected to timed examinations.
• According to educator Bill
Ayers, standardized tests ignore the most important characteristics of
being a good learner or a good person. "What they can measure and
count," he says, "are isolated skills, specific facts and 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 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?
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