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E-zine Test
Scores: "Educational
Enron"? Test scores made
the news again last week. This time it was
the SATs, tests that are designed to be one of the
factors universities can consider in selecting
students for admission. In fact, these tests
do predict, at least to a degree, how well students
may do in their first year in college. What
they don't do is show how well schools are teaching
their curriculum or the state standards, nor do
they show the quality of teaching and learning in
any given classroom. Furthermore, in some
states a high percentage of high school juniors and
seniors take the SATs while in other states just
the top students do. It is fairly obvious
that the number and quality of students taking the
test affect the average score. Nevertheless,
SAT scores, like many other test scores, are used
as the basis for comparison and judgment of how
well schools are teaching and what students are
learning. Georgia, the state
where I live, has the dubious distinction of having
the lowest average SAT scores of all the 50
states. Even though a large percentage of
Georgia's high school juniors and seniors take the
test (thus the expectation should be that the
average scores will be lower) it's not hard to
imagine that the politicians and the media here are
having a field day with these latest
statistics! Much has been written about how
horrible Georgia's education system is, and each
interest group has someone different to blame for
the low test scores. Meanwhile, the
newspapers have printed the scores for each high
school and real estate agents are advertising
housing in the higher scoring school zones.
You could probably guess that the higher scoring
schools are in relatively affluent areas with
educated parents. The above is just
the most recent example of the over-emphasis on
test scores in American education. Yes, test
scores are one important indicator of how well and
how much students are learning. But they
should not be the only assessment and should not be
the only educational bottom line! As I work
with teachers and administrators throughout the
United States, I hear over and over again that test
scores are the only things that really count.
Legislative mandates and political pressure seem to
make this so. Unfortunately, the unintended
consequence often is that many other things that
are valuable to children get lost in the
shuffle! Creative and critical thinking,
enjoyment of learning, social skills, leadership
development, affective curriculum, reflective
thinking, trial and error in problem solving,
personal development, classroom celebrations and
even the arts may be eliminated in the push for
higher and higher test scores. I see some
interesting parallels to what has recently happened
in the business world. Corporate America has
gone through a period of great difficulty in the
past year. In the thriving bull market of the
late 1990s, the only thing of importance was the
bottom line for the last quarter. Top
corporate CEOs and CFOs did everything in their
power to make sure the bottom line looked great,
even if the corporation was actually imploding and
in big trouble from within. Accounting firms
and auditors knew that the only thing of importance
was the current quarter's bottom line and immediate
profits. Additionally, they knew the accounting
tricks that could make this happen in the short
term. Eventually all of
this 'number play' caught up with Corporate
America. Many workers lost their jobs as
companies went bankrupt and stock prices
plummeted. Retirement savings in various 401
K plans have shrunk so much that some of us
jokingly now call them 201 K plans! While a
number of corporations have been involved in this
numbers game, the best known is probably
Enron. In the title of this article, I use
"Enron" symbolically to represent all of the
corporations who looked to the immediate bottom
line without looking at what would have been good
for the company in the long term. When I look at the
over-emphasis on test scores in education, I can't
help but see some similarities to this corporate
collapse. Many schools have adopted 'test
prep' curricula. Teachers are told to teach
to the test and bring those scores up.
Teachers consistently tell me that if it's not on
the test they don't bother to teach it. Some
gifted students (the challenging types who have
already figured out how to play the 'school game')
tell me they don't have to work or study in school
because they can easily pass the end-of-year tests
and that is the only thing that counts. Many
teachers and administrators are so stressed out and
worried about test scores they find it impossible
to pass on an attitude of joy in learning to the
students. Students themselves often have
prolonged test anxiety that may last for weeks or
months! Others feel school is just an institution
for test preparation and nothing more. Like the quarterly
bottom line in a corporation, if used properly,
test scores are helpful indicators. Teachers
can use them to see what a student already knows,
what he/she needs to know and where he/she might
need extra help. Conversely, giving a pretest
before beginning a unit of work is an excellent way
to find out which students already know the
material and who, therefore, can compact out of the
regular curriculum and do more advanced alternate
assignments. However, many rich
and challenging learning activities cannot be
adequately assessed by a test. Alternative
assessments such as checklists, rubrics,
conferences, learning logs and interviews with the
student are often more appropriate ways to evaluate
learning. Such learning and assessments are
used less and less in schools where the test scores
are all that matter. A true education
should be more than twelve years of test
preparation! If the bottom line for schools
becomes only test scores and nothing more, I fear
the result will be students who take tests well but
can do nothing more --- what I would call
"Educational Enron". This is when the bottom
line (test scores) look good but lifelong learning
is minimal. On the other hand, if test
scores are only a small part of what school is
about, if we use valid and reliable alternative
assessments, and if we put the emphasis on
creativity, inventive thinking, critical and
evaluative thought, personal effort and
responsibility, consideration for others and
continual academic progress, our children should
grow to be the educated citizens we need for the
21st century.
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