What’s wrong with standardized testing?
That’s an honest question in response to a very interesting discussion happening over at The Scene and the OG hood. Conor pins the blame on teacher’s unions and the difficulty of firing underperforming teachers; I think that E.D. agrees in principle with Conor (that better teachers are needed) but disagrees with how to measure what constitutes “better” in terms of education skill. In the course of his argument, E.D. says
Of course, standardized testing is a terrible metric (and the others aren’t much better) for student or teacher success. Standards require uniformity, and across the country uniformity simply doesn’t exist.
I know this is a relatively uncontroversial statement amongst educators, but I’ve never really understood why. I mean, I know that they don’t want their performance tied to the performance of their students, because even the best teacher can get stuck with a bunch of unteachable dullards. But I don’t get why there’s a particular animus against standardized testing. Mr. Kain makes the standard complaints about the evils of “teaching to the test,” but again, that’s a complaint I don’t really understand: If the standardized test for a subject is made up of the basic general knowledge in a subject, well, what’s the problem with teaching to the test?
Math is math, right? So if a teacher has done his job in, say, algebra, then the student should be able to solve 2x + 5 = 12, right? Figure out the area of squares and circles and the such, year?* Why isn’t standardized testing a measure of basic knowledge in that subject area?
Or let’s talk about American history. In middle school and high school you aren’t really teaching kids how to think comprehensively about the subject — learning basic civic history is more important. What does the Bill of Rights say? Who was the first president? Who wrote the Gettysburg Address, etc., etc. When you get into some of the higher level classes — AP, IB, etc. — then sure, I’d say the teacher is failing if he doesn’t teach his kids to be better thinkers and prepare them for college. But how do we judge if AP and IB students have succeeded and the teacher has done his job? With a standardized test. Though, perhaps, an imperfect measure, I think success in AP tests is a pretty reliable indicator as to whether or not a student has mastered the subject at hand and, therefore, whether the teacher has ably performed his duty.
I guess my confusion is driven by the fact that I took the Virginia SOLs as a high school senior. They’re amazingly simple tests, the sort of test that if you can’t pass it you honestly don’t know enough to deserve your high school degree. And if a teacher can’t coach the majority of his kids through it…well, maybe he needs to find another line of work.
*That’s algebra still, right? It’s been a few years since I was in middle school math.