Sources say America’s education system is lagging behind other countries; whereas it used to be a global leader. Some politicians have raised the stakes, claiming this decline poses a “national security threat.”
One of the many possible explanations for this decline is America’s obsession with test scores. (See also: America’s Toxic Culture of Testing; How Test Obsession Is Killing Education; and Standardized Testing: The Monster that Ate American Education.)
Undue emphasis on test scores encourages teachers to focus on memorization and test preparation—as opposed to learning for understanding. Memorizing data, as illustrated below, does not translate into workforce readiness.
If America were to place less emphasis on standardized tests, teachers could finally stop focusing so much attention on students’ ability to memorize and regurgitate information. Instead, they could use their time and energy to teach students how to process and make sense of information, and thereby become more adept and productive citizens. A look at Howard Gardner’s “Designing Education for Understanding,” gives us an indication as to how to accomplish this new education objective.
So class:
What do you think of standardized testing? Do you think it adequately captures the success or failure of an education system?
Can you reflect on an instance in which a teacher taught you how to truly understand a subject matter, as opposed to just the facts and data surrounding the matter?
This is a good links roundup on the role of tests in education today. Standardized testing is, for many reasons, one of the major downfalls of our education system today because it privileges some kinds of information over others. But it’s also an easy and reductive way to make decisions about what is good work and what is not.
In fact the teachers who taught me to foster critical thinking are the ones who did not have multiple choice tests in their class.