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Blog: FCAR
Speakout
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Standardized tests: A road map to
nowhere?
By Marion Brady
*August 4, 2005
'We are heavily reliant on standardized testing . . .," says Bill Hiss, talking
about education in America. Hiss is vice president of Bates College in Maine.
"What we have learned at Bates," he argues, "is that this may be a monumental
trip up a blind alley."
As you can guess if you've read even a few of my columns, that "blind alley"
comment about standardized testing got my attention. Like just about every
educator who has spent years in the classroom and given thought to what was
going on in students' heads, I oppose high-stakes standardized tests. They
confuse cultural differences and ignorance, aren't keyed to real-world or adult
success, lend themselves to political game-playing, cost enormous amounts of
money, short-change non-tested fields of study, deaden or penalize creativity,
hand local control of education over to faceless corporate interests, undercut
teacher professionalism, divert attention from myriad non-educational factors
affecting school performance, and are crude measures of even simple abilities.
(Incidentally, reading isn't a "simple ability.")
Hiss was speaking on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Just
to be sure I'd heard him right, I went into NPR's archives and replayed his
comments several times.
Whether or not you agree with his "blind alley" view, there's no question about
our growing reliance on standardized tests. DIBELS, DRP, FCAT, HSCT, PSAT, SAT,
NAEP, ACT, ITBS, CAT, TASK and CTBS are some of those with which many students
are familiar. Your kid or grandkid probably won't be required to take every one
of them, but the consequences of their scores on the ones they do take will
almost certainly follow them for the rest of their lives, opening some doors,
slamming others shut.
The major standardized test to which Hiss was referring was the SAT. For the
college-bound student, this is a big one. It's a creature of the College Board,
an association formed in 1900 made up of more than 4,700 schools, colleges,
universities and other educational organizations. As standardized tests go, it
enjoys considerably more prestige than the more recent ones, such as FCAT, which
states are required to buy or build to comply with No Child Left Behind
mandates.
Notwithstanding the major role SAT scores play in most colleges' selection
procedures, Bates leaves it up to students to decide whether or not to disclose
their test scores. Hiss says the policy has been in place for 20 years, and
that, in those years, about a third of applicants have kept their scores to
themselves.
Bates has kept a running record of student performance. What they've learned
from their "don't ask, don't tell" policy is that there hasn't been a dime's
worth of difference between the grade point averages or the graduation rates of
those who did and those who didn't disclose their SAT scores. Hiss mentioned one
girl who for some reason did submit her way-below-average score of 400 on the
verbal section of the SAT, but graduated magna cum laude and went on to
get a medical degree from Brown University, one of the most respected schools in
the country.
But, he continued, Bates doesn't just suffer no ill effects from ignoring
standardized test scores. The college enjoys a more diverse and therefore more
interesting student body.
If standardized test scores have little or no predictive power for college
performance, you can bet they have even less predictive power for performance in
life. Why, then, are we so willing to use them to beat up on kids, teachers and
schools, and let life-changing decisions hinge on them?
I really don't know. I guess it's a cultural thing. Standardized tests produce
numbers, and as a people we often seem more interested in comparing numbers than
in figuring out what, if anything, the numbers mean.
I'm not against all testing. Here's one I'd favor: On the Web site (www.fairtest.org)
for Fairtest, the National Center For Fair and Open Testing, there's a link to
48 professional education organizations opposed to the high-stakes
standardized-test fad. They all give their reasons.
Before editorial writers, columnists, newscasters, television producers and
other opinion makers are allowed to toss off test scores as if they actually
meant something important, I think they ought to have to make at least a "C" on
a test proving they'd read and understood the objections of the professionals in
the field.
*First published in the Orlando Sentinel. Posted here by permission of the
author.
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