This week we’re giving our state test, the CSAP, to the students at my school. It’s going pretty well — the students, for the most part, are taking the test seriously, as they care about our school and what the test scores can mean for the program. But something happened yesterday that really made me frustrated with this sort of assessment.
One of my students, a nice young man who has only been with us for a little while, raised his hand during a writing test. I walked over and he whispered to me, "Can I use a dictionary?"
The language arts teacher inside of me smiled with glee — here was a student seeking to use a tool to improve his writing. Hooray! Questions like his are the ones that start conversations that lead to increased knowledge. Teachable moments, some call them.
Except yesterday wasn’t about teaching. Yesterday was about taking a test. Teaching and learning and standardized tests don’t often sit down together at the dinner table of the real world.
The CSAP, as standardized tests go, is not a bad test. But it is a test where you’re not allowed to use resources like the dictionary or a thesaurus. Or ask the teacher to spell a word for you. Or read something you wrote out loud to see if it makes sense to a colleague or a classmate. Or any of a number of tools and strategies that I teach my students and that real people actually use in the standardized testing-free world that exists outside the realm of the public schools.
Standardizing a testing experience, like standardizing an educational one, takes away many of the dynamic and social elements of schooling and learning and being in a community of learners. These tests are artificial assessments — and that’s frustrating.
I understand the value of a test score (which isn’t near as valuable as many legislators seem to believe that it is). Testing can and does provide us with some information about our students that is handy to have. But I also understand that yesterday, a student who is growing as a writer and a thinker asked to use a dictionary, something that I had never heard him ask to do before. It was a simple request that should have been immediately granted. Shouldn’t we be encouraging dictionaries and other tools for learning? Where on the test is asking for help or reaching out to a new tool honored? #
"I’m sorry, but dictionaries are not allowed.
"Oh." #
I don’t want to make too big a deal about this, but what kind of language arts teacher denies a kid a dictionary? #
I know the question is mostly rhetorical, but this is the version of ‘mostly rhetorical’ that begs a response of some kind.
I was pondering along these lines the other day, not specifically the denial of valid resources, but the difference of expectations between school and employment. After I dismissed the trite answer: They just are, all I was able to come up with is that its not actually different.
The expectations are the same; the ratios are different.
In school, testing situations in particular, you are demonstrating individual performance for the sake of advancement. I would guess that minus a few group projects here and there that performance is the bulk of effort in school.
Contrastingly, most jobs don’t accomodate regular and timely advancement as schools do, so the need for individual performance is dimished. In fact, advancement in my experience is random, not built into an employer’s structure, or simply based on longevity and never based on quantifiable individual performance.
On a daily basis, a job skews the ratio in preference of producing over performing.
Performance in business is about increasing speed and reducing iteration to produce deliverables. I literally get to keep taking a ‘test’ until I get it (almost) right. I advance based on my ability to out produce my co-workers in the same effort.
The drawback is that without a standardized environment, my employer has a hard time measuring my abilities over another’s.
Bud, I agree with you completely, not being able to use a tool like a dictionary is ridiculous, especially considering that you are an English teacher. That has to be one of the hardest things to deny a student, considering you most likely wish students would ask you that more often. I feel your pain.
The Carnival of Education: Week 7 (on the road)
Welcome to the 7th Carnival of Education! I am thrilled to be guest hosting, and terrified at the thought of even trying to fill Education Wonks’ shoes. But the time has come, so let’s open the fair. Please help publicize this great event…
I agree, it’s silly to prevent a student from using a dictionary. But is this problem really because of standardized testing? Most of my teachers were pretty strict about not allowing any written references when taking tests, and that was back in the 70′s and 80′s. It seemed ridiculous to me then, too, and I always resented it, because I’m much better at finding what I need to know than remembering it.
You each make good points, yet I think another point adds to the conversation.
Standardized tests also evaluate a teacher’s performance with students against the performance of other teachers.
Test makers, and currently politicians, may call this a validity check of teacher performance. That’s a sour but real pill for each of us to take.