EducationNews.org

Peter F. Henry
Guest Editorial EdNews.org

Since politicians are so convinced on the necessity of testing, is it too much to ask that they take one?

I propose three questions: we don’t want a high bar as public service is already at risk.

Number 1: Find a single response for these questions. The square root of 546,789? The population of Micronesia? The temperature at which Jackpine cones open?

Correct response: Who cares! Any politician spending a minute on this should be thrown from office.

Each of us is daily inundated by information—an infinity of sense experience, verbal reports and descriptions, visual cues and data. It is not possible, nor even advisable, to digest, sort and store a very high percentage of it. In reality, we can’t.

In fact, one way to measure “intelligence” is the critical faculty for selecting facts, details and data from daily life that are useful and germane to our individual sense of value and mission. We cue on what is important to remember, know and understand. The rest, we let go.

In our information society, the extent of human knowledge is doubling every 5 to 10 years. Given that, requiring everyone (or anyone) to master a single discreet item or fact before being deemed “educated” is absurd, a silly game of “gotcha.” Any bozo with a laptop can answer the above questions in under five minutes with Google. Why require them to store it in their brain where it will be forgotten in weeks?

Number 2. Can you have both high-stakes exams and high standards simultaneously?

Answer: No.

Any politician who answers incorrectly, and I know a lot of governors who do, should be forced to spend a day at a Driver’s License examining station.

Why? Driving is important, and incompetent (read “uneducated”) drivers can do a lot of damage. So, it is right to require exams before a license is issued. In this sense, like a high school diploma, it is a “high stakes” event. Fail, you don’t drive.

In terms of high standards though, obtaining a license does not mean you are a good driver, much less qualified to compete in Nascar with the world’s best. In fact, there are laws as well as increased insurance premiums recognizing that young drivers, on average, do not drive well at all. That, in fact, your driving facility improves with practice and exposure to actual driving conditions—not because you continually take more exams.

Here is the dirty truth about “high stakes” tests: the higher the stakes, the more pedestrian and watered down the requirement to pass.

Think about it: if we impose a standard in America for being physically fit, would it be to run a mile in world class speed—under 4 minutes? Extreme level of competitive fitness—under 5 minutes? A demanding level of athleticism—under 6 minutes? And so on, until, you realize that if everyone actually had to “pass”, we would require only that they self-navigate in an hour or two, with modification for those with disabilities and injury.

Is that a high standard? What would we do with the ones who don’t meet it? Force them to work out? Deny them citizenship? Health coverage?

High standards and high stakes are necessarily opposed, and when politicians claim we need them to remain “competitive”, they deceive us. Passing a high stakes standardized exam does not mean you are able to compete in today’s economy, much less become the leading edge of entrepreneurial innovation. For that, you need skills that can’t be measured on multiple choice tests: critical analysis, collaborative people skills, creativity, a sense of aesthetics, among others. All things we should be developing—but currently aren’t, at least in most public schools.

So why do we overuse standardized tests?

Because we are a deeply fearful society. We don’t trust youth, we are wary of public education, and we have learned to scapegoat teachers. Standardized exams are the politicians’ weighty club, used to threaten, bully and eventually beat public education into better performance, or, move us toward “privatization.” Important note: not better education, but better performance on standardized tests that do not equate with quality education. If driving test scores improve 3 points—does that mean our roads are safer? No. It means applicants performed better on driving tests—or the test was easier.

And it is always the poor, immigrants and people of color most hurt by over-testing. Why? Because tests measuring such low skills narrow the curriculum substantially in poor, urban districts, and students there are leaving in droves, more turned off than ever to the nature and purpose of learning. Can you imagine African-American students without music, dance or art classes because they have to mechanically drill for ever more standardized tests?

And teachers are so brow-beaten, frustrated and adrift in trying to meet some abstract percentage or be judged failures, they acquiesce to the fantasy that learning is not about building skills, understanding and assets for the future, but about mastering what the system tells you will be on the next, ever more irrelevant, standardized exam.

If politicians don’t fundamentally “get” these questions—and most clearly do not—why allow them, and not educators, to set the agenda in terms of educating children? They can’t pass the very instrument they urge on everyone else.

Published March 12, 2007