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Don't Turn Our Schools into Uniform Testing Mills

Today, the level of federal involvement in education is the greatest it ever has been. But that isn't necessarily a good thing.

At a time when our public schools need an additional 1 million bright and curious people to choose teaching as a career, federal officials make no secret that their education strategy is based on one-size-fits-all criteria and standards that serve only to humiliate and second-guess educators.

And at a time when virtually everyone acknowledges the need for a better educated citizenry, the federal government's primary response has been to drive creativity and experimentation out of our schools by increasing the requirements for standardized testing.

Worse, Washington enforces its requirements by telling states and school districts exactly what must be done – and then withholds the funds that would enable schools to achieve those expectations.

The sad reality is that alliances between state and federal governments and testing companies have created a "test prep" culture in schools across our nation. As a result, programs involving literature, composition, scientific investigation, historical analysis, mathematical exploration, civic engagement, and the visual and performing arts are being curtailed or eliminated.

Schools no longer have much time, if any, for students to explore their own interests or to encourage them to pursue learning outside of textbooks and assignments geared to a single mass-produced test.

Frankly, if there weren't a custodial need for schools to take care of young people for 6 1/2 hours a day, 180 to 220 days a year, we might not need physical places called schools.
Everything now required of schools could be handled efficiently by test makers, test preparation books and test preparation tutorials. Students would need only to go online and download test preparation materials or visit test preparation centers in order to pass their state tests.

Washington may feel that it only is responding to a popular mandate. But in my experience as an educator, this isn't what students, teachers or parents want.

According to national surveys, parents want more than anything else for their children to enjoy school. That isn't to suggest that schools should be all about playing games. What it does mean is that learning should be challenging and satisfying. And that simply won't happen when the classroom experience is reduced to rote learning geared toward acing a test.

Teachers, parents and evaluation experts agree that student learning can't be assessed accurately by a single state or federal test and that we need to use many methods to evaluate students. That is particularly important when it comes to making critical decisions about student promotion and graduation and about consequences to schools.
There are many alternate means of assessing student learning, and they actually result in higher and more rigorous levels of achievement than a score on a single standardized test. Indeed, the highest student achievement in the country comes from states with the most comprehensive and flexible ways of evaluating students and not those dependent on a single multiple-choice test.

Most people would agree with the need for students to be literate and to master other basic skills. While that can be done through test preparation, citizens of a democracy need a deeper and more comprehensive education that nurtures their capacity to apply and contribute their knowledge in broader, more creative and more independent ways.

Yet we continue to move away from these powerful kinds of understanding, as schools become centers of test-driven learning. It doesn't help when the messages that bombard our youth through television, movies, music and commercials remind them that they are important only as consumers and not as citizens.

"Every government degenerates when trusted to
the rulers of the people alone," Thomas Jefferson wrote. "The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved."

At this critical moment in the life of our nation, we have a new opportunity to breathe life into Jefferson's words – to do everything in our power to help our children develop into informed and independent citizens of a free society.

Turning our schools into uniform testing mills wasn't what our third president had in mind.


Carl Glickman holds the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Endowed Chair in School Improvement at Texas State University-San Marcos and is editor of the forthcoming book Letters to the Next President – What We Can Do About the Real Crisis in Public Education.





— Carl Glickman
Don't turn our schools into uniform testing mills
Dallas Morning News
2004-02-08
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/020804dnediglickman.3f876.html

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