Free Their Minds…
High-stakes testing has not worked for education.
Timing is everything. As a result, history often becomes circumstantial in reaction to the conditions that presented themselves in the moment. One of the keys to transformational leadership is recognizing when a key moment has presented itself and seizing on the moment to implement or improve practices that will benefit our society or our institutions for years to come. Education leaders need to heed the moment we are in, cancel standardized tests again for the present pandemic year, and move to remove high-stakes testing as the sole measurement of whether schools and teachers are successful.
One of the keys to transformational leadership is recognizing when a key moment has presented itself and seizing on the moment to implement or improve practices…
From the inception of widely-adopted, high-stakes testing in the early 2000s, the system has been narrow in scope and limited in focus. It seems we are not looking at a way to improve outcomes for children, but rather a way to hold someone accountable for when students don’t perform at a certain level.
Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe in accountability for educators and that we need to have the highest commitment to standards and effective practices. We also need to make sure we are recruiting, retaining, and incentivizing the best candidates to become teachers.
However, boiling down the systems and art of teaching to standardized assessments is like measuring the effectiveness of a doctor by having patients take a multiple-choice quiz at the conclusion of a visit. On top of this, imagine having these quizzes made by a testing corporation without a large amount of doctor input and with an incentive to make mediocre examinations. The medical profession would have some major issues on your hands.
Results from post-visit quizzes could offer some insight into bedside manner, effective communication, or even the ability to give effective examples. Shucks, the best doctors’ patients might still perform the highest on the quizzes.
However, there would be many factors that contribute to the quiz scores and this would be a very narrow way to evaluate the effectiveness of the visit. The quizzes would also standardize the way that patients had to prove or showcase their knowledge of the visit. Instead of being able to provide a verbal explanation, draw a picture, or utilize their musical talent, they would be required to answer multiple-choice or standardized short answer questions. This would allow data to be collected in a simplified manner but would give the false impression that this is the only relevant data worth examining.
Also, tie the doctor’s ability to keep his/her job and/or receive a raise to patients’ performance on these quizzes, and you would see a drastic shift in the way that doctors perform. Many would start to gear their practices towards making sure their patients scored well on the post-exam quizzes regardless of whether it reflected best practices or whether it led to a better overall experience for their patients.
…tie the doctor’s ability to keep his/her job and/or receive a raise to patients’ performance on these quizzes, and you would see a drastic shift in the way that doctors perform.
These circumstances could also change the way the doctor prepared and planned for his/her patients’ visits. Doctors would organize, evaluate questions, analyze results from past quizzes, and then figure out ways for their patients to perform better on these quizzes moving forward. For some, there may even be an incentive to try and get their patients to know some of the acceptable or predictable answers prior to exiting the exam room. Instead of focusing on the acquisition of actual knowledge, the focus would potentially shift to patient performance on these quizzes rather than actual health and well-being.
Obviously, this metaphor is not perfect, however, it illustrates some of the issues with standardized, high stakes testing in education. Educators at all levels of the “food chain” are forced to narrow their curricular focus, prepare students to be able to perform on majority multiple choice and short answer exams, and are incentivized or penalized based on their students’ performance.
It creates a high-pressure environment that doesn’t accurately reflect all of the knowledge, talent, skills, or potential of the students in front of them. Nor does it factor in the level of the high level of hard work, preparation, and commitment they put into their job each day. On top of this, student performance has failed to significantly improve and sustain under high-stakes testing. Achievement in most facets has remained relatively stagnant and all achievement gaps persist when looking on a broad level.
Student performance has failed to significantly improve and sustain under high stakes testing.
High-stakes testing has not worked for education. We have stressed out children, parents, and teachers while reducing the number of meaningful learning opportunities in our classrooms. On top of this, instead of investing in community resources, we have placed the ownership for the success or failure of our students (and ultimately our future) solely in the hands of educators.
Due to the pandemic, for the second year in a row, we are looking at canceling high-stakes exams in our schools. State and national education officials need to recognize this moment in educational history, realize what is best for our kids and our schools and step into their power by eliminating high-stakes tests both for this year and moving forward. We don’t need this data to tell us where we need to allocate more resources. That data is very well known and our kids, our educators, and our communities deserve to be treated better. It is simply what is right and what is needed at this crucial moment in our journey.
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