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Blog: FCAR
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A true test of a student's ability?
Just doing it
By Marion Brady
*July 17, 2004
Question: What do kids do with No. 2 pencils that affects real-estate values,
political campaigns, corporate lobbyists, professional reputations, the
distribution of billions of dollars, the thrust of newspaper editorials, public
attitudes toward schooling, and the future of the Republic?
The answer, of course, is: "They blacken in ovals on standardized tests."
You might think that with so much riding on them, there would be enormous
interest in the tests themselves. Who, for example, decides what to test? Why?
When? How? What arguments and assumptions support their decisions? Who weighs
the merit of those arguments and assumptions? Should near-final judgments about
human potential be in the hands of a handful of test publishers? Should they be
setting the direction of American education? Since today's education will play
itself out entirely in the future, what's their vision of that future?
You might think that these and the dozens of other questions that could and
should be asked about standardized tests would be front and center in public
attention. In fact, the results of the tests are shaking America to its roots,
while the tests themselves are getting a free pass.
Explain to me, please, why that isn't considered a monumental case of societal
irresponsibility.
Where are the politicians, columnists, editorialists and other opinion leaders
on this issue? Thus far, they all seem to be on the government's bandwagon,
looking down at the teachers and kids doing the grunt work and yelling at them
to try harder.
"But," my critics invariably wail when I rail about the destructiveness of
standardized testing, "people have to be held accountable, and this is how to do
it."
Well, it isn't how I did it for decades in the classroom. Not long after I
started teaching, I concluded that, except for quiz-show contestants, tests of
knowledge were just about worthless. In everyday life, what counts isn't what
you know, but what you can do with what you know. Doing and knowing are
inseparable. So I stopped giving multiple choice and other so-called objective
type tests and started giving kids things to do.
Here's an assignment I wrote many years ago for high-school students working in
small groups:
An aim of The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the
ever-greater miniaturization of self-contained life support systems -- sort of
garage-sized "family farms." That's tough to do in space, but should be easier
on Earth.
(1) Design a system sufficient to meet the needs of four people, operable in the
local climate. (Remember, no outside connections to utilities.)
(2) Compute the system's approximate cost.
(3) Decide who'd be the most likely buyers of such a system and devise a
multimedia-marketing program, complete with roughed-in ads, etc.
(4) Predict both probable and possible impacts of the system on local
demographics, the environment, social institutions (governments, churches,
schools, the economy, etc.), and attitudes and values.
(5) In open debate, take and defend a position for or against making the system
available and affordable.
(6) Repeat (1) through (5) for a society outside the United States differing
markedly from your own.
If this assignment seems far out, consider:
It's intellectually challenging, even for the best of students. It builds on
present knowledge. It has no single "right" answer. It makes kids actually think
(not merely remember). It adapts to individual differences and interests. It
erases the artificial boundaries between and around school subjects. It demands
imagination and creativity. It builds useful team skills. It opens up vast and
varied fields for reading and research. It doesn't "talk down" to kids. It has
enormous social and political ramifications. It surfaces truly important matters
for study such as the dynamics of social change and the shape of the future
(just to begin a list).
OK, that's an example of an assignment. Now, what about the test?
That's it. That is the test. You give kids something to do, and then you sit
down with them, shut up, watch and listen. Day after day. You look over
shoulders, note what appears on scratch paper and in notebooks, pay attention to
body language, follow dialogue, argument, and evidence of determination,
diligence, drive.
Yes, making judgments about a kid's performance is hard. Yes, those judgments
will be subjective. No, they won't be easily converted into report card or
school grades. No, not all teachers will be equally perceptive.
But even the least gifted teacher, teaching to a legitimate test, will know far
more about your kid's abilities than can be learned from numbers derived from
standardized test questions, focused on short-term memory, written by
moonlighting graduate students sitting in corporate cubicles leafing through
company textbooks.
*Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. Published here by
permission of the author.
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