The Thing About Tests

Tests.  Wow.  Where do I even start on tests?  Is there a word that is more charged in education right now?  We love to hate tests.  We love to love tests.  We use tests for everything.  We test for intelligence, test for comprehension, test for meaning, test for understanding, test to end a class, test to enter a school, test to see whether more tests are needed, test our blood sugars, test our resolve, test our patience, test the waters, and according to popular media, we test our students to death.  Canada is apparently leading the way in the anti-testing movement, with recent reforms occurring here in Alberta and in Ontario to reduce the weight of final exams in overall course evaluation or to de-empahsize the significance of testing in the broader pedagogy.  Other provinces have long since passed on the high-stakes, winner takes all, loser takes nothing final exam game.

Critics of these approaches claim that the anti-testing movement is exacerbating a generational problem where today's youth -- the Millennials and the generation in grade school currently that follows them -- are the least resilient generation in recorded history.

To test or not to test?

That is a tough question.  Progressive movements in education call into question the value of testing entirely, and this sentiment has been broadly adopted in the world of educational discourse.  It is a rare week that my Twitter feed doesn't get hit with something like this:

Yet I also have friends and colleagues that scoff at the notion of eliminating testing from grade school.  I hear the following and all manner of variations therein:

"Well they're not going to stop testing in Universities and Colleges.  We need to prepare kids for their futures."
"Those <<Diploma Exams/Provincial Achievement Tests/State Tests/SATs/Standardized Government Issued Testing Regimes>> aren't going away, and we need to make sure our kids are ready."
"I need to know what my kids actually know, and the only way to do that is with a test."
"Without testing students are accountable to nothing, and neither are teachers."
"We need ways of measuring our effectiveness.  Hard data consisting of measurable results is necessary to shape policies and practices."

So who's right?  If you have a definitive answer to that question and the research to back it up, I'd be thrilled to have a conversation with you.  You see, from my perspective, both camps are right.  It really depends on your viewpoint and your values.  If you value...

• data 
• clear benchmarks
• performance measures
• accountability
• efficiency
• clarity
• categorization
• compartmentalization
• knowledge
• the ability to make valid comparisons between individual students and groups of students

... well then, testing is probably up your alley.  I want to make one thing very clear before contrasting that list.  Regardless of your visceral, emotional reaction to the list, nothing on it is inherently bad.  In fact, you can make a very compelling argument for why every one of those things is absolutely necessary in a public education system.

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Time out...

That last bullet up there is particularly interesting.  It's a lot of words that actually distill down to a single word that is inherently associated with "test," and is perhaps the only word that can contend with "test" for being more controversial as a term in education:

"Standardized"

If there is one particular kind of test that has permanent residence beneath the bus under which society throws all its scapegoats, it is the Standardized Test.  I'd like to put my scientist hat on and say something about standardizing before carrying on further:

Standardization is simply a method by which we normalize a process.  Normalizing in this context means to establish criteria upon which we can accurately, and with statistical validity, compare results from one test subject to the next.  Standardization isn't just important, it's a necessity when data and measurement are concerned.  Without it, an observer cannot reliably compare different subjects or groups of subjects being measured.  Anyone who wants a study done of the effectiveness of... well... anything frankly, requires that the method of measurement be standardized so that all test subjects can be treated as statistically equivalent.  Without it, measurement is almost useless.

If we want to throw standardized testing to the curb, we also should consider whether we want to be able to say where we fit in the greater global narrative.  We use standardized measurements (tests) to rank all manner of our country's capabilities relative to those in other nations.  And we use that information to set economic policies, direct business goals, and allocate resources both public and private.  Data matters, and to get it, standardization is an absolute necessity.

This doesn't mean I'm ready to reinstate the 50% weight on our Alberta Diploma Exams or to champion more state testing.  But it does mean, that I'd like to pull the standardization moniker out from under the bus and see if we can make better use of its value.

But I digress...

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If, on the other hand, you value...

• holistic growth of children
• the learning experience
• limiting stress and anxiety
• creativity
• life relevance
• empowering students
• engagement
• individualization & personalizing learning
• inclusiveness
• inquiry
• the iterative process

... testing is probably not your best friend.  Again, none of the things on that list is bad, and again, we can make an argument that all of those things are important to have in a public education system.

Both groups are inherently correct within their own spheres of value.  That's because in education we have a great many goals and some of those goals compete with one another.  Testing lives right in that space of competition.  Its presence satisfies a number of important objectives while potentially eroding others, and the absence of testing has the inverse effect.  No one's inherently wrong.

So what are we supposed to do about it?

I'm not going to pretend to have a definitive answer, but in my next post I'll share my thoughts on what roles I think testing in school should play, and (perhaps more importantly) what roles it shouldn't.

TL;DR:  Testing in schools gets a pretty bad rap, and many educational jurisdictions are looking to scrap testing practices wholly or in part.  Testing and non-testing each have their own sets of pros and cons and both sets of pros are pros we probably want.  Next post: some ways we might be able to have our cake and eat it too.

Vive la revolution!!