|
Test Travesty: Schools Should Emphasize Learning, Not Testing
Houston Chronicle Editorial Advising students that the answer to any question on the American Revolution is likely to be George Washington bears not even a slight resemblance to teaching. Yet more than one teacher defends the practice of suggesting answers without context in lieu of teaching the subject. Chronicle columnist Rick Casey revealed and disparaged this dispiriting custom in an April 25 commentary after a substitute teacher showed him the regular teacher's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills review sheet. The sheet listed key historical names, dates and other facts for students to memorize and then regurgitate on test day. At first impression, this is teaching at its worst. Upon greater reflection, this effort to raise test scores without learning is education accountability at its worst. In a subsequent Casey column, the anonymous teacher who devised the list of answers without questions for students at his affluent Houston-area school said the high-stakes nature of the test demoralizes teachers and forces them to employ methods they otherwise would not use. He expressed disappointment that the community at large prizes high marks over painstaking learning. Ideally, educators would teach students to master the Texas core curriculum so they could pass the TAKS. The statewide test is supposed to demonstrate how well schoolchildren have learned the material, not whether they have acquired tricks to increase their score on multiple choice tests without increasing their knowledge. Instead, students are drilled in all manner of test-taking strategies. They are drilled and reviewed to within inches of their lives for days or weeks on end. Practice tests and drills supplant time that should be spent learning content. Teachers frequently decry public policies, such as alternative certification programs, that do not respect the professionalism of their occupation. They should demonstrate that professionalism by refusing to waste valuable instructional time on rote exercises that bore eager learners and risk killing all hope of instilling intellectual curiosity in the rest of the class. However, teachers can't work miracles. Parents have to act as partners in their children's education, demanding high academic standards instead of just high grades that boost odds of acceptance at college but do nothing to help students fare well once they get there. And school administrators must change the school environment from one in which standardized testing is all-important. Should that happen, teachers will be able to do the job they were hired to do, so students can learn what they need to know to pass the tests. |
