Test Less, Learn More
By Don Batt
Each school year, students have about 185 days of class. Each day is precious, for every day students should be learning. Yet each year, more and more time is spent preparing for or taking standardized tests. Colorado proposes to implement the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests, a national battery of tests, in 2015, which will expand state testing even more.
But the idea that testing is a remedy for students’ lack of knowledge flies in the face of logic. There is no causal relationship between testing and learning. In fact, an argument can be made that the more students are tested, the less time they have to learn.
PARCC has spread because corporations that sell tests and test materials see schools as an endless cash cow, and the more tests schools administer, the larger the profit.
According to the Associated Press, in 2011, Colorado spent over $20 million on testing. This year in Colorado, the Joint Budget Committee is proposing a $3.4 million increase to fund the addition of 11th-grade math and English tests. This proposal is an effective example of how ill considered this rush to assess has been. Eleventh grade is when students are applying to colleges. They take SAT and ACT tests, for which their teachers spend considerable time reviewing. In addition, many students take Advanced Placement exams for multiple subjects. Again, AP teachers spend hours of instructional time administering practice tests.
Add to this burden the proposed PARCC tests, and we have a junior year filled with empty content. This is a time students develop intellectually and should be given more challenging and complex material, not taught how to think like a test designer. In other grades, instead of creating effective lessons, teachers spend countless hours redesigning assessments so they resemble state tests. Some administrators’ primary task is to coordinate the giving of tests. Substitutes are hired so teachers can proctor tests. But these are only the costs in resources. There are also long range costs to our children’s learning.
Standardized tests distort curricula when they are used to rate schools and teachers, purposes for which they were never designed. As a consequence, schools reduce instruction to just answering multiple-choice questions rather than the real business of learning and developing critical thinking.
A Harvard study, underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that “… heavily weighing a single measure may incentivize teachers to focus too narrowly . . .” And the RAND corporation concluded that the validity of these tests are suspect due to “… teachers’ instructional focus on test-preparation strategies in lieu of better teaching of the underlying content.”
Because of these serious problems, four states, including Minnesota, never signed up; nine states, including Indiana and Pennsylvania, have withdrawn from these tests; and another four states are considering withdrawing.
President Obama has said, “One thing I never want to see happen are schools that are just teaching to the test because then you are not learning about the world.” But in Colorado, because of the draconian provisions in SB-191, this is exactly what is happening. Our lawmakers never observe schools at work, never actually take the tests that they mandate, or ever see the appalling negative effects these tests have on children.
In the rush for Race to the Top funds, our legislature has lost sight of the goals of public education. We have heard enough empty rhetoric about 21st Century college and career readiness. “Test-taker” is not a marketable skill. It is time for our lawmakers to realize that schools should be testing less and teaching more.
Don Batt taught English in the Cherry Creek School District for 23 years and retired last June from Grandview High School. He’s a resident of Park Hill.