The idea that our over emphasis on testing being harmful is not a very new one. Both of my parents were teachers, and they were some of the best. I don't say that gibly though I do say it with bias. There are dozens of others who share my assessment of my parent's teaching prowess. In addition, my parents shared some of the resources and classes they found helpful with me. I didn't actually realize at the time that I was fairly privileged to be able to to participate in 500 level courses as a teenager, but the things I learned stuck with me.
Unfortunately for many of the teachers I have had since then, I learned how to tell a good teacher from one that just puts in the requirements. The problem with assessing teacher's performance is that teachers are generally the people that were comfortable in schools. They tend to enjoy boundaries and outright expectations. Checklists and syllabi are their bread and butter. Because of this, if you give a teacher a method to assess their teaching, they will unwittingly "cheat" the system. How can this be? How would a teacher cheat?
Teachers cheat the same way the "smart" kids cheat. They go through the expectation list, and find a way to fulfill each one. They then perform and document how they fulfilled each expectation and they assessment will show them as a five-star teacher. The problem is that if your assessment is trying to tell you if they are a GOOD teacher, they just cheated.
You see, a really good teacher will already be doing the things in your assessment, and all your assessment will teach poor teachers is how to complete your assessment, not how to be better. Across America people act as though the educational system were racist, catering to white males, not caring if the others drop out. Truth be told, our current educational system appeals more to the way girls learn, and the testing methods students are exposed to are advantageous to no one at all.
Standardized testing at first appears to be a good method for finding out how teachers are doing. All it really does is give a snapshot of the general knowledge of a classroom, and highlights who are good at taking tests and those that don't deal well with high-pressure high-stakes testing. There are people out there who are extremely intelligent who don't work well in boundaries, and the moment they are given a piece of paper labelled "Test" they freak out and their mind goes blank. They may know all the answers, but for the duration of the test, stress defeats them, they are overcome by events, and the test will say that they are much less intelligent than they are.
Beyond this, standardized testing doesn't reveal the raw materials the teachers had to work with, and the way they are compiled rarely gives opportunity to highlight the true places of individual excellence. Furthermore, some countries even cheat the entire standardized testing system by disallowing students below a certain level of achievement to participate in the next testing. The reason some countries look so successful at education by means of standardized tests, is because by the end of 12th grade the bottom third of the classes are working at fast food restaurants and in other menial jobs while the top two-thirds actually take the test. Yet another example of educators being "Test Takers" and not actual improvers.
We've lost the basic idea of education. I have heard university administrators speak of "Survival of the fittest" as though red in tooth and claw, "good" institutions will weed out of "bad" institutions thus resulting in better students. This is a fundamental educational error. Education itself goes against survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest says "If you aren't fit, you don't learn the lesson!" Education says "We will teach you the lesson so you will be fit" True education actually seeks an increase in the quality of the materials it is working with.
Instead we have competition, with scorn and ridicule if a student gets held back. As a result, parents pressure schools to shuffle their kids through the system, ready or not! This is often out of fear of ridicule with no though to the fact that they are setting their child up for failure of higher stakes with each advanced grade. What started as Timmy not fully grasping phonics and being too afraid to ask a question out of fear of peer ridicule turns into utter apathy and abandonment in by his senior year. The parents insist on moving Timmy from grade to grade so he doesn't get "left behind" In the mean time he is getting left in the dust because he didn't ever learn to read properly. Or worse, straight A Billy doesn't get to reach his potential because the teacher has to stop and re-teach Timmy every concept three times while Billy stagnates.
Testing is important. It is a valuable tool when used correctly, that can actually accelerate everyone's learning. Unfortunately, more and more price tags get tied to standardized testing, leading teachers to say "Screw teaching them! Lets just train them to get the right multiple choice pattern on standardized test!" Testing should separate kids out into classes that meet their needs, not give a rank of students where this one is the best and gets six figures per year while this one is the worst and goes on SSI and welfare.
Trying to fix the system of tests that can be beaten by clever test takers, more and more systems are designed, by people who love tests, and are participated in by people who love tests, and are subsequently, inadvertently, cheated on. Everything from Accreditation to Trade Guilds is just an attempt to ensure quality instead of people just fulfilling a list of requirements, and yet they can't get away from the list of requirements. There are lots of teachers out there that look great on paper and terrible from the seat of the student.
I've observed one teacher in particular bragging about how he gets high marks on all the teaching assessments that his university performs during class tell a student after class that if they didn't understand the material it wasn't his job to teach it to him. I'm unclear to this day what the hell this man thought his job was. Apparently it was some combination of filling out assessment paperwork and telling inappropriate jokes to his students while on tenure.
At the end of the day what a test cannot do is ensure that a person is competent. At the end of the day I would rather have a mechanic that can and will treat me fairly and actually fix my car than one that has a hundred certifications and only really knows how to pass tests really well. Too bad our current education system is only interested in the certification. That's probably why it's broken.
bravo!
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