How Standardized Tests Stunt the Intellectual Growth of Asian American Students

By Tina | Monday, January 30, 2012 | 46 Comments

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8a test How Standardized Tests Stunt the Intellectual Growth of Asian American Students

Standardized testing was pretty much invented by the Chinese. As an American of Taiwanese and Chinese heritage, this means that standardized testing is part of my ethnic and ancestral heritage. The fact that Asian Americans tend to score better than everyone else on standardized tests is not news to anyone. I mean, after 5,000 years of test prep culture (there’s even a god of testing), it’s not really a surprise right?

But what are the consequences of all this standardized testing? After a lifetime of school here in the United States spanning from pre-school to my Ph.D. in Education (20 years of school), as well as 14 years as a professional educator in both public school and private settings, I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’ve come to the conclusion that standardized tests, a vestige of ancient China, stunt the intellectual growth of not just Asian American students but of all students.

Let me explain.

There’s a lot of controversy over the use of standardized tests to measure school, teacher, and student progress (let’s not forget parents and communities, too), especially when those test scores are used to make teachers and schools “accountable” for their performance. Basically, we use standardized tests as a sort of thermometer for educational quality.

I think the best way to judge the effectiveness of standardized tests as a measure of educational quality is to analyze it against our ideals and goals for what makes a quality and successful education.

The Goal of Education

Using an American value system, one that I personally believe in, a quality education should produce knowledgeable and analytical thinkers that become compassionate, just, and thoughtful decision-makers for our country. Everyone gets to vote and for the welfare and continued strength of our country and homeland, we want everyone who votes to be a quality voter, capable of not only living a life of intelligent and caring self-determination but also capable of being a quality contributor to the great experiment that is American democracy.

How Standardized Tests Discourage People Away from this Goal

What is the definition of “standardized”? In short, the same for everyone everywhere. That means there is one right answer or at least a set of right answers for every question or problem presented. When a student sits down to take one of these tests, that child either picks the right answer or the wrong answer. End of discussion. No appeals or rebuttals allowed.

Simply and harshly put, standardized tests are the intellectual equivalent of tyranny. There is no encouragement of the student to think for themselves. Instead, they are basically coerced to give the expected answer, the accepted answer and nothing else. Do otherwise, and the child is punished with shame and lower level class assignments, sometimes worse.

I don’t need to go into detail of how this is not even in the same universe let alone ballpark of the goal for education stated above.

Bottom line: standardized tests do not encourage the intellectual critical thinking needed to deal with the complex and dynamic realities of our world and society nor do they encourage compassion and care for our fellow humans. Not only does it fail in helping us measure and provide quality education for our next generation of citizens, it horrifyingly does the exact opposite—promoting the sort of despotic mentality that goes against the very grain of American liberty.

That is not just UNACCEPTABLE, it is UNETHICAL.

However, I do hate it when people complain about a problem and provide no suggestion of a solution, so let me also elaborate on what I strongly believe is a doable alternative to the current standardized testing situation.

The Real Demon Behind Standardized Tests

Demonizing standardized tests is like blaming the gun for the murder. A standardized test is simply a human constructed tool meant to measure the educational attainment of students. It is created based on rigorous statistical standards and norms accepted among top experts and researchers in the fields of psychological and educational measurement. And any of those experts will tell you that the tool is LIMITED. The tool is not perfect and is subject to the biases and assumptions of its creators and all the uncontrollable variables that come with being human.

The problem is not the tool—it is the way we use it.

Standardized tests are not completely useless. As a very experienced teacher (the students I’ve taught number in the thousands now), I see the standardized tests as a helpful little added piece of information about students. If they score really low on a standardized measurement of their reading comprehension, it alerts me as a teacher to check in on that aspect of their learning. However, it DOES NOT tell me that their reading comprehension is necessarily bad, BECAUSE I know that the standardized measurement is extremely limited and can only give me a BLURRY SNAPSHOT of a student’s actually comprehension skills. It’s like the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle; there’s an inherent inaccuracy in its measurement of reality. Generally, when a kid scores below average or average or above average, it’s pretty much a good ESTIMATE of the general ability of a child. However, too often I’ve worked with students who score below average on reading comprehension but can share an insightful observation about a character’s development after reading an advanced classics book. They didn’t get to demonstrate that on the standardized test because it probably wasn’t one of the multiple-choice answer options. Further, kids can have bad days, test questions can have a bias towards middle class White American culture, and these standardized tests were never meant to tell us accurate information about individual students in the first place. It’s more useful as a measurement of general population of students than an accurate measurement of an individual student. It’s like trying to pinpoint a dust particle in a snowstorm.

Now, imagine kids, students, parents, principals, and school districts being held “accountable” for the test scores of their students. Wait, on second thought, don’t imagine. Let me tell you what happens. Since “accountability” hangs on the outcome of test scores, all positive reinforcement in terms of praise, recognition, grades, prestige and even lollipops and a smile are suddenly tied into motivating kids to get the best score possible on these standardized tests. Learn the RIGHT answer dictated by some unseen test maker, not the most thoughtfully constructed one that takes into consideration all the nuances of a dynamic reality and comes about from in-depth research, inquiry, and dialogue.

After a long academic year of learning all the right answers for a test, the kids get to top it all off with TWO WEEKS of continuous testing. That’s two weeks of NO LEARNING, JUST TESTING. Two weeks of teachers parroting from exactly scripted directions that must be read precisely the way it is on the paper, which means two weeks of NO INSTRUCTION. When I was a brand new teacher, I thought, “Wow, getting paid to sit here and administer this test is like the easiest and most brainless part of the school year.” You don’t get more dumbed down than that.

Luckily the reality is not as bleak as this (although some would argue otherwise), as there are excellent teachers that actually do provide a lot of quality instruction to students to learn complex concepts and skills, even despite the pressures, but can you see the amount of wasted time and energy that has been diverted from real learning because everything hangs on the standardized test results? And what about the not-so-excellent teachers? They could easily drill kids on simplistic standardized test-prep-only activities and be fully justified in doing so because the test score is the measure of quality education.

Okay, so I hope I have made it as clear as possible that the real demon behind standardized testing is our misuse of this tool and misinterpretation of the data it produces.

So what now? We can’t very well just have no accountability for our educational system. There are very real BAD teachers, and with the pay offered, it doesn’t exactly attract the best and the brightest. There are a lot of intellectually mediocre individuals working with our children every minute of every day. What can our educational system look like without standardized tests to whip everyone into shape?

False Products vs. True Products

There are a lot of answers to this problem, but let me present one rather simple one that I think can at least get us thinking in the right direction. I propose that we move towards an educational system that encourages students to produce true products instead of false products. False products are grades and test scores, extremely abstract, sterile, and inhumane representations of the real human child. True products are the sort of products that we expect from professionals. Instead of memorizing history facts for the test, students should be engaging in historical research and local history documentation. Instead of flash cards for science facts, they should be studying the ecosystems in their own backyards. Instead of writing for a state writing assessment, they should be writing books and news articles and publishing their work. Basically, all students should have the education reserved for only the most wealthy, gifted and privileged of our population. Given the opportunity to help guide students in their production of true products, teachers will be able to practice and train to become true master guides to their apprentices and not just parroting fools of pre-scripted tests.

At first glance, this sounds like an easier system, as if we’d be raising a generation of coddled babies who don’t know how to take the blow of a red “F” bleeding across the top of their paper. But let me assure you, this will be a HARDER system on all fronts. First of all, anyone who has put themselves out there as a writer will tell you that readers are harsh critics, especially young readers. And it’s not exactly easy defending your historical or scientific finds against the scrutiny and judgments of others.

The real world will be harsh enough on the true products of students. We don’t need to create fake harshness in the form of arbitrary grading systems and sterilized test scores. Our job should be to support the next generation as they learn how to deal with the real world first hand.

For Asian Pacific Americans and our model minority shackles, I feel the dangers of the standardized mind are doubly perilous. 5,000 years is a lot of baggage to carry, so let’s make sure that it becomes part of our experience and not part of our burden.

(Disclaimer: I totally took that last line from Jet Li’s Tai Chi Master movie.)

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http://www.thelexingtonavenueblog.com/ Lexington

Great post and good thoughts. I do think that these days, many schools and universities overemphasize the importance of standardized test performance. I think it’s really because education administrators are looking for shortcuts to find out who the best students are.

Part of the reason why standardized tests in the U.S. rose to prominence was to prove that Anglos were “superior” to Jews. Jewish students had been working insanely hard and beating their Anglo counterparts in school and began filling the ranks of top universities. The Ivy Leagues then began to use a new test called the SAT that would measure “aptitude,” or native intelligence, with the idea that the Jews would do poorly on them. The belief was that Jews were simply too dumb to do well.

That’s exactly the opposite of what happened, of course. The Jews dominated the test. What was originally conceived to keep the minorities down turned out to be incredibly empowering. Poor and uneducated Jews began to study insanely hard, and relied on standardized tests to break their way into top universities. Later in the twentieth century, East/South Asians began to follow the same pattern.

(you can read more about the Jews, standardized testing, and WASP privilege in this fascinating account of Stanley Kaplan: http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_12_17_a_kaplan.htm)

The problem with the SAT though, is that it doesn’t completely reflect academic success and promise. It’s a proxy for achievement, and it just so happens that some do exceptionally well on them (east Asians and high socio-economic folks) and others do poorly on them (blacks, hispanics, and low socio-economic folks). You rightly point out all the problems with standardized tests, especially those relating to secondary-level public education.
itissaid

How do you know that standard testing was invented by China? That’s a very bold statement.
JosephLee1

Actually, standardized test can be good indicators of student achievement and progress. I see no problem with gauging students’ academic caliber based at least partially on their test scores, especially for subjects that are less subjective. 2+2 has to equal four, regardless of how that question was presented to the student.

I have some teaching experience as a lead teacher in a classroom and a private tutor. The problem I noticed in the classroom really isn’t the lack of creativity in the curriculum, but a glaring lack of fundamentals from students. How can you write haikus and publish novels when your vocabulary, reading comprehension, and basic writing skills are shaky to unacceptable? You can’t send someone on a expedition if they don’t understand the objective or unable to utilize the necessary tools.

Test scores do not define someone’s intelligence. But they do indicate how well you absorbed relevant information. If I’m learning about the constitution, I have to be tested on recognizing which amendment grants us which rights. The teacher can challenge me (beyond the multiple choice) by asking me to apply my baseline knowledge in real life situations, but even then, he or she would have to grade the quality of my work using objective, impersonal standards.

A professor In one of my fiction writing classes in college noted that “You can’t break the rules unless you understand them first” – because a lot of the students turned in weak Avant garde experimental pieces. If our students can barely pass tests that check your memorization skills, then maybe teachers should “teach to the test” a bit before embarking on ambitious projects.
Danny_Ahmed

@itissaid I”m not 100% certain, but she could semi-joking about that. The nature of the article is serious, but that conjecture can be taken lightly.
Danny_Ahmed

The funny thing about the Imperial Exams in Ancient East Asia was that they might have been considered part of the humanities today. In theory, the did have some themes which required some critical thinking beyond reciting classics. Like, what should be done in this or that situation. Although answers to those type of themes weren’t straightforward. There wasn’t any science or topics about the natural world beyond how to administrate them.

In reality, yeah there were a lot of issues, and often the candidates that passed could only get desired government positions through connections. Speaking of the past, the ancient exams was only around for a thousand years or so. Relying on connections had a longer history. Both practices are ingrained into Asian cultures though.

http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2008/e200802/p54.htm
dragonrider0ne

As a kinesthetic learner who happens to have grown up in the “Asian” system, I knew all of this (or most of it) to be true. Standardized tests are feared by most kinesthetic learners mainly because you’re strapped to a chair for at least a couple of hours and hopefully you won’t screw up. Personally, I’ve had not problem with standardize tests – but it came at a cost. Now that I’m older I’ve rediscovering many of my “lost” talents.

Oh btw, as for the Chinese Imperial exam: many of the answer to questions are “cookie cutter” types – the administrators are looking for exact answers to their questions – failure to do so usually meant u failed in that portion. Oh and usually the Imperial exam (for the Chinese Empire in this case) involved memorizing various Confucian texts verbatim. Usually these texts were as long as the Christian Bible! Did I mention that there were at least a dozen of these monstrosities that these guys had to memorize and if they were off by a sentence that was enough to get them disqualified! Sorry, I have a history undergraduate degree in history and I had an emphasis in Asian history.
jeffat8asians

Great post! I think that the abuse of standardized testing comes from a combination of laziness and the desire for a single simple metric to measure the “quality” of something. Happens in the business world too. One of my coworkers with strong statistics background called this “mononumerosis.” People want a single number to indicate how some system or department is performing, but real world systems are usually too complex to accurately model with a single number. “Education” is the same way.

As I mentioned in the college admissions series (http://www.8asians.com/2011/11/21/the-college-admissions-game-part-3-an-admissions-officer-speaks/), a growing number of US colleges are becoming “test optional” regarding standardized admissions tests. In addition, the admissions officer says that admissions criteria is becoming increasingly more subjective.
Danny_Ahmed

@dragonrider0ne I asked some history students and teachers about the Imperial Exams. While everything you said is mostly true, I heard it’s a bit more sophisticated than that.
raymonst

“The problem is not the tool—it is the way we use it.”

This. It’s problematic when tests become the only measuring stick in education, but they do have their uses.
raymonst

@jeffat8asians It’s nice to hear that more colleges are relying less on test scores, but I’m still waiting for one of the “big” schools to do it.
dragonrider0ne

@Danny_Ahmed I know, what I said was just to give a taste of what the exams are like. I wrote what I wrote knowing that there’s a lot more than what I said.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@raymonst They can definitely alert us to pay attention to something we’ve missed in the day to day with kids, but unfortunately, I feel like it detracts from learning so destructively that we should do away with it. More student-authored literary magazines and journals and less testing!
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@jeffat8asians Mononumerosis. I love that term. That’s exactly what it is.

It is totally an indication of laziness on our part as a society, not willing to see reality for what it really is, and this is especially not cool when it comes to our kids.

I see the same thing you see about colleges. I heard recently that quite a number of private schools have gone test optional or done away with SAT scores completely.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@dragonrider0ne Multiple learning styles and multiple forms of intelligence add to the complexity of human development, which makes the dehumanizing standardized testing all the more odious.

I’m still shocked there’s a god of testing in China. If I remember correctly, it’s this guy who is really ugly but studied really hard for the imperial exams and did super well on them. And he’s got these two kids, a boy and a girl, that are his attendants or something. Someone fill in the blanks. I read about this like five years ago.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@JosephLee1 [A professor In one of my fiction writing classes in college noted that "You can't break the rules unless you understand them first"]

My response to your professor of fiction writing is “There are no rules.” (I really wanted to say “There is no spoon” but thought the point might be missed.) Even the California State Standards are careful to call it grammar, spelling, and punctuation “conventions” and not “rules”.

[How can you write haikus and publish novels when your vocabulary, reading comprehension, and basic writing skills are shaky to unacceptable?]

How can you strengthen shaky and unacceptable basic writing skills without writing haikus and publishing novles? There is no empirical evidence (that I’ve found, and I’ve looked quite thoroughly) that supports that direct grammar instruction improves writing skills. Vocabulary and reading comprehension are developed through reading and writing, not through memorization and drills. Doing push-ups and squats can strengthen some muscles for basketball, but spend too much time on that and not enough time ACTUALLY PLAYING you’ll never be a good basketball player.

It’s not that standardized tests and drills and memorizing vocab lists don’t help at all, it’s just that it should be only 5% of the learning activity, not 95%.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@itissaid lol I’m not a historian, so anyone who’s got a stronger history background can correct any inaccuracies here, but that’s what I’ve gathered from my cursory studies of Chinese history. That and the almighty Wikipedia says so too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_tests

If you can find any counter-evidence to the claim that China invented standardized testing, I’d love to know.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@Lexington “It’s a proxy for achievement”

Exactly right.

“I think it’s really because education administrators are looking for shortcuts to find out who the best students are.”

Absolutely true.

What’s worse, is my article here is about K-12, which means little kids as young as 7 are running this hamster wheel. Just imagine the impact it is having on their cognitive development.
Danny_Ahmed

@TinaTsai @JosephLee1 Speaking of writing, there’s currently some controversy brewing on the Mainland (China).

A popular blogger/writer named Han Han is alleged of using ghostwriters for his books. The person accusing him is a famous “fraud” fighter named Fang Zhouzi who exposes some of modern China’s dirty practices like falsifying resumes and such. I haven’t read Han Han’s books before, but apparently they’re very popular. There’s a lot of drama going on in the Chinese blogospheres and media about this. Anyway, Fang wants a public debate while Han is going to sue him for libel. One of the reasons that Fang uses is that the writing styles was too mature for Han (he is in his late 20s but wrote the books when he was in his teens) and there was no way a high school dropout could be that good. Something like that.

I was reading people’s responses and one netizen said that was sort or ridiculous logic. Something like a person can do bad at school but could still excel in one subject or so. Like, in China at that time, writing accounted for 20% of the grade but if you didn’t do well in others, you would have failed school. In a way, there were quite a few kids like Han Han who weren’t competent in other subjects, but did well in writing.
Danny_Ahmed

@TinaTsai@JosephLee1 I’m leaning towards that idea that these drills and standardized tests shouldn’t be 95% of learning activity. In some subjects like Math and Science, it’s probably close to that figure. I don’t agree with it, but the way those courses work nowadays, it’s made to be learn that way. Even the lab activities and hands on projects are very structured, leaving little room for mistakes and such.

Most of the problems in those subjects have like one answer. In some cases, you could be off in your numbers and still be acceptable, but they got to be very close, Like instead of .0029 it could be .0031. Something like that.

If you are lucky, there are some teachers out there who will not take out too many points in grading if you got the wrong answer, but only if you showed all the steps and describe how you got that.

You sort of have to take quite advanced science and math courses to go beyond those only-one-right-answer scenarios. Depending on your instructor and how deep you are in a subject, it can get quite philosophical in describing certain things and could be open to debate. I had a physics professor who did that; instead of traditional lectures, he made us discuss and debate our lessons. Some of the test questions required an essay answer. It was a love or hate it situation. Some people did great, but mainly because they were already competent in the basics and knew the topics beforehand. Some didn’t and had to change classes where they had the traditional lecture.
Laciemn

I think you are right on with this. Everyone knows the system is broken and what you’re talking about is the exact root of the problem.We should be spending resources and time on making competent and independent people with unique talents and view. The amount of focus put into the test scores is just stupid. I remember in school, instead of having my own opinion, I always thought to myself, “What do THEY want me to say here?”

On those tests, I always felt as if the test wanted to “trick” me. So, what if a student knows the way to do a certain math formula but they are very nervous about tests and tend to freeze up? Fear or stress can make some students perform a lot worse than they really are.

“Instead of memorizing history facts for the test, students should be engaging in historical research and local history documentation. Instead of flash cards for science facts, they should be studying the ecosystems in their own backyards. Instead of writing for a state writing assessment, they should be writing books and news articles and publishing their work.”

^This should be posted in every school so the teachers and admins remember it. A pro-active hands-on approach is exactly what most kids need and surely it would make the kids happier and perhaps more confident in who they really are. Great article!
itissaid

@TinaTsai It’s your job as the one making the argument to prove that statement. It’s rather lazy of you as a writer to have others prove your point. If you aren’t sure, you shouldn’t make such statement. Wikipedia. LOL.
JosephLee1

@TinaTsai

It’s a bit cavalier to say “there are NO rules”. How can you write novels and haikus if you aren’t fundamentally sound in grammar or basic English skills? That’s like asking a person who’s clueless around the kitchen to bake a cake with creative design.

If you aced scantron tests that merely examine how you absorbed knowledge in class, you’re far from a novelist or poet – because constructing flesh and blood characters and engaging plot or dialogue is an art that ventures beyond strict academics. But I think many American students are barely even that. To borrow your sports analogy, they’re actually badly out of shape / ignorant of playing the game, and need to be drilled.

I don’t believe an overhaul of standardized tests will help students without a solid foundation. If the new testing format is requires you to write a novel, these students will write every sentence in a grammatically flawed personal voice, or something that reads like “Jason like candies, and he likes it very much you know”. Glaring mistakes that are very telling of the student’s current level and needs.

Of course I don’t want classroom learning experience reduced to “by the numbers” memorization or multiple choice quizzes, but they’re not “dehumanizing”. They’re tools for learning and gauging student progress. The impersonal nature of scantron test is can be an advantage. It cares not if who the test taker is. Either you paid attention in class and was able successfully identify the right answer, or you don’t. Some Asians are used to doing things by rote and find success in that arena. For such students you can make an argument for expanding the parameters and apply their knowledge outside of earning grades.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@Laciemn Thanks for reading! I agree, I really feel like this is the root of it, and I’m not just idealizing. I put this into practice every single day working with my students, and last year a group of them were at the LA Times Festival of Books promoting their own self-published works. Now with ebooks, the possibilities are endless!

There are simply not enough kids publications out there because it takes so much time and effort to put together a literary or other type of magazine, but this is a stupid problem because we already have schools and teachers and facilities all set up for it. They just have to do it! And I’m not just talking about journalism as a side thing but as a CORE curriculum.

“Fear or stress can make some students perform a lot worse than they really are.”

What’s especially alarming is I remember some presentations given by other students at my grad school that African American kids and other kids of minorities who are viewed as poor academic performers would score lower because of the pressure of those lowered expectations. Basically, self-fulfilling prophecy at its worst.

We’re seriously missing out on all the human capital that we’re suppressing instead of developing every day at schools!
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@itissaid PERFECT. Thanks for proving an incredibly important point in this article! ^O^
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@JosephLee1

“How can you write novels and haikus if you aren’t fundamentally sound in grammar or basic English skills?”

Exactly. And what is the best way to learn the grammar needed for writing?

“But I think many American students are barely even that.”

Apparently we’re doing something wrong. Maybe it’s time to rethink our status quo of drill, remediation, and standardized testing?

“I don’t believe an overhaul of standardized tests will help students without a solid foundation.”

And how exactly are we to create this solid foundation?

“The impersonal nature of scantron test is can be an advantage. It cares not if who the test taker is.”

It certainly does not care, nor does the human being who wrote the questions behind that scantron? And the people who

“Either you paid attention in class and was able successfully identify the right answer, or you don’t.”

It’s like saying something against the propaganda in a despotic government. Sadly, education has been used for both good and evil in our human history.

“Some Asians are used to doing things by rote and find success in that arena.”

Exactly what I fear, and exactly why I wrote this article.

California State Standards English Language Arts:

“At every grade level the standards cover reading, writing, written and oral English language conventions, and listening and speaking.” (p. iv) Notice they use the word “conventions” and not “rules”.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/elacontentstnds.pdf#search=language%20arts%20standards&view=FitH&pagemode=none

(The CA standards are excellent, thoughtful, and extremely well done, and the CA standardized test is an extremely well constructed measurement tool. Great tools must be used wisely.)
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@JosephLee1 *And the people who interpret the scantron results?
itissaid

@TinaTsai “cursory studies”, wikipedia. LOL.
JosephLee1

@TinaTsai

But it seems to me you’re arguing for “tools” for students who may not be able to utilize it.

Can one write haikus or novels (or stimulate learning experience via such activities) when he or she struggle with basic spelling, pronounce “shoe” as “Showy”, and can’t incorporate words in sentences within proper context? Don’t you think that writing a song, news paper articles, novellas, and screen play (even in mock format customized for classroom purposes) are separate crafts that require baseline knowledge?

I can certainly have my class write a play, compose a song or something more interactive and substantial than flash cards, but mainly for the sake of instructing grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and other essential knowledge. I may ask “How would you use that word we learned in this character’s dialogue” or “Who can spell “chandelier”, which is used in this scene”. The memorization and absorption of facts are still there, just with a different tool. If I had to guess, many teachers already employ such “creative” lesson plans in their classrooms.

How we gauge an individual based on standardized tests ALONE can be subjective. The actual test (excluding writing portions) is less so. If you successfully learned the multiplication table in math class, then you should be able to which letter of the below is an answer to 3 time 3. POE. Boring and unimaginative, but an objective way to test what you learned. Scantron machines that scan for answers don’t hate minority students. Can a test writer put in questions like “who was the first president of the US” in a way that discriminates against certain students?

If you aced these tests, you might be “book smart”. But you might not be able to apply strict academic knowledge in real world situations. You have more room to grow. But most American students probably are not even academically sufficient. Many have core issues and may benefit from a grounded, earthy instruction that emphasize fundamentals, not promising theories that abandon rules. Creativity should thrive within certain structure and boundaries.
dc02111

While I agree that standarized tests are not a perfect measure of aptitude, ability, etc., you don’t propose a solid alternative. You suggest that projects are better than standardized test at measuring learning. Perhaps, but how would you measure RELATIVE performance? Yes you can give your students a project to measure their progress, but how would they compare to another class down the hall, or every other class of the same grade in your school system and every other school system in the U.S.? Standardized tests are unfortunately the only way to measure relative performance on a mass scale. Measuring relative performance becomes particularly important when dealing with limited resources (e.g., admission into a top tier university). How would you suggest determining who deserves certain limited resources? Please don’t answer that all universities should provide a “top tier” education or anything similar to that. There’s a natural hierarchy that arises from selectiveness…that is not up for debate.
Danny_Ahmed

I think a lot of readers already know this, but I’ll post it anyways.

The Standardized testing culture has already permeated into modern society. This activity goes beyond the high school and college years. A lot of skillful jobs are requiring their people to participated in some form of constant training, in order to get updated with the latest information and technology. Virtually all the STEM (Sci-Tech-Engi-Math) related professions are like that. In almost all industries, from manufacturing to healthcare to a lot of professional service sectors, etc. A lot of people are almost constantly trying to get certified or licensed in this skill set or in that regulation. In the end, they all have to go through some form of testing, which is more or less standardized. That’s usually the only way that people can be certain of your knowledge and capabilities. For the sake of consumer confidence, liability and a whole host of reasons for that. If someone wants to go beyond manual labor or climb the social ladder in your employment, they more or less have to through something similar.

Even a lot of restaurants have some sort pressure to do that. Health departments usually want the boss or supervisor to take those sanitary or food safety courses (which they take a test in the end). Sometimes the restaurants don’t have that time or don’t want to and they just grab the employee with the most time (or knows English) to do that for them.

The pace of getting tested is different for each occupation. Sometimes, people go through this many times in a calendar year and sometimes people do this once every few to several years. There’s only a few job positions within the STEM arena that I know of which doesn’t have this pressure. It’s either deal with that or keep climbing to those positions without those pressures. Or try to be your own boss.
Danny_Ahmed

We could bring some type of apprenticeship system back. Maybe.

For example, a lot of family pharmacies use to grandfather their workers into the field. A relative or long term worker would fulfill all the duties and have the titles of pharmacy technician or manager (not the Pharmacist role). They had to go through some paperwork and registration to do that, and it didn’t required testing or classes. They didn’t even care if you had a high school degree or GED. Nowadays, the laws and industry itself requires people with those occupations to have that education background, go through some type of formal training with standardized testing and be certified.

I heard of one guy who got a job without doing that, because he knew a Pharmacist, but I’m not sure if it’s legal. Or what exactly he does at the Pharmacy. So far, I can’t think of a “legal” alternative to standardized testing in general. You kind of need some type of connections to go around that loop.
jeffat8asians

@TinaTsai @JosephLee1 Tina, I think you have to be careful about setting up absolutes like 5% or 95% on drilling. I think that the right proportion is highly dependent on the subject and age, and frankly, some subjects are just to take hard work and some memorization. It’s impossible to move on to more complex mathematical topics without understanding the basics and memorizing some fundamental things like times and addition tables. As skills and knowledge build upon each other like a pyramid, you need more drilling at the base and less as you get higher. Learning writing by writing is necessary and can be a great motivator, but you also learn about writing from reading, an almost rote task that lots of kids hate these days (mine do, sadly).

I really see this in the analogy that you gave – basketball. At some of the younger levels (I have coached and see a lot of youth basketball), I see more successful younger teams work on fundamentals and conditioning maybe 50% of the time, with plays and playing the other half. I have seen teams that do no fundamentals and extremely little conditioning but work on plays and playing do fairly poorly – the weaker players get no chance to develop. This is in fact one of the criticisms of the AAU basketball system in the US (e.g. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904574248282288269744.html one of criticisms), as kids play a lot but don’t work on fundamentals and are hurt in the long run.

In the end, the question is one of figuring out balance. Teaching only to the standardized test is ridiculous, as is the practice of dismissing basics as uninteresting. Sadly, both of these extremes occur – I think it is yet another form of laziness. Going to one extreme or the other is generally going to be easier than thinking about what proportion is right for the situation.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@itissaid Rather lazy of you as a reader to not prove your counter argument. ^_~ Oh but I love history, so here are your coveted socially acceptable sources of knowledge:

“The earliest record of standardized testing comes from China, where hopefuls for government jobs had to fill out examinations testing their knowledge of Confucian philosophy and poetry.” – Dan Fletcher, Brief History of Standardized Testing, Dec 11, 2009 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947019,00.html

“The Tang dynasty (618–907) created a system of local schools where scholars could pursue their studies. Those desiring to enter the upper levels of the bureaucracy then competed in the jinshi exams, which tested a candidate’s knowledge of the Confucian Classics.” Encyclopedia Brittanica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/112424/Chinese-civil-service

Still “cursory”, but you know, I don’t have the skill or resources to go to primary sources in classical Chinese texts since I’m not a professional historian. Oh, and did you even get past the first paragraph of this post? I think the core content is a lot more important to discuss.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@JosephLee1 “Can one write haikus or novels (or stimulate learning experience via such activities) when he or she struggle with basic spelling, pronounce “shoe” as “Showy”, and can’t incorporate words in sentences within proper context?”

- I’ve read the writings of too many students who are capable of beautiful abstract inspirations or rather complex and thoughtful plots while at the same time spelling everything wrong and having lots of grammar mistakes. I’m not saying “shucks to basics”, I’m saying that (1) grammar/spelling/punctuation are political, their real nature is dynamic and ever-changing based on conventions and social/cultural/political norms, and to say there’s only one right way of doing something is simply tyrannical and (2) the learning is not linear and kids can approach a complex task like writing from very many directions. I don’t want to tell a kid who can write excellent plots or beautiful poetry “No, stop writing this instant. Your grammar is not good enough for you to write.” The writing itself is a vehicle for them to learn, and by tearing that away from them, it both silences them as individuals and robs them of the very activity that will help them improve those grammar/spelling/punctuation conventions.

“who was the first president of the US”

- Those questions are written and chosen by people. Who decided that was an important question to ask? Why not “Who was the first most influential Chinese American political leader?” Also, was it really George Washington? How about showing Benjamin Franklin some love for being America’s first real “representative” and leader? Sure he wasn’t the “official” first president, but we could argue that he did so much to lay the foundations for this country and court the foreign support that was critical for the winning of the revolutionary war that he may be deserving of the title. Personally, I think of his as our President 0, but that just doesn’t sound right. President Beta perhaps? Also, 1+1=2, sure, but have you studied fuzzy logic? I read a chapter on it for my dissertation work, and after reading it 3 times outloud to myself, I still didn’t know what the heck it was. It humbled me into realizing that mathematics is not as 1+1 as it seams. Questions get even messier when we deal with critical reading and comprehension questions of literature, especially because comprehension relies heavily on cultural knowledge.

“If you aced these tests, you might be “book smart”. But you might not be able to apply strict academic knowledge in real world situations.”

- The real world smarts are book smarts, and anyone who is book smart and not real world smart is clearly not fully comprehending what they are reading.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@jeffat8asians @JosephLee1 “I think you have to be careful about setting up absolutes like 5% or 95% on drilling.”

- You have a point, the 5% does fluctuate, but I would say it is not based upon the age of the learner but the needs of the learner based on the state of the learner’s mind, the task at hand, and the interaction between the two.

“It’s impossible to move on to more complex mathematical topics without understanding the basics and memorizing some fundamental things like times and addition tables.”

- Funny story, I got Cs in math until I started Algebra and then I started acing math with A+s. In high school, all the top math students (of which I was one) took a basic career test and failed the math part because we had forgotten all of our basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division after working so long with trigonometry and calculus. I literally remember sitting there, looking at the basic 3rd grader division problem, and thinking “I can find the area and volume of an asymmetrical shape but I can’t do this…”

- Also, memorizing doesn’t have to be done in the drill way. I’ve been a math teacher before, but I’m not as well versed in math-pedagogy theories, so I’d probably still have kids memorize multiplication tables if I taught math today just because I wouldn’t know anything better to do. But as a literacy pedagogy expert, I must insist that sitting around memorizing vocab and spelling words is a super duper waste of a child’s precious cognitive time.

“I have seen teams that do no fundamentals and extremely little conditioning but work on plays and playing do fairly poorly – the weaker players get no chance to develop.”

- I totally don’t play basketball, so I’m probably not using the analogy right, but still, I think that it still applies. Basketball, Writing, Math, Quantum Physics…each activity has it’s own dynamics that will interact with the dynamics of the learners. Today learner may need 5% drill, tomorrow learner may need 50% drill, and then 25% the day after that, but the problem with standardized tests is that it takes out all this dynamic learner-based adaptation and pushes teachers and students to 95% drill. It’s February, with May being the end of this school year, and most of my students have only been assigned an average of 2 writing assignments SO FAR at their schools. Aug to Jan, 6 months of school, and only 2 compositions. It’s CRAZY. There are a few teachers that are assigning writing more regularly, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Ideally, you’re right, teachers need to adapt to student needs with the right amount of drill for the right amount of time at the right time, but for now I’m pushing the 5% drill learning to 95% authentic learning because it’s way too unbalanced in the drill direction right now.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@dc02111 “Perhaps, but how would you measure RELATIVE performance?”

- Who’s the better writer, J.K. Rowling or Stephen King? We have to step back and think about what we are giving up when we absolutely need to know if MLK Elementary is beating Korematsu Elementary. Is it really necessary for us to know that? Or can we just focus on supporting, nurturing, and developing the individual needs and talents of those unique communities of students? Then we can have a larger variety of awesome reading material to enjoy and make into movies and theme parks.

“How would you suggest determining who deserves certain limited resources?”

- It is unfortunate that we don’t have unlimited resources and no matter how we try to level the playing field, it will never be perfectly even. But I think that at the very least we should give each child the human dignity of knowing about the uneven playing field and equipping them to play in the real world to the best of our ability. Even if we spent the exact same amount of resources on every single child that comes into this world, there will still be disparities. The world is ever changing, and kids come into this world to face a dynamic reality in constant motion, and what makes one child the fittest to survive one moment leaves them the most vulnerable in the next. Standardized testing gives us a false sense of fairness and stability, and forcing our children to live in such a fantasy land will not help them live and flourish in the chaotic real world.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@Danny_Ahmed I think apprenticeship is all around us, more than we realize, but you are right, standardized testing is definitely pervasive. lol it’s making me think “well, maybe the kids need to know standardized tests if they have to take it for future jobs, too” ^O^ Still, when judged against the goal of creating intelligent citizens for this country, I can’t abide by that system. I just can’t sit by and say okay while I watch kids having their precious time wasted away.

I think the apprenticeship system has great promise. That’s basically how doctorates are awarded. You study with a mentor, doing research, writing, experiments, etc. until you are dubbed ready to begin your dissertation. Then, you do that major project, defend it in a room full of other experts on the subject, and then they shake your hand and you’re a Ph.D. Basically, the “masters” deem the “student” worthy of becoming a “master”. I’m sure there are basic “checklist” items that all candidates are judged by, but the final judgment is based very specifically on the quality of the individual’s work and performance, and there are no numbers used in the judging (at least not in mine). So, it won’t be easy or the same for all professions, but I feel like it is a reasonable system that can very realistically be implemented, and more importantly, I find it a lot more humane.
dragonrider0ne

Jeez, I’ve been getting a steady stream of comments in my inbox about this and it’s a trip! As a student in a MAT (Master’s of Arts in Teaching) program this is a great experience! I have left my two cents, but I just wanted to say that this is the subject that I am learning at the moment in my MAT classes, and discussions like these are precisely what is going on in them.

Just as my own last “official” word: @TinaTsai is a professional and I trust her views since she has “been through the grind”. Maybe not 100%, but her message is genuine and agree with her message.
Danny_Ahmed

@TinaTsai That’s true. Apprenticeship or something similar is still around, more or less. You’re right that graduate school is basically like that. The harder thing to do besides the program itself is getting in. Besides finding that Advisor, and letters, almost everyone had to do take a major standardized test (like the GRE) and have a decent GPA (also full of standardized testing). Had to do all that before getting in. So, it’s like we have to go through Hell first before reaching Heaven.

The other options to Standardized testing that I could think of, and have done, is writing essays, report papers or oral exams. Well, there is some type of “standard” involved, but it was more open to interpretation and wasn’t limited to those only one right answer scenarios. So, I guess they’re not really “alternatives” to standardized testing.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@Danny_Ahmed Very true. I took the GRE and to get my CA teaching credential, I had to take a bunch of standardized tests as well. And for the MSAT (Multiple Subjects Aptitude Test) I had to read some culturally biased publication. Not that I didn’t learn anything from it or the standardized tests, but my beef is with the overall framework that is used to structure our learning and knowledge, a structure that allows someone to dictate to us what is the right answer and what is the wrong answer instead of us as human beings coming to the conclusion and agreement of what is the right answer. We could learn all the same information, “memorize” all the same “basics” through a much more democratic system.

Regarding writing tests, I definitely think they are a whole lot better than multiple choice questions. In CA, an actually standardized written writing test is give only to 4th graders, 7th graders, and 10th graders. All the other years, “writing” is measured by multiple choice questions. I’m sure I don’t need to explain how wrong that is. Also, when the kids are actually writing, there is a preset expectation, and the kids write thinking “what will get me the highest score?” They aim to please the almighty test grader instead of thinking “What message do I want to convey? How can I best convey it to my reader? Do I want my reader to be comfortable with my answer or do I want to challenge them?” I totally have my 100+ students practice writing test topics, but I’m very careful to explain to them that we have a very specific audience here, a test grader, and we have to cater to that test graders’ needs/wants, but that the sort of writing expected, is not necessarily the real writing that you would publish in the real world, even if there is some overlap. Is it good for kids to do these writing topics? Yes. I actually like many of the SAT topics because I think they promote philosophical cognition. However, again, it’s the tyranny of it, writing for a score instead of for a genuine reader response.
JosephLee1

@TinaTsai

If the student is already an accomplished writer capable of articulating his / her thoughts and constructing complex characters, then correcting grammar mistakes is really a matter of formality. Many good writers aren’t grammar Nazis, but they are well versed, literate, and fundamentally sound in the English language. They can be as intentionally obtuse or experimental in their prose because they understand the rules and conventions they attempt to break or mock. Unrefined ingenuity isn’t an argument for “write what you makes you happy for 30 minutes” kind of curriculum that attempts to mine some sort of learning experience only through stimulating the imagination.

If you couldn’t identify who George Washington was in a multiple choice format question, then you probably can’t articulate the qualities that made him such a great leader. That’s logically consistent. Standardized tests check your baseline knowledge of what you learned in class. The simplicity is limiting and telling at the same time. I work with typical American students who might choose “the sun was hut” as an answer in the fill in the blank question. It’s highly unlikely these students will write stories of real substances or derive knowledge through unconventional learning styles. Often, they don’t. These students often require help at the the most basic level. That even applies to high school students 2 yrs away from graduation.

It wasn’t in my teaching experience to find students whose innate writing talents were hampered by a simple lack of fundamentals. It’s usually the other way around. The romantic notion of inherently gifted students caged by red tape and bureaucratic educational (testing) system is often just that. Some Latino students struggle to write even in Spanish! You make a lot of good points, but I feel like you’re ultimately waxing philosophical about a more fulfilling learning experience that involves a number of ambitious projects, when the needs of a typical American students are more concrete and calls for a more grounded instruction that emphasizes fundamentals. I would certainly require my students to write novels or poems as assignments, but to use them as a vehicle to sharpen their writing style and the English language.
http://tinabot.blogspot.com/ TinaTsai

@dragonrider0ne Thanks for the vote of confidence ^_^ When you say “been through the grind”, I have to say, it was quite a grind. Everything I’m suggesting here goes against 60% of what I’ve done with students over the last 14 years, and I’m personally and professionally ashamed of all the drill and kill and poor instructional practices I used to engage in even though I just didn’t know any better, but I understand it is the process of becoming a better teacher. That’s why I’m so vocal about sharing my current understandings of education with others. If I can help another teacher improve their practice by sharing my mistakes and help them skip over as much of the bad-practice as possible, I will feel that all of those bad practices I used will have not been in vain. The most potent place to reform our education system for the better is in the mind of a teacher. Best of luck to you in your studies and congratulations on choosing this most noble of professions!
Danny_Ahmed

@TinaTsai I had a class that was like that; where the students would come together and discuss certain topics and end in some consensus. The instructor would only involved himself to inject ideas to prolong the discussion or stop us from taking a lazy route (that is we refer to textbook definitions and answers without laying it out). We had to keep a journal writing out what we learn, what we wanted to know, what we didn’t understand, etc. There were discussions with the whole class to discussions within smaller groups. Those discussions and journal made up almost 70% of the grade with testing and lab activities for the rest. Tests were word problems with basic math but also had a question or two which needed essay like answers. Grading wasn’t all or nothing, but that professor was adamant about using the right measurement units and integers because it’s detrimental to any experiment if those were off, not necessarily the numbers (as long as it’s really close). This was an intro. Physics course. I think one can be surprised at how sophisticated it can be to talk about simple terms like Heat or gravity. Once in a while, we did dwell into far out stuff like does 1 +1 always equal 2. Something like that.

I think that type of experience is interesting and it can work. Though it’s better if the classes were smaller, like no more than 20, maybe 30 but that’s stretching. I think not just college students but high school and middle school wouldn’t mind doing that type of classrooms. Some specialty high schools and prep schools are already like that.

Overall, some students liked it but just as many didn’t. Especially in the sciences, I wouldn’t mind having a mix of those type of class styles along with the traditional lectures. I think looking back, that’s what I would have prefer. For college, high school and middle school. If I could change anything, it would be to prolong the lab or hands on activities. Traditional lectures and discussing theories is a lot of work, but it’s exhausting because everyone will understand them at different paces. No one was dumb or couldn’t understand, it’s just true understanding is very individualized and can’t be packed into certain time frames.
itissaid

@TinaTsai Excuses, excuses. I just questioned your argument for which you had no basis. It is up to YOU as the writer to prove your argument, which you still haven’t done. The idea that China invented standardized testing is laughable if one considers the fact that many ancient cultures like in Europe had standard ways of testing people. Don’t blame others for your lack of evidence. LOL.
Blamster

I think what you’re saying makes sense for daily teaching/learning, and for testing depending on the subject and the expertise level being tested. However it doesn’t make sense and it’s not affordable to have kids reinvent or relearn the wheel for basic things or for certain subjects. Things like basic math, chemistry, even the structure of the government in civics are “fixed” and standardized testing does a good job to measure whether kids grasp the facts. Only after possessing a basic degree of knowledge and skill would kids be equipped to observe, analyze, and critically think in an effective manner. So in short standardized testing has its place, so do other methods of testing.

8 Asians