• You can prepare your students for the tests, but then get back to concentrating on real learning. Keep it clear in your mind that these are two different objectives. Whenever possible, help others to see the difference (in letters to parents, for example).
• Don't devote all of your classroom time to test prep. A basic introduction to the test format and a review of test content is good enough. Some teachers spend most of the year doing exciting classroom activities that focus on real learning followed by a two week 'cram-session' that focuses on the tests. Studies have shown that these students do just as well as the kids who have had an entire year of test preparation.
• As far as possible, make preparing for the test fun. Use the test questions in some type of stimulating game or puzzle that the whole class can have fun playing or solving.
But the course of action listed above is hardly a solution. It is more like a way of damage control. Rather than just working around the tests, or attempting to accommodate them, we must do something to fight back. We must do something that will make our views heard by the public and move our schools in the direction of eliminating standardized tests. We need to organize. Find people in our own areas who share our beliefs, and work together so that we can collectively have a more powerful impact. Find friends, coworkers, and neighbors who share similar beliefs, and form an organization. Give yourselves a name, for example, [name of your area] Educators Opposing Excessive Testing. You'll instantly gain some credibility, and be able to recruit more members. Whether you work alone or as part of a group, you should begin by learning all that you can about the tests that are used in your area. Once you taken these steps, the real action begins: • Discuss the situation with your acquaintances at every possible opportunity. In the grocery store, at the doctors office, or whenever the chance to do so arises.
• Attend your local school board meetings and other local events that deal with education. Voice your concerns.
• Write to school administrators, public officials, and newspapers.
• Form a delegation of concerned citizens, and visit your state legislators or other elected public officials. Politicians will be much more likely to take your concerns seriously if you speak to them in person.
• Sponsor a forum on testing. Invite the media. Sign up new members for your organization.
• Protest. Organize, participate in, and ensure press coverage for some form of protest. This can include marches, demonstrations, and other activities.
• Challenge politicians, corporate executives, public officials, and other advocates of the 'tough standards' movement to take the tests themselves. Do this especially if your district uses high stakes exit exams, which are increasingly being used to deny diplomas to students. You can go about issuing the challenge in two ways. First, you can describe it as a private invitation for these individuals to learn more about the tests. The second approach is a bit less thinly veiled: set forth an outright challenge. In one such instance, several top elected officials in Florida were challenged to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test along with 735,000 students. All of these officials declined the invitation. If using the second approach, you might want to consider holding a press conference to publicly issue the challenge. Imagine the public's response if top elected officials won't agree to take the tests that they advocate!
• Consider filing a lawsuit against the tests on the grounds that they are inherently discriminatory or statistically invalid measuring instruments.
• Opt out. Some states have a clause that allows parents to exempt their children from testing just by notifying the authorities. Not many people are even aware that these clauses exist, so do some investigating. If you find out that such a clause does exist in your state, do your best to make this information public knowledge. Though this may sound extreme, in the case of their being no opt-out provision, boycott the tests altogether.
3 comments:
Why not improve the tests instead?
You seem to assume that teachers and administrators have any say concerning the content on standardized tests. They have none. They have to sign affidavits swearing they haven't looked at the test. Anyone who posts even one test question on line without the permission of the publisher is sued. When the test scores return, months later, after the kids who took them are no longer in the same grade with the same teacher, all schools receive are results. They are not permitted to see what the questions were that their kids missed. So teachers and school administrators have no ability to evaluate the tests, much less improve them. Standardized tests belong to their publishers, and with no feedback about the items on their tests, why would they bother to improve them - other than to change the computer software running them, so that every couple of years schools must either buy new software, or, as is happening right now, completely replace all their computers. Standardized testing is a profit making activity, not a teaching or learning activity. They are designed to make a high percentage of students fail them - there's more money in testing when people believe kids are failing and must be monitored frequently. It is also true, as stated in the article, that these tests have never and don't now reveal anything about a student other than the socio-economic status of the child's family. Kids who live in high stress neighborhoods - poor, dangerous urban deserts, with no public library, no safe places to play - do poorly on standardized tests. Those who live in safe, relatively affluent or very affluent neighborhoods do much better or spectacularly well. We would do better to do more to improve the quality of life of all our children, if we truly want higher test scores.
Why not improve the tests instead?
Mainly because it's not possible.
If you read Bloom or Scriven on the taxonomies of edu objectives, you find that mechanically scoreable paper and pencil tests tap into only the least important aspects of learning. To tap even the mediocre level requires free-form responses, and to tap into the most important elements takes simulation and 1:1 dialog.
It can easily cost as much to test as to teach in the first place.
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