Public attitude toward student testing is a curious and
multifaceted thing often seldom addressed but not from the point of view of why
do we test. After all, it is almost impossible to design a test if we do not
know why we give the tests. You and I both know we can write tests to give us
the results we want. I can write a test that everyone will pass, and one
everyone will fail. After 30 years, I can predict the mean score on a test I
write within in narrow margin. I wrote tests for multiple reasons. By writing
the test to yield an average of 75, I caused problems. Seldom did anyone every
write a perfect paper, but I had to guard against making it impossible for that
to happen. At the end of the year, I could tell which students were the best
and which one who were not doing well. I posted the results by score with no
identifiers associated with the score. Some of my colleagues were writing test
that everyone
I changed Universities mid-career. The first class at the
new university, I wrote an examination, and the mean score was 74.5 as
predicted. Surprisingly, within minutes of posting the results, the associate
dean of education requested an emergency meeting with me. He told me he had a
near riot in his office. The policy at that university was that the college
administration had fixed grades for all classes to test scores; 90 to 100 was
an “A”, 80 to 89 was a “B”. The final blow was that 70 top 79 was a “C”. My
class was composed of professional career students; they had to have a “B+”
average prerequisite for my class. In other words, they probably had never
received a “C” grade in their life. My office filled with disgruntled students
waving papers with numerical grades. To everyone’s satisfaction, the solution
was easy; I satisfied both the students and myself by marking on a curve; it
was a form of letter grade inflation. Students with a test score from 70 to 79
were suddenly “B grade” students. Still I knew my students had the
prerequisites to learned the material, learn it from the way I presented it,
and I knew who were the best students and who were not so good. In addition,
they learned where they stood in class.
Seldom do I hear anyone talk about in a way that suggests
there is a common understanding about the purpose of testing. The remarks
either address directly or imply that the reason for giving tests range from
punishment, to show “them” who is the boss, and to find out what teachers to
fire. We should be talking about such things as learning how to teach better,
what subjects and to what depth should we teach those subjects, and in what
environment should we teach them. Of course, we cannot ignore the connection, a
battlefield between politics and education.
Religion plays and unhealthy role in education. Arguments usually centers on funding with
teacher crying for more money and taxpayers carrying for lower taxes; thus, are
talking about efficiency of educations—more bang for the buck.
However, above all else, we should be learning how to write
and grade tests to answer the questions teachers want answers. Especially,
educational administrators should be doing the same thing. Standardized testing
is for naught if they are only terrifying challenge for students and teachers.
Of course, reasonable testing will be revealed poor teachers and be the main
guide as opposed to personality surveys of parents and students. Of course,
teachers unions should protect a teacher’s right to teach what the school
community hires them to teach and not base job security on seniority. Tenure is not seniority; unions should not
sully their reputations by protecting bad teachers or teaching.
A poor educational administrator is one who makes judgments
of merit on anything but what the student learns. Administrators have corrupted
some discipline in our universities by basing merit on ability to generate
research funding and not teaching ability.
For example, the University of Minnesota has a chemical
engineer as a president who enforces a requirement for demonstrating
entrepreneurial leadership for the “faculty” to granting tenure. In other
words, it is not the faculty who grants tenure but the industrial giants who
want free research done by professors at state taxpayer expense. What does this
have to do with testing; it testing has no purpose, why bother. Professors are
there for a salary and are no longer teachers. High school and grade school
teachers are more than just paid employees; they are professionals in a sweaty
palm job who need evaluation—testing is a vital part of all of this—so
educators must do it and they must do it well.
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