It’s the end of the week and the end of the Spring term for some UK teachers (not me!). Time to relax and look at some issues that have been floating around the news and education-related blogs in the past seven days, including using computer gam…

At my school, and many, many others, science and social studies and art and PE and even recess have been all but completely dropped from the curriculum in the name of test scores. How do students that are behind primarily because of lack of understanding of the world around them learn about that world from a curriculum that is devoid of experiences about the real world? Over two-thirds of the parents of the students in my class never graduated elementary school – about half never got past 4th grade. Not one of my 31 sixth graders yesterday knew that there are craters on the Moon - much less what caused them, or that we have landed on the Moon, or that there are people called astronauts that travel into space (actually 3 or 4 of them knew that).

Except that I have access to about 27 six –year-old iBook laptops, 26 of my students had never really done any research on the internet until this year - or used tech as a tool in any other way because “that’s an add-on to the curriculum we don’t have time for,” - and the chances of them working much on tech in school during middle school beyond a basic computer class are slim to none - and only 4 have a computer at home. Project based work – give me a break - that “takes too long and is harder to grade.” But little to none of those skills or knowledge is on the tests they have to pass to graduate high school – but lots of things they will probably never use are.

I’m convinced that the lack of community about which we often lament stems directly from having broken traditional, inter-generational learning links from within the community. Kids are cloistered away in cells where they are fed facts and figures, failing to make real-world connections socially and intellectually.

Since when is a score on a standardized test an accurate reflection of what a person truly knows? Sure, we can use the results to label, stratify, and select, but what are we really measuring when so much of what’s behind the score gets forgotten in a short period of time? Such mechanisms certainly have their place, but please don’t mistake it for anything close to a comprehensive assessment of what I can do! I agree with Wesley, assessment is important, but let’s assess what really matters: that which elevates us socially, intellectually, morally, and ethically!

Thanks for your comments. I am definitely not advocating an end to assessment. What I do advocate for is a focus that is more authentic and comprehensive than the one encouraged by the present system of high-stakes accountability. We have tunnel vision on SUMMATIVE assessment. Yet any teacher knows that formative and ongoing assessment are essential for learning, not just summative assessment.

I agree with you that we need to “focus on creating young adults who can assimilate information rapidly and can analyze that same information critically.” The world is full of ill-structured problems, and we need to help equip kids with the skills to thrive in that environment. High-stakes testing that is based primarily on single answer, multiple choice problems does not do this. It encourages teachers (and administrators who evaluate them) to focus on worksheets, test question strategies, and a narrow curriculum rather than encouraging inquiry, STUDENTS asking questions about their own learning, and learning in depth.

It is no surprise that most of us have difficulty believing this. We are steeped in traditional, transmission-based instruction that focuses on tests, and it seems logical that focusing even harder on testing would naturally be a good thing. I will not deny that in many schools, high stakes accountability has had some positive effects by forcing some teachers to have higher expectations of student performance than they held previously. But in many of those same schools, art and music are no longer taught, or given very short shrift, because they are not tested.

Much of what matters cannot be measured by multiple choice exams and represented in neat bar charts. I am not advocating an end to assessment. Just an end to the myopic focus on summative assessment that holds our children can best be prepared for their futures in a culture of fear where the purpose of the entire year’s educational activities comes down to just a few days of bubbling on scantrons. That is not what a high quality educational environment should be all about.

My point? Testing competencies is an accepted fact of modern life. I submit that we, as educators, parents and taxpayers, must insist that our curricula focus on creating young adults who can assimilate information rapidly and can analyze that same information critically. The only way in which I know we can accomplish that objective is by stretching young minds by exposing them to a wide variety of ideas. Then we need to show them how to make sense of it all and how to apply it in their daily lives.

Am I nuts? Am I making sense?

Rob