STUDENT TESTING IS VITAL TO EDUCATION

Figuratively speaking, I kicked over a rock with what I wrote and something sinister crawled out. There seems to be a growing sentiment that testing is somehow bad for students as well as teachers and it should be stopped. This “hate all testing” approach is reminiscent of the venomous “hate the government” right wing rhetoric that is now so pervasive in the political media. If you criticize them for what they say, they are quick to respond that “of course we didn’t mean all testing” just like the right wing are quick to say “we don’t mean all government”. The interpretation of what they mean is they “hate” all government or “student testing” that may challenge their rights as individual to do anything they please or reveals their incompetence.

I am referring to the thrust of my recent post on this blog site: Stop Trashing Student Testing. A reader referenced a long convoluted article as an authority on testing, which I can summarize by copying one of its first paragraphs:

. . . I’d ( the author) argue that too much attention to the particulars of implementation may be distracting us from the bigger picture -- or at least from a pair of remarkable conclusions that emerge from the best theory, practice, and research on the subject:  Collecting information doesn’t require tests, and sharing that information doesn’t require grades. In fact, students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age.

The quote is the authors but the emphasis is mine. This of course is complete non-sense to anyone professional school admission committee, in an interview for a job interview, or anyone else who has to do with evaluation of a person’s educations, especially when it comes to voting. This article is The Case Against Grades, written, by Alfie Kohn and published in Educational Leadership (Nov.2011). The article its self had 31 references 6 of which a were written by the author of the article.

The outstanding statement taken from the readers comment was that “Grades in general and testing in most current forms does nothing to enhance learning and in fact (the researched kind) has repeatedly been show to diminish learning outcomes.” In addition to saying testing is of no value but declares student evaluation is harmful. This is some weird distortion of the Heisenberg principle in physics . . . if you measure something you change its characteristics.

The comment made in response to my post contained a personalize attack on me claiming I hate teachers. This isthe characteristic—Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh—approach of the right wing media. The commenter wrote, “This is a case where the pervasive "hate for teachers” rhetoric expressed in your comment (sic: post) can be proven simply by reading your post.” Apparently, this was made in response to my remark about teaching, which was "There is no profession in which meritocracy counts more." I was decrying the fact that teachers unions have destroyed their creditability by protecting incompetent members. The tie of all of this to testing is that teacher are judged by student evaluations but also by how well the students do on their tests. Classically, there is an inverse relationship between how well teachers have done on student evaluations and how well their students have done on testing as well. The obvious charge is that teachers can corrupt testing and “teach tests”. Of course, failed teachers charge student evaluations are evaluations of the teacher’s personalities and not on what students have learned. The bottom line, by far the main purpose of testing, is not to test the teacher but to help the teacher to learn how to be a better teacher. The job of a school administrator is to sort all of this out in the best interest of the students.  

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