Just Say No - to Standardized Tests

November, 2000

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Frequent participants in this forum know that I am something of a fan of project-based learning, and feel that this model of contextual education is not only good for learners, but can be made even better through the effective incorporation of technology. Yet, when I talk about this topic, I almost always hear from someone who says, "We are expected to help our students perform better on standardized tests, and I don't feel comfortable taking on a new way of teaching with all this pressure on my shoulders."

Rather than address whether or not project-based learning helps students do better on tests (I think it does), I want to look at a broader picture. There is no question that our romance with testing is enjoying a heated revival, with the stakes being raised at every turn. School funding, staffing, and just about everything else seems to hang in the balance as we cram every factoid and test-taking strategy possible into the cranial recesses of our youngsters. Afterwards, we pour over the results as if we were trying to forecast the future by looking at goat entrails. Newspapers celebrate even the slightest gains, and decry even the slightest losses. Next to sex and baseball (to misquote a great old Broadway play) testing is our nation's greatest sport.

So, I did an experiment.

I asked a small group of educational leaders (400 or so) how many of them wanted their kids to do well on statewide exams. All hands went up. Being on a roll, I then asked how many of them wanted these same children to lead successful lives when they finished school. Again, all hands were raised. Just to make things interesting, I asked how many audience members considered themselves to be successful — again almost all hands went up.

So I did the only logical thing: I then told my audience (using a trick I learned from Bill Daggett) that the stack of paper I was holding contained questions from the test they were currently giving to every tenth grader in their state, and that, after they took the test I would have it graded and would share the results with the '60 Minutes' crew standing in the hall.

The room became still, punctuated by the ever-so-slight sound of sweat dripping from 800 palms onto the auditorium's carpet.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "This is the same test you expect kids to master, and you already said that you want kids to be successful in life (as you are), so why are you so reluctant to pit wits against your own kids?"

The most common response was that, whatever the tests measured, they did not measure the skills needed to be successful in life, therefore the educational leaders were not prepared to take the test.

So, of course, we then explored the now plausible notion that whatever these tests measured had little to no relevance in the world outside of school -- even for educators. The tests were just another hurdle for learners to jump. Of course, these folks argued that they were powerless to change the system — yes, the tests were junk, and they might even take time away from effective teaching, but there was nothing they could do to change the system.

This leads me to a suggestion: The next time a politician jumps on the testing bandwagon, let's require that the politician take the test he or she thinks kids need to pass -- and publish the score in the daily newspaper. That ought to dampen their enthusiasm. But until something like that happens, people will feel powerless to change the system. A sense of powerlessness sure permeated the group with whom I was talking. The tests were designed by others, mandated by others, valued by others, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Kind of reminds me of the 60's when some of us thought it was strange that a significant segment of our society was having a hard time registering to vote in some communities. Some spent their time wringing their hands wishing there was something they could do, but feeling powerless to change the "system." Others took a different tack. We launched voter registration drives ourselves, and took our work to the streets. Yes, this means we got beat up by the police and thrown in jail, but in the end it was all worth it.

Now it seems to me that we are unlikely to have the cops bashing in the heads of superintendents who refuse to go along with decontextualized tests that have nothing to do with the skills needed to thrive in the coming years, so how about a little civil disobedience? What do you honestly think would happen if every educator were to say, "I don't need ETS or others to tell me how my children are doing, and I sure don't need a test designed to measure isolated factoids. All I care about is that my students acquire the foundational skills and content depth needed to thrive in a 21st century democracy, and a school-based version of 'Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?' just doesn't cut it."

Instead of giving the tests to the students, these educators would stage a "teach-in" and give the tests to parents, real-estate salespeople, and others who seem so enamored of these instruments. (And, as I mentioned before, the results should be published in the local press.)

Think about this for a minute. What do you honestly think would happen if, on a massive scale, educators refused to treat children like lab rats? Would the cops storm the schools and lead the teachers away in shackles?

I think it is obvious what would happen: People would start talking about this issue in a deep way. People would come to understand that there are other ways to measure the effectiveness of education — ways that are relevant to our time and to the lives of our students. State legislators will probably start by condemning this radical process until they realize that the movement was gaining steam — and then they will rush to claim that they had espoused the same idea all along!

I shed blood at the hands of my own government so people had equal opportunities to vote. Fighting for our kids is a lot easier — let's do it!

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