The No Child Left Behind standard testing has been a subject of casual debate for awhile now, but standardized testing like the HSPE and the now-abolished WASL has sort of been something that basically all middle school and high school students have accepted as a part of their school year. I've never really thought much of standardized testing until I read an interesting section of Freakonomics (and its sequel, Superfreakonomics) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a book about all the quirky statistics of the world that we never thought about. The section that I'm referring to is the part about cheating on these same tests that I'm referring to now, but we're going to file this particular thought away for a bit later on.
What brought me back to Freakonomics was this article from CNN, where it seems people are starting to catch on to something that Levitt and Dubner discovered 7 years ago. Link!
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/25/report-test-cheating-may-be-widespread/?hpt=hp_bn1
In essence, teachers falsify tests in order to make it look like they can do their job, and administration lets it happen because their salaries and school district funding is tied to those test scores, and so everyone except for the students win in a situation where the test scores look better then they actually are. The article also brings up the "teaching to the test" problem that has risen from standardized testing, which involves specific learning for the student in a way to get the best test score. With me being in a position to appreciate how absolutely idiotic that this is, being a high school student and all, I decided to throw some commentary.
1) Why is attention being brought to this now? Freakonomics backed their conclusions about cheating teachers with solid statistics and analysis of those statistics, and no one decided to address that problem? It seems to me that administration isn't doing their job when they're more worried about rising test scores than actual learning, and yes I realize their salary is as important to them as student welfare (let's be honest, far more important.) but hey! Its not like we don't have a way to make these problems known.
2) A quick reread of relevant chapters in Freakonomics reminded me that the repercussions of this cheating is far more detrimental to the students than I think most people realize. The public school system has ended up using standardized testing as a baseline for student learning, as well as a measure of student learning. So when these records of tests are forged, the student takes a double-whammie of sorts. Not only is he/she put into a class that they probably shouldn't be in, thus putting their academics further down the toilet, but additional help is provided to the student simply because no one (except for maybe the crooked teacher involved, but I think we've already decided he/she's not all that responsible.) really knows that said student needs any extra help. Since this starts fairly early on, we're not just talking about a couple of years of setback here. We're talking about serious problems late into high school, possibly even chasing into college where the student struggles because no one took the time to help them understand fundamental concepts.
3) This is my last point, I promise. Sometime last week (you expect me to remember exactly when? Please.) I was called into the office by administration to question my decision not to take the AP Computer Science AP test. Now, normally I wouldn't really be bothered by this, but the person asking me said something that I thought represented a type of thinking that just shouldn't exist in public education. What she said was, "You know Luke, it would be good for Liberty if we were to have 100% of our APCS students taking that AP test". To me, this says that the number, the statistic, the benchmark of students taking the test matters much more to the school than actual scores. And this isn't just about AP testing, I think this same thinking shows up with standard testing where if the student passes, great job! We've done it, this student is fine and ready to graduate. But really, shouldn't education be focused much less on the numbers and much more on the student? I accept that really the only way to measure learning in a student is by numbers, but why not focus on the student and then take the numbers for whatever they mean. Yes, I'm being confusing but I don't really have another way to say it. Start focusing on the student learning, and the numbers and the learning both improve. Focus on the numbers like we are, the numbers improve but does the actual learning? That's a good question, one that I don't think even should be asked in a public school setting.
Its weird that I spend so much time critiquing a system that I spend so much time defending on the internet...
Ah well.
I'm a true wizard on the inside
No comments:
Post a Comment