Are You Sure About Standardized Tests?

This is an addition to the Philosophy page at TA where we look at common practices in education that may not always be the best practice. You can find similar posts under the "Are You Sure About..." section.

We "need" to test students to be able to assess what they know.

But why do students tend to perform so poorly on tests?

Is it nerves or something else?

Comedian Daniel Tosh thinks "Bad Test Takers" are just stupid.

"Don't you love it in school when people say 'Oh, I'm a bad test taker'? You mean you're stupid. Oh, you struggle with that part where we find out what you know? I can totally relate, because, I'm a brilliant painter minus my god awful brush strokes. Oh how the masterpiece is crystal [in my head], but once paint hits canvas, I develop parkinson's."

We have seen an increase in high stakes testing which causes many students to stress which often results in poor scores.

I have also seen a number of teachers focus entire lessons on test taking strategy.

Why?

Tests make schools and teachers more accountable. Comparing learning and teacher effectiveness in two separate regions can only be done when the students are tested over the same content. We can then promote more rigorous standards!

We pay an awful lot of attention to tests.

What can tests reveal to us?

• What the students have/haven't learned
• If the teacher is effective in instruction

What can't test reveal to us?

• What the students have/haven't learned 
• I know it is the same but tests are a sampling of student learning. While a test may show good indication of a student's intelligence it is not the whole. Tests are a sample of what students have retained but they do not cover everything and so it is difficult to say authoritatively what a student knows with a small sample of test questions.
• If the teacher is effective in instruction
• Tests at one time were good indications of this but these days teachers are "teaching to the test". So it is a little more difficult to assess teacher effectiveness when they have in a sense cheated the system.