In a post last week I asked what would change if discussions about educational policy focused more on what children should know and be able to do. It seems natural to ask whether this is not already happening. Isn’t it the job of educators to focus precisely on what children are learning and doing?
Whether or not educators focus on these questions is often beside the point. Unfortunately, many of those who debate and make educational policy decisions are not career educators. They often spend little time in schools.
Educators actively engage in working with students in classrooms and other contexts. The process of policymaking is often far removed from the actions undertaken by these individuals. This is another point raised by Diane Ravitch in her recent book.
Want to know a huge problem with discussions about schooling?
With very few exceptions, most of us have gone to school. And that gives us an automatic tendency and implicit right (so we think) to have an opinion about how to make schools better.
To critics, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the standards movement it represents, is an example of a potentially decent idea gone awry when taken out of the hands of educators and placed in the hands of educational policymakers. This criticism still seems to hold true even as the Obama administration outlines its plans and wrestles with how best to reform this icon of the Bush era.
While the wrestling match continues, the fact remains that the current standards to which American public school children are held are expected to be captured by multiple choice tests. Multiple choice tests have their place, most agree.
Multiple choice exams are consistent, and consistency is important. There is a reason why it’s called “standardized testing.”
Large scale standardized tests enable us to examine millions of students at roughly the same time, in a relatively economic fashion, and compare the results. A British think tank conducted a study in 2009 showing that:
“When compared to essay tests that are adequately marked, multiple-choice tests are 12 times more efficient in terms of the time taken to sit a test, and over 7,000 times more efficient in terms of marking time.”
A 7,000-time increase in efficiency is not to be taken lightly.
But it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Yes, multiple choice tests have their place. They also have their own, perhaps unintended, impact.
Whether they are in suburban schools with high tax bases or underfunded urban ones, public school students are spending increasing amounts of time preparing for multiple choice tests. I have yet to see official, nationwide stats about this. In the suburbs, students might spend a month preparing for their NCLB exams. In some urban districts they might spend most of the year.
Going back to thinking about what children are learning and doing, this time spent does leave them with skills.
There are techniques and tactics that students can and often do learn to do better on their yearly, federally mandated standardized tests. The educational publisher Scholastic has outlined a few of these. They include:
- Manage your time relative to the number of questions you have to answer.
- Scan questions, responding to those you know and returning to those you do not later.
- Pick a statement because it answers the question being asked, not simply because it is true.
- Immediately eliminate answers that are implausible or just flat out incorrect.
- Guess when needed, but try to narrow it down to at least two choices.
Are these test taking skills valuable ones?
As long as the divide between educators and educational policy makers continues, the answer is yes. In fact, they are basic survival skills.
Originally posted on Policy Shop | The Demos Blog: Ideas for the Common Good on April 4, 2011. Reposted with the author’s consent.
