Why Testing Doesn't Work

Today's New York Times has an article on how the increase in high stakes testing has actually decreased learning. There is truth in the article, specifically this paragraph:

"Teachers are focusing so intently on the high-stakes tests that they are neglecting other things that are ultimately more
important," said Audrey Amrein, the study's lead author, who says she supported high-stakes tests before conducting her
research. "In theory, high-stakes tests should work, because they advance the notions of high standards and accountability.
But students are being trained so narrowly because of it, they are having a hard time branching out and understanding
general problem-solving."

Unfortunatly, the final paragraph reinforces the false notion that the problem is in the testing and not in the teaching. The pose the question; '"Should we just make better tests," asked Anthony G. Rud Jr., associate professor of education at Purdue University, or "is there something fundamentally wrong with testing in this matter?"' Unfortunatly for the Times, the answer is neither. Teachers are not, as a group, the best and the brightest minds out there. The pool of teachers is typically drawn from the bottom half of college graduates. The exceptions stand out in the minds of their students and in their impact on the school.

Someone once observed that American managerial theory is the most advanced and progressive in the world and our actual practice is among the most regressive and primitive in the world. I think the same can probabaly be said for teaching. Bloom's Taxonomy tells us that factual knowledge is the lowest form of thinking. Most teachers seem to wander aimlessly in the desert of facts without ever asking students to do something with them. Facts isolated from context, from meaning, from connection to other facts amounts to trivia. I have seen a good deal of trivia taught in the schools. When considering Abraham Lincoln, students are often expected to know facts about him. When was he elected. This is only useful if it is meaningfully connected to other events. Teachers must provide and then evaluate based on analysis of facts, synthesis of facts, and evaluation of facts. Students who can analyze, synthesize, and evaluate will do well on any test. Teachers who only teach knowledge of facts end up wasting valuable classroom time teaching to the test. State testing boards have taken considerable efforts to make this difficult. So, teachers must spend a great deal of time doing it. Rather than teaching students, something they never did well to begin with, they are spending time attempting to goose their test scores. That, dear reader, is what does not work. Rather than questioning the tests themselves, the Times should be informing its readers that the teachers' responce to these tests is dysfunctional. Then the public has before them a useful choice: keep the higher standards and get teachers who can reach them, or keep the teachers we have and save money at the expence of the next generation.

Remeber, its a global economy. Demand for labor will flow to the place where it is done most cheaply. For Americans to compete in subsequent generations, we must have skills unavailable where labor is cheap. Where are the Russians to launch another Sputnik when you need them?