Mike’s Meandering Mind » Blog Archive » That Shalt Teach
Okay, this is an “older” post at another blog that for some reason showed as “new” today in my feed reader, so I decided to take a look… in general I agree with pretty much everything Mike says there, but for a couple of details…
As with many posts on the topic of education, the argument is made that “testing is not the answer”. And, I agree that testing will not lead to improved learning. Teaching leads to learning… but people who make this sort of argument against testing often go on to talk repeatedly about the need of accountability. Here’s the question though…
How do you hold teachers/schools/whoever accountable for student learning if you don’t measure the learning achieved by students?
Basically, at some point, you are going to have to test students, in one form or another, to determine if the goals of education (ie learning) are actually occurring. Now you can argue that multiple choice tests aren’t the best way of testing learning outcomes, but over the years they have been fairly successful and allow for more objective measurement of learning than many other approaches. At the same time, I’m willing to say that maybe we should look at ways of assessing learning beyond multiple choice tests, but you still need to make sure whatever assessment is used is both reliable and valid. And one of main ways you establish that is through standardization of the measure (ie standardized testing and assessment). This also allows you to then compare the learning of students from different classes, schools, etc., which in turn allows parents to make informed decisions about the best choice of which school to send their child to, which teachers should be given raises (or let go), etc. Without the standardization of the assessment across teachers, schools, etc. you end up in a situation where everyone is going to choose the “best” way of assessing students, which of course means that whatever method makes them look the best is the measure they will use. As a result comparisons across teachers, schools, etc. will be essentially meaningless.
And then you hit the big issue. If the test is standardized in a way in which we can hold teachers/schools/etc accountable based on the results, many of those teachers/schools/etc. are going to try and focus the content of what they teach in such a way as to maximize student performance on the standardized assessment. Note that it isn’t the test that dictates this, it will be the administration… often as a result of the policies put in place behind the test (such as funding). Well, if parents could vote with their dollars which school their child went to, I think we would see schools being rewarded for success by the market as opposed to a system where federal dollars are withheld from a school for failing to perform. To me, this would do a lot more for encouraging improvement in the schools than federal mandates. But, still, testing in order to hold schools accountable will be necessary. And I’ll even say that testing shouldn’t be the only measure that is used in assessing outcomes (e.g. acceptance rates to colleges, employment of graduates, etc. are all factors that should be taken into consideration). There is nothing wrong with using multiple methods of assessing outcomes, and in fact I think it should be encouraged. Still, standardized testing will need to be a part of that picture as one of the methods since it gives the most direct and immediate feedback on performance rather than having to wait 3 or 4 years to see how a school is doing. Why wait until it’s too late to suddenly realize a school is having problems? The more immediate the feedback, the faster corrections can be made.
Along these lines, I agree that teachers should be given the freedom to teach in the manner that works best for them and the students they are charged with teaching. One-size does not fit all, but some methods of teaching have been found to produce more learning than others, and those methods supported by sound research and empirical evidence, should definitely be encouraged. At the same time the freedom of how to teach is given, I think there should also be some restrictions on what is taught.
There should be some standardization in the content that is taught in school, if for no other reason than to give us a basis of comparison between schools. Sure there are plenty of controversial issues that people will differ on whether they feel the topics should be taught in schools, but at the same time some common ground should be there. They key, at least for me, is making sure that what is taught is actually supported by empirical evidence. When that evidence is mixed or incomplete, that should be taught as well with students given the opportunity to see all sides and reach their own conclusions, again based on the evidence, as to which way they want to view things… but they must also be taught that in these situations, where the evidence is mixed, that future research in those areas might change what we know. Knowledge in these areas is not “fixed”, and just because someone might say “the debate is over”, doesn’t necessarily mean that it really is. Future research might easily re-open older debates, especially when the debate should have never “ended” to begin with.
At this point, I’m sure I could go on for another several pages, but I need to get on to completing some other things tonight that need to get done… I’ll probably come back to this issue at some point though since I always seem to find these posts that argue against the need for testing, but still want people to be held accountable without some form of assessment being recommended…
Oh, and pictures from the past few days will be coming… just have to get them transferred out of the phone and onto the site…
